Tag: vote counting
Emails Expose Georgia Election Officials Scheming To Disrupt 2024 Vote

Emails Expose Georgia Election Officials Scheming To Disrupt 2024 Vote

Even though voters aren't going to the polls for several weeks, there are already a slew of conservative groups organizing to sow doubt about the result in one particular battleground state if Republicans suffer a loss.

The Guardian recently reported on a trove of emails it obtained detailing efforts by a collection of MAGA-aligned organizations aiming to undermine election results in Georgia should Vice President Kamala Harris defeat former President Donald Trump in the critically important swing state. Several far-right groups — including Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network — are working with election officials in several Georgia counties who are sympathetic to their cause in an effort dubbed the "Georgia Election Integrity Coalition."

The emails, which were obtained via public records request from watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and shared with the Guardian, show how election deniers in positions of power throughout Georgia are hoping to disrupt efforts to certify the 2024 election if Harris prevails. One of those election deniers is David Hancock, who is a member of the Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections.

The effort appears to date back to January, when an unnamed website "admin" sent an email to members linking to an article by the United Tea Party of Georgia (UTPG) entitled "Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Elections Officials." That article described how an attorney with the Democratic Party of Georgia sent a letter to election officials in several counties reminding them that certifying an election wasn't discretionary and that failing to do so could result in legal action.

What likely prompted that letter was election officials in Cobb, DeKalb, and Spalding Counties refusing to certify the 2020 election in Georgia, which President Joe Biden narrowly won by less than 12,000 votes. UTPG called it "Orwellian to demand that election officials certify an election even if they have unanswered questions about the vote."

CREW discovered that the unnamed admin who wrote that UTPG article was indeed Hancock, who the Guardian described as an "outspoken election denier." On the same day the article was published, Hancock wrote: "All right – I finished the article and posted it."

Several of the email's recipients include election officials who tried to decertify election results in Georgia, like Republicans Michael Heekin and Julie Adams of the Fulton County Board of Elections, Debbie Fisher in Cobb County, Nancy Jester in DeKalb County and Roy McClain in Spalding County. Hancock urged them all to share the article in a February email, writing: "I think the message needs to get out, so share as you feel led."

Adams, using her TeaPartyPatriots.org email address, sought to coordinate voter fraud messaging with the group in a separate email. The group has hosted election deniers at their meetings, including Cobb County Republican Party co-chair Salleigh Grubbs, who successfully got the Georgia State Board of Elections to adopt a rule making it easier for counties to refuse to certify election results. Another featured speaker was state election board member Dr. Janice Johnston, whom Trump mentioned by name during an August rally in which he praised Republican election board members as "pit bulls" who were "fighting for victory."

The core argument of election deniers is that "widespread voter fraud" tarnishes the legitimacy of election results, requiring a delay in certification to conduct an investigation. However, as the Washington Post reported, there is no such thing as widespread voter fraud. Loyola Law School-Los Angeles professor Justin Leavitt found that out of more than one billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014, there were just 31 instances of provable voter fraud. And in several Republican-controlled states including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Virginia, voter fraud investigations dating back to the 2020 election only yielded 47 convictions.

According to the Guardian, Democrats have pointed to court cases in Georgia dating back to the 19th century showing that county election boards' certification duties are "ministerial," and not discretionary. Even Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger — a Republican — reportedly instructed a member of his office to remind county election officials that refusing to certify election results could subject them to legal proceedings.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

gavel

Forcing Trump’s Election Lawyers To Tell The Truth

There is no penalty for lying on television, as anyone who watches cable news already knows. It is considered normal today when Fox News personalities — to name one prominent group of habitual liars — repeat absurd falsehoods, even if the result is that people contract the coronavirus and die.

There is no penalty for lying on the radio, as everyone has known for decades. It is a highly lucrative daily routine for talk jocks such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage — among the most successful of their ilk — who are often exposed but never feel embarrassed.

Read NowShow less
How Boss Trump Blew Up His Own Election Fraud Scheme

How Boss Trump Blew Up His Own Election Fraud Scheme

Displaying the same staggering incompetence that has led to the deaths of thousands in the Covid-19 pandemic, Boss Trump made two big tactical errors in his failed effort to keep the White House: First, he telegraphed his scheme to overturn the election, and then he waited too long to make his big move.

These blunders brought him to a classic, indelible Trumpian moment: simultaneously demanding that vote-counting stop in Pennsylvania and Georgia, but continue in Arizona and Nevada. The difference being that Trump was temporarily leading in the first two, but trailing out west.

At this writing he appears to have lost all four states.

Just as he lost the national popular vote, it bears emphasizing, by one of the largest popular vote margins in U.S. history—likely in excess of five million votes after they're all tabulated. Spontaneous celebrations broke out in the streets of almost every large American city when the result was announced. It felt awfully like the collapse of authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world. You'd have to be actively delusional to believe that even this Supreme Court could find a way to overturn it.

Trump himself appears to be a True Believer. Never mind that he had no winning political strategy. Yes, his frantic series of Covid "super-spreader" rallies brought millions of enraptured supporters to the polls; but they also stimulated larger numbers of Americans to cast their votes against him. If MAGA believers risked their lives; Trump's opponents felt they were saving their own.

But disenfranchising millions of absentee voters amid the Covid pandemic was never going to work. A politician more firmly in touch with reality would have realized that.

Of all people, sycophantic Attorney General William Barr has implicitly acknowledged as much. His order instructing U.S. Attorneys to look into allegations of voter fraud has a caveat that gives the game away: "While serious allegations should be handled with great care, specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries."

Then there's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has predicted that "there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration."

In his dreams. Pompeo is not a stupid man, but he badly wants the 2024 Republican nomination.

GOP senators too appear to think they must judiciously humor the big crybaby until the hissy fit passes. Trump's angry toddler act—crying, screaming, throwing food on the floor, holding his breath until he turns blue, and breaking things—won't actually change anything. Eventually, he'll wear himself out.

Or not. I really don't care. Do you?

Even Fox News cut away from White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany when she alleged widespread voter fraud without a scintilla of proof. Then there was Rudy Giuliani, holding forth in the parking lot of a landscaping business appropriately located between a crematorium and an adult bookstore that his bookers had evidently mistaken for the Four Seasons Hotel. Trump's personal lawyer, as one British reporter put it, ended up "struggling to be heard over a man in his underpants shouting about George Soros."

The exact proportion of MAGA True Believers in the population isn't clear. Presumably the same fools who bought into the "birtherism" conspiracy theory Trump used to win notoriety in the first place are equally prepared to believe in the myth of a stolen election.

But not very strenuously over time, I suspect. For most people, politics is a secondary passion, like being a football fan. You think you'll never survive your team losing, but the sun comes up and there's another game. Clinging to a lost cause can get tiring, leaving a person mired in an ever more irrelevant past.

Here's how Charles Mackay, the 19th century Scottish author of the classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds put it: "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Freed from the spell of Trumpism and the daily necessity of rationalizing a malignant narcissist's follies and outrages, many will find themselves inwardly relieved. Over time, MAGA hats will become the equivalent of Confederate flags, a symbol signifying that you're a resentful loser.

Meanwhile, here's how an American president talks:

"Let's give each other a chance," Joe Biden said in his speech laying claim to having won the 2020 election. "It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again. To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans. The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America."

That's a message millions wanted to hear.

Al Schmidt

GOP Official In Philly Recounts Death Threats Over Vote Tally

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Following the victory of President-elect Joe Biden over President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Philadelphia might be the most hated city in the United States among Trump supporters. Biden had the 270 electoral votes he needed after winning Pennsylvania, and many Trumpists are making the baseless claim that the election was stolen from Trump in Philly — where the office of City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, has been receiving death threats.

Read NowShow less

Shop our Store

Headlines

Editor's Blog

Corona Virus

Trending

World