No, Trump does not have the legal authority or the practical ability to “nationalize” US elections, for all the same reasons he also didn’t when he issued an executive order a few months ago abolishing mail in voting.
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@mattblaze election worker here. I simultaneously believe our elections are secure, and that they are vulnerable to a fascist takeover. When the laws are followed, any fraud is easy to detect and on an individual level that won't change the outcome. /1
@mattblaze But if masked agents show up before the polls open, give a list of Republicans, order us to only allow those people to vote, tell us they know where we all live, and doing anything against their demands will result in masked agents busting in our doors at 3am to disappear us,... I'm not sure there are enough 60+ year old retirees willing to defy that. The few that resist may only result in their precinct being declared as invalid, which is just as good for this regime's goals. /2
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Well, say the DOJ detected "irregularities in voting", some "foreign interference" perhaps or suspected "antifa activity", and they send the FBI to impound the voting source material, is it then impossible for them to tamper with it and give it back?
But I would agree, that it is probably much easier to influence elections before and after (just not swearing in people, endless court cases, voter suppression) then it would be to tamper with the actual election data.
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@mattblaze But if masked agents show up before the polls open, give a list of Republicans, order us to only allow those people to vote, tell us they know where we all live, and doing anything against their demands will result in masked agents busting in our doors at 3am to disappear us,... I'm not sure there are enough 60+ year old retirees willing to defy that. The few that resist may only result in their precinct being declared as invalid, which is just as good for this regime's goals. /2
@mattblaze the point that so many here have been making is that the laws may be good, and the system may be highly distributed, but those laws are worthless if the judicial and legislative branches keep rolling over in submission to the executive. We are becoming a country where might makes right, and it sickens me. /3
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@lastofthem @dominykas You know what’s *really* dangerous and full of privilege? Ignoring the details of how complex things you don’t actually understand(like how US elections work) work in order to make dramatic but unwarranted pronouncements of doom.
@mattblaze They should put that on billboards to remind everyone, every day.
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One (very risky) thing that Trump could potentially do would be to use federal law enforcement and/or military to *disrupt* elections to prevent them from happening altogether. It’s not clear that doing this yields him any benefit, or that enough people would obey his orders to have wide impact.
This is essentially a nuclear option. The outcome is no legitimate government, and likely civil war. And if he really wants a civil war, he can start one in other ways without taking over elections.
@mattblaze dc elections are quite vulnerable
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It’s hard to overstate just how huge this system is, or how many moving parts are involved. And almost all of it operates at the local level, governed by state laws and local practices and tied to the structure of local government.
This is not something you can just snap your fingers and take over by fiat or force, not to mention the fact that it’s all deeply embedded in federal and state constitutional structures.
@mattblaze what do you think happens if the SAVE act passes?
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Scale of US elections:
51 states (and DC), each with its own election laws
Most ballot questions are for state and local offices and initiatives
~ 5000 local election administration jurisdictions (mostly counties and townships), which run election logistics
~ 115,000 local polling places, mostly borrowed for election day
~ 750,000 election day workers
~ 138,000,000 ballots cast in 2016, 82,000,000 of which at local polling places on election day.
@mattblaze While I agree that the full scale is huge, what would be the smallest subset that Trump needs to take control of or interfere with, to achieve his aims? Is it still in the realm of the impossible?
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But this is far fetched and almost certainly counter to Trump’s interests, which presumably include not getting himself killed in a coup if he fails. And again, disrupting elections isn’t really essential for this.
@mattblaze
He is also far into dementia and not connected to reality very well. These factors play a role. -
You obviously have expertise regarding technical aspects of US elections, but this doesn't mean that you are an expert on totalitarian regimes & how they come about.
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I dread when Trump makes these proclamations, because it’s a denial of service attack against me and every other election expert with better things to do than explain why this is BS over and over. But other than that, it’s just empty, meaningless blather.
@mattblaze it's really hard to find the balance between "I can't let this ignorance go unchallenged" and "I can't waste my life challenging every ignorant thing this man says." Am I responsibly responding to dangerous misinformation or am I being suckered into rolling around in the mud with a pig who enjoys rolling in the mud? It is so frustrating because the uncertainty just adds to the sense of hopelessness and feeds apathy.
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No, Trump does not have the legal authority or the practical ability to “nationalize” US elections, for all the same reasons he also didn’t when he issued an executive order a few months ago abolishing mail in voting. Elections are governed by states, and, to a limited extent, Congress. Not the executive branch.
There are plenty of very real, immediate threats to democracy to get worked up about right now. This isn’t one of them.
@mattblaze He can't "nationalize" elections, for the reasons you give, but I wouldn't call it "meaningless blather" either. It fits into and reinforces what he *is* doing to disrupt elections in his favor, not by preventing them, but by intimidating voters and officials in key places. We have plenty of historic examples of voter suppression and bias in running polls, and he's already been able to shift other behavior in some states (and universities) via "orders" that shouldn't have legal force.
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@RunRichRun he has an enormous platform to promote chaos, as we saw on Jan 6. But that’s not unlimited. Being able to summon an angry mob to break things isn’t the same as being able to take over and actually run complex systems.
@mattblaze
Understood. I do not think the administration wants free & fair elections. trump stated — likely correctly — that R loss of Congressional control in the midterms wld lead to his impeachment. Authoritarians want control. They're neither efficient nor effective at delivering services — including free & fair elections — in most cases.How to reach past the regime's limits that you mention = key. Vote and turn out the vote & use the courts as much as possible. What else?
Thx.
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But this is far fetched and almost certainly counter to Trump’s interests, which presumably include not getting himself killed in a coup if he fails. And again, disrupting elections isn’t really essential for this.
@mattblaze Surely some member of the USSS would take their oath to protect the constitution seriously in such a situation? Or am I a hopeless dreamer?
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I could go into detail about what the limits on executive and federal control over US elections are, and what the president could do to exert influence over them, but it would be extremely tedious and irrelevant to the actual reality here, which is that this is a nothing burger.
@mattblaze I’m more worried about people believing he CAN do these things, and disrupting the process that way with the noise and enough precincts possibly following along, or outside pressure like we started to see with counting. General public panic is the weak link, and the logical, legal explanation is a lot less interesting to entertainment media these days
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Scale of US elections:
51 states (and DC), each with its own election laws
Most ballot questions are for state and local offices and initiatives
~ 5000 local election administration jurisdictions (mostly counties and townships), which run election logistics
~ 115,000 local polling places, mostly borrowed for election day
~ 750,000 election day workers
~ 138,000,000 ballots cast in 2016, 82,000,000 of which at local polling places on election day.
@mattblaze maybe I'm missing something here, but the US only has 50 states...
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@mattblaze Yep, just like he can't bom random ass fisherman without congressional approval. How's that working out?
@hellomiakoda @mattblaze Do you really think Trump will order the military to bomb random-ass polling places?
The question isn't whether Trump can proclaim he's above the law. It's whether he can act on it in any particular case. All the mechanism to run elections is in the several states, not in Washington; Trump can't just order obedience and expect to be followed here.
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@mattblaze @dominykas this is my concern too. There's what is legal, and then there's what is permitted.
@hosford42 @mattblaze @dominykas What concrete actions can Trump take to make states obey his unconstitutional election decrees, given that all the mechanism of elections is in the states, not the federal government?
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@mattblaze @diasyy11 i don't have to be an elections expert to understand that if a bunch of guys with guns show up and start beating people up and shutting down the polling station or seizing the machines, that nothing in the law can stop that and in a situation like minneapolis where the cops are outnumbered 5:1 by ICE guys with bigger guns, nothing in local law enforcement can stop it either.
@cryptadamist @mattblaze @diasyy11 How many ICE guys would it take to do that at a majority of polling stations in every blue-majority city, let alone every blue-majority state? What impact would even an attempt to do that have on voters even in red states? Trump has a core of fascist-fanboi supporters but they're nowhere near a majority. Look at the recent special elections.
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@mattblaze @dominykas I mean - think of a scenario where one of the officials in the elections committee in Mariposa county (a Trumpist) insists that there was a miscount?
This will fuel all conspiracists, and Jan 6th would be a walk in the park.
@mkilmo @mattblaze @dominykas But how many such incidents would it take to spoil elections in hundreds of districts (and tens of thousands of polling places) all over the nation?
Remember that the US federal election system is a large, highly-distributed system. A denial-of-service attack such as you describe would require orders of magnitude more resources than Trump has yet deployed on anything, for blatantly unlawful actions that many proper-military people will decline.
I don't say it's utterly impossible but it's a lot harder than the not-so-effective attempts to subdue all opposition in Minneapolis.
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@theklan @mattblaze @blasen You are an idiot, and he does. (Matt is a highly visible public expert on his day job and gets an ENORMOUS amount of abuse: he doesn't need random fools like you telling him to be polite to idiots.)
@cstross @theklan @blasen He does what? I was under impression that the community here was friendly and ready for polite exchange of ideas. But from this and other his threads it look like he really doesn't want interaction. And that's fine, but there is no need for rudeness and sarcasm just because somebody asks something or presents a different opinion.
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