Notes on Trump 53 – Ascertaining the apparent President elect

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Things seems to have quietened down a bit since the US General Services Administration performed its task of ascertaining the apparent President elect and released funds for the Biden transition team.

I think things will heat up again over the next couple of weeks to the deadline of December 8 for resolving who are the electors from each State that form an electoral college to choose a President and Vice-President on December 14.

Oddly this very recent judgment of 25 November from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) could be relevant:

Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (20A87)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20a87_4g15.pdf

It is an interim order cancelling health regulations that were held to restrict religious establishments more than necessary.

As the Chief Justice (dissenting) pointed out, there was no need for an injunction since the restrictions were not currently in force and the issues would be tried by the lower courts in mid-December.

But the injunction was issued anyway, just after the apparent President elect was ascertained, and just before the disputed elections are about to reach SCOTUS. I think there is a connection, explained below.

The word “apparent” has two meanings:

  1. clearly visible or understood; obvious.
  2. seeming real or true, but not necessarily so.

Things have quietened down because many people agree in the first sense.

I think things will heat up very soon because the actual reality is the second sense.

As explained in Notes 48 (and 49), Trump’s strategy is to keep disputing postal votes until the December 8 deadline so that Biden has less than 270 electoral college votes. With some help from Republican State legislatures and governors as well as Vice-President Pence presiding in the joint session counting the votes, this could end up throwing the election to the House of Representatives voting by State delegations. If Republicans still have a majority of representatives in 26 States then Trump wins.

See also the links in comments to Notes 48 and also the complex legal details:

https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2719&context=luclj

…

But unless Biden gets a big enough landslide for the result to be clear without postal votes on November 3, it looks like there will be a protracted battle.

It seems unlikely that the fight would be just among lawyers.

https://c21stleft.com/2020/10/02/notes-on-trump-48-unknown-unknowns/
https://c21stleft.com/2020/10/05/notes-on-trump-49-and-the-winner-is-president-pelosi-or-president-pompeo/

I wrote on October 12, before the US election day:

If there is a big enough landslide on the election night so that subsequent postal votes would not affect the outcome, then legal battles in swing states will be pointless.

Likewise if Democrats win a majority of seats from a majority of States in the House (including smaller Republican States that they don’t usually win).

Likewise if Democrats win a majority in the Senate.

All three are possible.

But if none occur there will certainly be drama from election eve to December 8.

That lays the basis for Trump to retain leadership of a large right wing party loudly convinced that the election was stolen by the corrupt liberal elite.

Even if the drama ends with the Electoral College votes on December 8. That will still result in consolidation of a far right mass based party in the USA.

Worse if it doesn’t end there but only in Congress or the Supreme Court.

I don’t see any likelihood of Trumpists being able to retain office in the face of what is clearly a majority of both the people and the establishment hostile to them.

But the “stab in the back” legend has a powerful appeal on the right and we will still be stuck with a weak inept ruling class and no left wing opposition.

As it turns out none of those 3 possibilities of avoiding the current situation occurred. The Biden landslide that would settle it on or near election night did not occur. The Democrats did not win the Senate and they actually lost seats in the House as well as losing one more State governor.

Democrats were resigned to defeat until the covid-19 pandemic. With Trump presiding over a quarter of a million unnecessary deaths he should have gone down in flames. But they managed to stuff it up.

So I do still expect drama until at least December 8 and I still expect consolidation of a mass right wing party in the USA.

My guess is the likelihood of Trump retaining office has been significantly diminished by the fact that Democrats voted early in large enough numbers to avoid it looking as though Trump actually won on election night. But it certainly did not look like Trump lost until a lot later when postal votes were counted. So lots of Trump supporters will believe the well prepared and slick campaign insisting that he won. Not as many as if it looked like he won on the night, but still a lot. Certainly enough to continue to dominate Republican primaries and consolidate a mass right wing party.

This video from the future “Trump TV network”, ONN competing with Fox news gives insight into the way things look to them:

One America News – Chanel Rion on “Dominion-izing the vote”
https://youtu.be/746HTjhFifA

If you don’t watch it, don’t pretend to yourself that you understand what is going on.

Lots more at:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media

On the other hand the likelihood of Trump retaining office may have been significantly increased by the sheer extremism of the mass media’s response to their fear about the success of that campaign.

Instead of attempting to actually counter the campaign, they have, as usual, come out like spokespeople for a banana republic dictatorship denouncing an opposition candidate for having dared to dispute the integrity of a rigged election.

Nothing could be less reassuring than the unanimous bleating that there is “nothing to see here” and repetition that any allegations are “baseless” with “no evidence” etc. It is just a reminder that the same people spent the last four years insisting that the President of the United States was a Kremlin stooge who should be removed because the election was manipulated by the Russians.

Here’s the results of Rasmussen polls on the effectiveness of the bleating:

Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans say it’s Very Likely the Democrats stole the election, but just as many Democrats (61%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Among unaffiliateds, 29% feel it’s a stolen election; 45% do not.

…

Just two weeks before this year’s Election Day, 94% said their vote would be correctly recorded and counted, with 73% who said it was Very Likely. Following the election, those findings fell to 71%and 47% respectively.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2020/61_think_trump_should_concede_to_biden

ONN does not have the reach of the anti-Trump media (now also including Fox news). Credit for convincing a majority of voters that the election was rigged must go to the anti-Trump media.

I don’t think the conspiracy theories about voting machines are likely to be the focus of either the imminent legal battles at SCOTUS or what actually convinces many people about whether the election was rigged. Conspiracy theories are more a distraction to assist the media to continue not thinking while their heads just keep on exploding.

Some of the court documents with the actual “baseless” allegations and the “non-existant” evidence can be found at links buried in the news releases at above web site.

Lots of it is pretty weak.

But there is evidence that observers were prevented from observing. If that occurred enough to have enabled rigging sufficient votes to affect the outcome in any State, the results from that State should be cancelled. It isn’t necessary to prove whether or how many votes were affected. It is sufficient to establish that observers were excluded. Excluding obserers is pretty much the definition of a fake election.

It should be a very simple matter of evidence. Detailed audit trails are maintained to account for who had custody of each ballot paper and who observed at each stage of the process of counting them. How on earth would anybody be persuaded to take the results seriously if that were not enforced?

If the observers were not allowed to observe then the election was not held according to law and has to be cancelled.

It isn’t the integrity of polling officials and people vouching for them that ensures a fair count. The ONLY thing that ever can is the fact that they are being watched.

But the judgments attempting to avoid a trial and evidence on this simple issue are dynamite.

Here’s the best bit from p34 of a 37 page Pennsylvania judgment:

Click to access rudy-can-fail.pdf

“None of these allegations (or the others in this section) claim that the Trump
Campaign’s watchers were treated differently than the Biden campaign’s watchers.
Simply alleging that poll watchers did not have access or were denied access to
some areas does not plausibly plead unequal treatment. Without actually alleging
that one group was treated differently than another, Plaintiffs’ first argument falls
flat.”

I can think of 3 justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) who might be persuaded that the casual workers and election officials in Democratic run cities like Philadelphia and Detroit could be trusted to count votes accurately when there are no observers watching them. But they would be able to argue a lot more convincingly than by triumphantly pointing out that both Republican and Democrat observers were equally excluded from watching the Democrats count the votes!

My guess is the substance of a less spectacularly stupid argument would be that Republican observers were not excluded. They insisted on trying to approach poll workers closer than 6 feet of and were not permitted to do so because of health regulations. But they could have still done their job from 6 feet away, just as the Democrat observers who complied did.

But I can think of 5 justices who are unlikely to find that convincing. They could argue that there have been many months in which arrangements could have been made for Personal Protective Equipment routinely used by health workers during the covid-19 pandemic and close up TV cameras could also be provided etc. So BOTH health requirements AND the requirements for monitored counting of votes in a valid election could be achieved.

Not making those arrangements might have been honest incompetence, but it does void the election.

See the case cited earlier.

The media are carrying on as though the result of disputes could be civil war.

Since the Dred Scott case, SCOTUS has tended to avoid judgements that ultimately encourage civil war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

But there is no such problem now. There will be some “civil unrest” but neither side will go to war.

Of course, if it was a revolutionary communist party that would have won an election if it had not been rigged, one could rely on a bourgeois court not to “interfere”.

But it simply isn’t true that courts don’t care about whether elections are rigged between bourgeois parties.

Courts frequently do “interfere” because not doing so would undermine a fundamental source of stability for bourgeois rule. Without the regular opportunity to replace one set of misrepresentatives of the people by another, an awful lot of brute force would be required to maintain “law and order”. They would rather rule by peaceful means.

The following details actually matter. That is why they are not being discussed much.

Here is a list of the “battleground” States, disputed by Trump, with the number of electoral college votes apprently won by Biden followed by three letters representing the party affiliation (Democrat/Republican) of the State Governor, Lower House and Upper House followed by the full name of the State. Listed in order of importance (number of electoral college votes).

As far as I know, no other results are disputed by either side and there are no other States where the affiliation of the components of the State Government could affect the final outcome.

PA 20 DRR Pennsylvania
GA 16 RRR Georgia
MI 16 DRR Michigan
WI 10 DRR Wisconsin
AZ 11 RRR Arizona

NV  6 DDD Nevada

Total 79

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_state_legislatures#State_legislatures

Biden is apparantly the President elect, with a majority of 306 to 232 including the above 79. The total number of electors is 538 which makes 269 each a tie and the smallest possible majority 270 to 268.

There is no reason to think that SCOTUS would even consider assigning the electors apparently won by Biden to Trump instead.

There are many ways to change the apparent outcome while visibly letting it emerge from the political process.

All they need to do is cancel some of the current results and leave it to the political mechanisms of the legislative branch to sort out the consequences as clearly specified in the Constitutions and laws of the States and of the USA. See previous articles for the various permutations that could arise, in no way predetermined by the simple decision that certain elections had not been conducted according to law.

Unless there is an actual majority of at least 270 votes in the electoral college the President is chosen by the House of Representatives voting in State delegations rather than as individuals. Republicans hold a majority of seats in a majority of States. The Vice Presidet gets chosen by the Senate. In that situation the likely outcome is Trump and Pence. However a small number of Republicans in “Purple States” could switch the vote of their delegation to Biden, in which case the outcome could be Biden with Vice President Pence or perhaps Biden with Vice President Trump or whatever Republican the Senate chooses.

Note: If both Georgia Senate elections are won by Democrats on January 5 they still don’t have a majority for choosing the new Vice President on January 6 since Pence still has the casting vote. However there could also be switches from Republican Senators.

If all 6 battleground results were cancelled by SCOTUS and not replaced, Trump might apparently be President elect. Trump would still only have 232 but Biden would only have 227 remaining, which is even less.

If even the smallest of those States was not cancelled, the extra 6 votes from Nevada would put Biden ahead with 233 votes against 232 for Trump.

But I think that is irrelevant. Whether or not the proper interpretation of majority is based on 270 out of the total number of expected electors, or a majority among those actually counted on January 6 it is highly unlikely that none would be replaced.

There is explicit provision for the State legislatures to choose the electors for their State if they have not been chosen by the people in time for the December 8 deadline.

All the battlegrounds except Nevada have Republican legislatures and would choose Trump electors.

I don’t think there ever was any reason to imagine that any State legislature might attempt to change the electoral process after election day.


But if Nevada was the first State cancelled, could the Democrat State Governor restrain himself from convening the two houses of the Democrat legislature to fill the vacancies with the same Biden electors that were chosen by the people?

They might be stupid enough to do so. It is hard to think of any trap they have not enthusiastically jumped into.

Either way, if the people of any State would not be represented because SCOTUS has voided the elections it would be surprising if the legislature of that State did not act quickly to exercise their plenary power spelled out in the US Constitution to fill the vacancies in the electoral college. Apart from Nevada, in each of the other 5 battleground States both houses are Republican.

Just PA, MI and any one of the others would exceed the 38 needed to make Trump the apparent President elect by 270 to 268.

But there isn’t any need for that. Surprises do happen. The electoral college votes are certified by State governors. In MI, PA and WI the State governor is a Democrat. They might have a veto or they might just be too outraged or the legislature might not decide to fill the vacancies.

But it simply does not matter. If neither candidate gets more than 270 votes the election goes to the House of Representatives voting by State delegations. Not determined by SCOTUS at all and exactly as spelled out in the Constitution.

Could end up Trump. Might not. Many other permutations. Lots of sound and fury signifying nothing. Ideal breeding ground for a mass based right wing party.

32 thoughts on “Notes on Trump 53 – Ascertaining the apparent President elect”

  1. The stolen election story is just sad. Trumps legal team have 2 grounds on which the elections were fraudulent one is that the electronic voting machines were crook and the other is that trucks came in the night with phony votes.
    Voting machines can be rigged but they cant alter the paper vote. A voter hits the keys then the machine spits out a paper vote. The voter can check that the paper vote is correct before handing it to an election official. Its easy to see if the machines are rigged because when you do a hand recount the two tallies will be wildly different. Georgia did a full hand recount and still found that Biden won. Trump could have paid for a full recount in Wisconsin but tellingly decided not to. A partial recount was done in Wisconsin and no fraud was detected. OK so the machines are clean what about the dump of votes in the middle of the night?
    The mail in votes are delivered and the signature on the outer envelope is compared to the signature on the voter registration form. Any that dont match are put in the provisional pile and sorted at a latter date. Now to commit voter fraud the fraudster not only has to come up with a similar signature but also has to acquire tens of thousands of legitimate votes. If massive fraud has occurred the investigators only need to contact people on the role with a cast vote and ask them did you vote? If the answer is no or Im dead then you got yourself a case of voter fraud. Anyone interested in democracy is still waiting for the people making the claims to come up with the evidence.

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    • Buried among all the noise (and silence) are some much more interesting allegations. All the procedures set out for elections are closely inspected by observers from the competing parties. The allegations that have not yet gone to trial on evidence are that observers were prevented from carrying out that essential function.

      When I was 14 I was an ALP “scrutineer”. It is simply laughable to think that observers can be excluded from ANY step in the chain of custody and processing of ballot papers in a lawful election.

      I have quoted and provided a link for the judgment holding that this isn’t a problem because both Democrat and Republican observers were excluded. Therefore, the judge ruled, there was no need for a trial on the evidence. That was from a Republican judge (nominated by Obama and confirmed by the Republican Senate) who was then thanked by the Trump team for having not delayed but helped speed up the process of getting to SCOTUS. The judgment has been celebrated as yet another defeat for Trump. That is how completely clueless the reports you are relying on are.

      “Anyone interested in democracy is still waiting for the people making the claims to come up with the evidence”. Indeed. The anti-Trump media are not interested in waiting for a trial based on evidence. Like the pro-Trump video about voting machines they are only interested in spouting off. But they do it much more clumsily than ONN.

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  2. The whole Trump supporters not allowed in the counting rooms is a false narrative. Trump set this up by encouraging his supporters to be poll watchers. Theres a whole lot of difference between a scrutineer and some guy off the street who says Im here to watch the poll. Im sure that with Americas hap hazard way of conducting elections that you can find an example of just about anything. But what is needed is proof of systematic fraud.

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    • When I was a 14 year old ALP scrutineer I was not “some guy off the street”. I was properly credentialled by the party and invited to inspect the seals on ballot boxes before they were opened and to countersign the seals when they were resealed between processing steps. “America’s haphazard way of conducting elections” is historically known there as “the Australian ballot” because they copied the procedures from Australia in the nineteenth century.

      Whether credentialled observers were excluded is a matter of fact easily settled by trial on the evidence. The audit trails of signatures and counter-signatures on ballot papers, along with the video of the counting rooms would (and will) easily establish the facts of whether at each challenged counting location this was was an election conducted according to the laws that enable detection of fraud or a void election that must be annulled. Shouting that it is a “false narrative” is no substitute for a trial on the evidence.

      Trump did set this up, but long before the election with a campaign against postal votes. His opponents saw it coming and prepared for it with teams of lawyers, as I documented in the links provided above. If they did not also prepare for it by scrupulous documentation of their strict adherence to the chain of custody watched at every step by the credentialled observers, no amount of shouting “false narrative” is likely to be helpful to them. Systematically excluding observers IS proof of systematic fraud. It is pretty well the ONLY way systematic fraud gets proved. How else could one prove an election observed only by the authorities conducting it was fraudulent?

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    • That looks reasonably typical from a quick skim. Note p7 “The poll watchers are permitted to get close enough to the machines and tapes to read the
      numbers and information on the machines and the tapes.” From the few affidavits I looked at my impression is that the Republicans are claiming they were not allowed to get close enough to actually inspect signatures etc etc and the (Democrat) election officials are likely to respond that there is a pandemic with health regulations requiring 6 foot distancing. That is why I speculated about the possible relevance of the recent SCOTUS decision to grant an injunction concerning the interaction of health regulations and constitutional rights despite there being no need to do so given trial of the issues by lower courts was due in mid-December anyway.

      Given Trumpists propensity for maskless superspreading it would be entirely understandable that poll workers would not want them peering over their shoulders indoors, masked or not. But why weren’t suitable arrangements made with PPE, closeup cameras etc?

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  4. May be you missed it. I put up a video link at 8.21 where the Fox anchor says to the Fox reporter at the polling station that the Republicans are claiming that they wernt allowed to be inside the tally room and he says “Thats not true, its not true, its just not true”

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    • I did miss the video link but have now watched. The reporter was right. They were allowed to be inside the tally room.

      Maybe you missed it but the anti-Trump media has been doing this stuff continuously for four years.

      Maybe you missed it but I said lots of the allegations were weak but buried inside was a more interesting allegation in some affidavits (from lawyers assigned as poll watchers) that they weren’t allowed close enough to the tallying to do their job (and the background I read from between the lines that this was due to 6 foot social distancing covid regulations). There are also claims of not being allowed back in after leaving for a break and being required to use a different exit where there leaving was not recorded (because health regulations limit the room capacity and it remained exceeded as their exit was not recorded). In a count that matters you need an observer at every point where votes are counted, observing every vote counted.

      Maybe you missed it but I also mentioned that Fox news (and the whole Murdoch empire) has now become anti-Trump which makes it important to look at the link I provided to the slick campaigning from what will likely be the channel for a mass based right wing party in the USA.

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      • No I didnt miss any of that. Anti Trump media dont you mean non Fox media. Yes I knew on the day that poll watchers had issues with credentialing and with gaining access but these issues were not pervasive. The judgment makes it clear that the poll watchers have access to the room but thats it as far as their rights go (hence the guy using binoculars in the room). Fox news plays its own game initially being anti Trump then rabidly pro Trump and now it will let OANN go down the rabbit hole of insanely parroting while Fox repositions itself to remain the number one channel in cable news. Fox has huge market share and more importantly a huge affiliate network to maintain, it has to hold on to a shred of credibility. OANN has a tiny market share and would like a slice of the loony right that is turning on Fox (boycott the Georgia run offs indeed. Fox wont touch that)
        My understanding is that the Trump lawyer team has dropped the complaint that poll watchers wernt allowed into the polling stations because as the reporter on the night said
        “Thats not true, its not true, its just not true”

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      • Yes, Fox is now the number one channel in cable news. It owes its shred of credibility entirely to the sheer nuttiness of most of the media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome. Even when joining in the campaign it does so more credibly than the others because it is roughly as ridiculously biased as it always was while the others have lost the plot entirely and given up on communicating with anybody who doesn’t agree with them.

        The ONN video was quite slick and my guess is that they will do quite well occupying the niche formerly occupied by Fox while Fox becomes mainstream. The particular conspiracy theory that video peddles about voting machines, Venezuela and Soros used to be appealing only to the fringes that go for entertainment like “Infowars”. After four years of MSNBC and CNN wearing tinfoil hats and talking about the Kremlin there is now has a much wider audience for similar stuff from an opposite perspective. More generally the US had two globalist parties before Trump and now has two isolationist parties.

        My understanding is that the only reliable information on what the Trump lawyer team is doing will come from their actual court documents. Not from ONN or any other media.

        It will be interesting to see whether they file for Nevada before Michigan and Pennsylvania. The judgment I linked removes any obstacle to them filing at SCOTUS re PA immediately.

        BTW you are quite correct that the 3rd circuit appeal vigorously adopts the Democrat submissions that “poll watchers have access to the room but thats it as far as their rights go”. Here it is in the full glory of lawyer speak:

        Count Seven alleges that Philadelphia’s Board of Elections violated due process by
        obstructing poll watchers and representatives. But nothing in the Due Process Clause re-
        quires having poll watchers or representatives, let alone watchers from outside a county or
        less than eighteen feet away from the nearest table. The Campaign cites no authority for
        those propositions, and we know of none. (Ditto for notice-and-cure procedures.) And the
        Campaign litigated and lost that claim under state law too. The Pennsylvania Supreme
        Court held that the Election Code requires only that poll watchers be in the room, not that
        they be within any specific distance of the ballots. In re Canvassing Observation Appeal
        of: City of Phila. Bd. of Electors, No. 30 EAP 2020, ___ A.3d ___, 2020 WL 6737895, at
        *8–9 (Pa. Nov. 17, 2020).

        I would be very surprised if SCOTUS holds that the second amendment provisions in support of a well regulated militia is the only remedy available.

        If it was there would be a lot more Americans ready to resort to it than engaged in prayers summoning angelic intervention.

        Would YOU accept Australian elections observed only by people peering through binoculars from 6 metres away?

        BTW at Wayne County (Detroit) level a Michigan court held there was no need for ballots to arrive at the counting center in sealed boxes.

        Democrats really are that stupid. The Nevada case is particularly weak but might be worth running first on the offchance that the Nevada Democrat legislature and governor take the bait and become the first of the battleground States to replace electors who certification was annulled by SCOTUS with electors chosen by the State legislature.

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      • You ask “Would YOU accept Australian elections observed only by people peering through binoculars from 6 metres away?” Well I have not been in a tally room so I dont know about the practicalities but as a philosophical approach what I would be happy with is that the electoral authorities meeting with the campaigns and discussing what will and wont happen. I would expect that scrutineers could observe the process and I would expect some level of pre election consensus as to how this will happen.

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    • The politico article is typical of the delusionary outlook that led to Trump getting 10% more votes than before after 4 years of incompetent government capped by a quarter of a million unnecessary deaths, saved only by his skillful promotion of Trump Derangement Syndrome that completely paralyses his opponenets so that they don’t see what is actually happening and carry on in a deranged way that makes people stop listening to them.

      Just compare the final paragraph to the one I quoted from the judgment as to why they acted so fast without oral argument etc and at whose request:

      ” The appeals court panel rebuffed the Trump campaign’s request for oral argument to present its case. And, in one final indignity, the judges designated the 21-page ruling as “non-precedential,” suggesting the campaign’s claims had so little weight that the case isn’t worthy of being cited in the future cases.”

      It is non-precedential because it is simply a very hasty step in the procedures for rushing an issue to SCOTUS as fast as possible, without taking the time to write considered opinions on anything of consequence. There was and still is no trial of the issues yet so there cannot be any interesting precedent. Cases dismissed without trial do not set precedents.

      Voters decide elections under laws. Journalists used to report what was happening from a fairly coherent bourgeois mindset. Now they just babble excitedly and incoherently in a way that will maximize the ineffectiveness of any efforts they later make to discredit the judgment from Trump’s appointees on SCOTUS when it comes.

      BTW the lower courts also ruled that the Trump campaign lacks standing to sue under the Electors and Elections Clause of the US Constitution, which of course is also headed straight for SCOTUS as fast as possible.

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  6. The three republican judges of the 3rd circuit Court of Appeals have now sped the Pennsylvania towards SCOTUS by dismissing the appeal as rapidly as possible:

    Click to access 203371np.pdf

    “”We commend the District Court for its fast, fair, patient handling of this demanding
    litigation.
    4. This appeal. The Campaign filed this appeal on Sunday, November 22, and we
    granted its motion to expedite. The Campaign filed its brief and another motion November
    23; opposing briefs and filings arrived the next day. We are issuing this opinion nonprece-
    dentially so we can rule by November 27.”

    “Because the Campaign wants us to move as fast as possible, we
    also deny oral argument. We grant all motions to file overlength responses, to file amicus
    briefs, and to supplement appendices. We deny all other outstanding motions as moot. This
    Court’s mandate shall issue at once.”

    “On appeal from the dismissal of a complaint, we take the factual allegations as true:”

    Here’s the gem:

    “3. The Campaign never pleads that any defendant treated the Trump and Biden cam-
    paigns or votes differently. A violation of the Equal Protection Clause requires more than
    variation from county to county. It requires unequal treatment of similarly situated parties.
    But the Campaign never pleads or alleges that anyone treated it differently from the Biden
    campaign. Count One alleges that the counties refused to credential the Campaign’s poll
    watchers or kept them behind metal barricades, away from the ballots. It never alleges that
    other campaigns’ poll watchers or representatives were treated differently.”

    The factual allegations not yet tried on the evidence are that the Philadelphia Democratic machine counting the votes excluded observers quite impartially without discriminating between Republican and Democrat observers. Thus providing entirely equal non-protection from the laws. Does this comply with a constitutional requirement for equal protection?

    SCOTUS will now consider the legal question of whether an election in which poll watchers are kept too far away from the ballots to see whether they are counted correctly should be annulled. The issue is squarely before them. The courts bellow have covered every point so SCOTUS can rule on exactly how the case should be disposed of without needing to send it back and forth for proper consideration by lower courts in the short time available before December 8.

    I would be quite surprised if the PA election has not been nullified by December 8. What else happens remains to be seen.

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    • I almost missed the video again. Bug in WordPress embedding that removes the URL from where I read in WordPress app and presumably for others via email. Must remember to always mention when anything is embedded.

      Watched it in browser. Enjoyed it. Good reminder that there are fringe elements on the Trumpist side even more deranged than the media.

      But they really are fringe elements. Most Trumpists and even most evangelicals are not as weird and laughable as that fringe. The video isn’t aimed at winning over the 70 million or so who voted for Trump. It is aimed at making a section of the not particularly large majority that outvoted them feel smug and superior.

      Big problem is that people almost as deranged as those Pastors are actually taken as part of the mainstream in the anti-Trump side.

      It isn’t just funny to watch when “mainstream” politics is dominated by the tinfoil hat brigade claiming Trump is a Kremlin stooge.

      Nor is it amusing that quite recently this month Obama’s CIA head John Brennan called for a coup to remove Trump office.

      Lunatic pastors speaking in tongues to summon angelic intervention to save Trump are unlikely to be capable of interfering with an election.

      The open incitement from former senior officials like Brennan and James Clapper makes it utterly clear that lots of election officials in Democrat run cities like Philadelphia and Detroit would regard it as their patriotic duty to do whatever it takes to prevent another four years of the nightmare.

      The only question is whether they could get away with it or whether they would get caught by observers if they tried.

      There was never the slightest possibility that the media would do anything other than insist that allegations were baseless and that there was no evidence. They would also cheer if Clapper’s nutty proposal was actually possible:

      https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/11/10/brennan_pence_must_invoke_25th_amendment_to_stop_trump_from_declassifying_some_type_of_information.html

      I cannot help wonder what the journos would do if SCOTUS carried out an unexpected “angelic intervention”. Would they rush out wearing Handmaiden costumes to protest against the election result again, as they did last time? The pastors would certainly feel vindicated. How would the journos feel? Both are nuts. The journos more dangerously so.

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  8. I agree with you that people who used to run the CIA are way more dangerous than people whose main role in life is to fleece the flock however I return to my original points about the election. If the machines were tampered with then there would be a discrepancy between the machine count and the hand recount. They have done a hand recount in Georgia and a partial recount paid for by Trump in Wisconsin and no discrepancy has been found. The electoral roles are public documents if you think that a particular county was involved in electoral fraud you just have to contact people whose names were crossed off the list but didnt vote. This stuff about poll watchers being too far away will go no where. Just look at the time line. Pre election Tump announces that he will only lose if there is fraud. He loses and immediately announces that there has been fraud. He claims that the poll watchers were excluded when they wernt. He claims that the machines are crook but the hand tally matches. He comes up with a couple of irregularities ie dead lady votes only to find that she voted then died or man who voted after death only to find it was his elderly wife who voted under his name with Mrs. as prefix. Several affidavits have been reversed ie the guy who says he was ordered to backdate mail in ballots. As they say in America. Wheres the beef?

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    • Scotus won’t be dealing with the barrages of smokescreens from Trump. The lower courts have found that that there is no requirement for meaningful scrutiny of elections (and no requirement for sealed ballot papers). If so there is no mechanism for free and fair elections.

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      • I agree with you that Trump produces barrages of smoke screens. Currently he is claiming that the pro Trump Republican Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia run elections that are rigged against him yet he is urging supporters to vote in the Georgia January runoff elections. Why would you spend really big money to fight an election that you knew was rigged.
        “Donald Trump has called Republican Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, an “enemy of the people”.” This is a classic smoke screen. Does anybody seriously think that Raffensperger is an enemy of the people? ( in any sense other than all the politicians are enemies of the people)
        Just on American elections being free and fair well I dont hold that they are or have ever been. The most glaring distortion comes from money. Its costs are so astronomical that the process is a competition between rich donors, couple that with partisans not only running the elections but gerrymandering the elections and voter suppression and a system where the person who gets the most votes loses and the fact that California pop 40 million gets the same number of senators at Wyoming 1/2 million pop I would never describe America as having a democratic election system but they do have a system that choses the President that both parties were prepared to abide by, nothing more than that.

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  9. Stacey Adams wasn’t prepared to abide by Georgia’s election system when she “acknowledged” that Brian Kemp, the Secretary of State who rigged it by voter suppression would be certified as Governor instead of her, but did not “concede” anything at all. She then led a successful campaign to ensure it could not be done again. I think it is highly unlikely that Georgia’s results would even get looked at by SCOTUS.

    Watch the embedded link of both videos below (in browser if not visible) to understand the message at the end of the second one. You know your vote matters when they try to take it away from you.

    The second one starts slowly and is longer but is also worth watching.

    All bourgeois democratic elections are to determine which of the ruling class parties people are prepared to abide by. Things are a lot worse when ruling class parties don’t have to face that.

    BTW I haven’t followed closely, but Brian Kemp is contemplating a “GOP 2.0” ie (after Trump). I suspect part of the smokescreen of pretending the count in Georgia was rigged is actually about the fight between Trumpists and former Dixiecrats over who runs the GOP in Georgia.

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  12. I have just finished watching the Netflix documentary on US Grant titled Grant. The interesting thing about this documentary comes in the last episode. I had always bought the idea that Grant was a great general but a poor president. The documentary challenges this with the idea that Grants diminished role as president is successful pro confederacy propaganda. The documentary argues that reconstruction languished under president Jackson and the KKK rose in power. It was Grant as president who sent the army back into the south to physically defeat the KKK and uphold the 15th amendment. Grant served 2 terms and it wasnt till after he left office that equal rights again suffered. To be fair to myself my main complaint against Grant had been his Indian policy. Maybe Ill have to wait for another documentary to straighten that out.
    Highly recommend the documentary Grant.

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    • I’m not familiar with American history and haven’t watched the documentary. But my understanding is that it was Hayes who agreed to the compromise that led Grant as outgoing President to withdraw Federal troops from Florida followed by Hayes presiding over the end of Reconstruction:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877

      The history of that disputed Presidential election is more directly relevant to the current topic.

      BTW something like 5000 German Communists fought on the Union side in the civil war, including General Willich who’s aide de camp in Prussia was Engels. Colonel Weydemeyer kept up correspondence with Marx who wrote regularly on the civil war, including military advice in the Republican newspaper Tribune likely to be read Lincoln.

      This note (which may not be particularly accurate) mentions a possible role of Grant in connection with passing on Marx’s advice against the Anaconda strategy of surrounding the Confederate forces to crush them and instead to split them into two.

      https://www.historynet.com/karl-marx-communists-civil-war-interview-robin-blackburn.htm

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  13. Pingback: covid-19 Quarter Baked Half Time | C21st Left

    • Unfortunately that video does not bring out the reason for fighting the war and even praises the disasterously leadership of McLellan who was dismissed for failing to actually fight the Confederates and who was subsequently a focal point for militias and agitation to end the Reconstruction and elect a Dixiecrat supported President as described at link provided.

      Better song, also no doubt sung by Irish as well as German troops was “John Brown’s body” which commemorates a revolutionary fighter against slavery.

      It was so popular that the lyrics got “officially” changed into “Battle Hymn of the Republic” to back off from the revolutionary content and exalt God.

      I don’t have a link but recall reading that the variants of this song were popularized from Willich’s troops.

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    • I don’t know what this is a correction to. (Missing comment?). As stated Reconstruction was ended by the Compromise that elected Republican Hayes over Dixiecrat supported Tilden who won the popular vote.

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  16. Yes John Brown’s body a great song and clearly more politically correct than my Irish contribution. I put the Irish one up because it lauded McClellan which I found humorous but more importantly it showed that Irish units fought and were aware that England may well enter the conflict on the side of the Confederacy. With Jackson and Johnson that was just an error that I made that I wanted to correct obviously Jackson was well dead by this time.

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