General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So when is the revolution? [View all]SpankMe
(3,701 posts)Through a combination of executive orders, federal legislation, and red state legislation, rigging is in the works. Only a small amount of this sabotage has to survive court rulings to quash enough blue votes to assure Repubs victory this year. Even if much or all of the efforts fail, the chaos created by the attempts will do damage to the ability of many people to vote and would give electoral victories to Republicans.
These exec orders and legislative "remedies" currently under consideration include:
1. Cancelling all current voter registrations and requiring everyone to re-register with proof of citizenship.
2. Allowing state legislatures to decline to certify elections if they suspect fraud has occurred. Republicans will declare "fraud" if even a single ballot has a pencil smudge on it. We know how they work.
3. Restrict mail-in voting to a large degree. Or ban it. We're already seeing post offices nationwide removing mailboxes from many locations, including on post office property, without justification in order to reduce the ability to handle mail-in ballots. I've seen this in the town I live in.
4. Allowing DHS to subpoena or otherwise obtain voter registration lists by force to look for voter registration fraud. Since lists containg tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of voters, a miniscule number of administrative or data errors - not significant enough to sway an election - would give them an excuse to purge huge numbers from these lists.
5. Dispatch armed ICE agents and other possible gestapo actors to polling stations under the guise of voter/ballot security, but which is really voter intimindation.
6. Shutting down the agency that combats foreign interference in our elections, including cybersecurity and combatting disinformation (CISA). This, in fact, has already happened.
7. Mandate hand-counting paper ballots, ban voting machines, and ban paper ballot vote-counting machines.
8. Ban ranked choice voting.
9. Attempt to cancel the 2026 midterm election due to some manufactured crisis, like a war with Iran. I know that supposeldy can't happen. But all he has to do is get a couple of swing states with red legislatures to buy in to this and we're done.
Whatever Trump fails to pull off as far as federal control of elections could stil be implemented at a smaller scale at the state level by MAGA state governments to make it harder to vote.
Your enthusiasm is a bit too rosy for me. Election interference by Trump and MAGA is already in motion. I don't believe it's fair to say that they aren't going to rig the midterms or that there will be a blue wave.