Trump’s baseless lawsuits are getting laughed out of the courts. His allegations of voter fraud collapse under the facts (as in this case). He’s paying big bucks for recounts he can’t possibly win. Why?
It’s all part of a coordinated scheme to block or slow election certifications in key states he lost in “the hope … that Republican-controlled legislatures or governors would just hand him their state’s electoral votes,” Huffington Post says (read story here).
“If a state election board fails to certify an ‘electoral slate’ by the Dec. 8 safe harbor deadline, it increases the possibility that the state legislature, which is Republican-led in many key states, could choose to send an electoral slate that supports Trump, even if their state’s voters backed Biden,” Time magazine says (read story here).
Event though legal experts say it’s extremely unlikely to succeed, Huffington Post argues “it’s incredibly dangerous” because “it undermines his supporters’ faith in democracy” and “could be used in the years to come to justify unnecessary and damaging voting restrictions” that especially target black voters. Time called it “deeply damaging” to our democracy — not that Trump cares about that, or anything but himself.
It’s not wrong to call it a “Hitler strategy,” because it goes beyond a cynical effort to gain an advantage within the framework of our democratic system; it’s fundamentally totalitarian in character, and would overthrow our democracy. Here’s something for Trump’s supporters to think about: If he’s willing to take away Biden voters’ freedom, why do you think he’d stop there, and not take away your freedom, too?
But suppose Trump did succeed in gumming up the certification process, and GOP-controlled legislatures sent him back to the White House. In that case, we would have lost our freedom, and be living under a government we couldn’t vote out of office, ruled by a dictator. We know from history it can happen. If it did happen, who then could argue the Nazi comparisons didn’t have validity?
In these states neither candidate got 50% of the vote. The winner take all disenfranchises 1/2 the voters no matter who gets the electoral college votes. With neither candidate over 50% and in multiple cases the difference is less than 1% perhaps the legislature should step in in 3 to 5 states and divide the electoral votes in half. That is not the likely outcome but it would be a fair outcome that actually matches the voters preference in those states. There is nothing saying you cannot do it that way and in the early days of the US state legislatures did split votes and it was not a winner take all in states. It became the norm only after new states in the original northwest were admitted and those states adopted winner take all systems.
If you want to change the rules, then how about we just let the people choose the president, with each person’s vote counting the same as every other person’s vote?
“Disenfranchise” means not being allowed to vote. The losing side in an election is NOT disenfranchised, but the word “whiners” may apply.