The truth behind the Republican attempt to steal the election
My first reaction after getting off the phone with the Northampton County (Pennsylvania) Election Office was, “What the hell are these people up to?” The guy on the other end told me that my 2024 ballot should be emailed to me sometime around “the middle of September.” A vague enough promise I didn’t like the sound of, to be sure. “But,” he added ominously, “don’t quote me.” I didn’t like the sound of that, either.
That was on 10 September. Well, it is now, as I write this, seven days past “the middle of September” and still no ballot. Wasn’t the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania supposed to send out absentee ballots no later than 20 September for people living overseas like me? I thought I read that somewhere.
Recently a Montana absentee voter, Max Himsl, noticed one of the presidential candidates was missing from his electronic ballot. It gave him two choices for president: Robert F Kennedy Jr and Donald J Trump. His personal choice, Kamala Harris, was nowhere to be found. Turns out the office of the Montana Secretary of State had misprinted a handful of those ballots. Their claim is it was an accident and they quickly fixed it.
For the time being, I am going to go with Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Besides, I have the word of Marc Elias, one of the top election lawyers in the country. If anybody tries to screw with my vote before or after the election they are going to get sued — and they are going to lose. Some of them, depending on which state the screwing takes place, are even going to go to prison. It’s still true, your vote is sacred in the United States of America, and nobody can take it away from you.
But it doesn’t change the facts. More than seventy election denialists have been placed in key positions in all of the battleground states. Some of them have already refused to certify past election results they didn’t like, specifically, elections that didn’t go their way, that is, the way of the MAGA Republicans. Elias and his team were on the spot. They sued every one of those denialists and, to use a technical term from the world of jurisprudence, they kicked all of their asses.
So are the 70 or so election denialists in key positions going to try to mess with the 2024 presidential election? In all probability, yes. Will they be successful? Certainly not. The law is steadfastly on our side, and that law will not change between now and November. Such issues can quickly be resolved in court.
And SCOTUS has no jurisdiction here. There is no appeal, either. To be sure, a criminal who just robbed a bank can appeal a criminal conviction, but he can’t go to the Supreme Court and demand the right to rob the bank!
My concern isn’t for 2024. My concern is for 2028 and beyond. As long as MAGA holds some sway in America, there is no such thing as a safe law. We used to think at one time Roe was a safe law. How young we were back then! I wouldn’t put it past MAGA to one day adjudicate certain kinds of murder as legal. Like a MAGA Republican murdering a Democrat, for example.
But I have confidence we will fix all that, and MAGA will never wield that kind of power. But that confidence is vested in good people like Marc Elias, who will make sure that such outrages never happen, and the coming presidency of Kamala Harris, who will help to further buttress existing laws to make sure it never happens.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is living in a dreamland, where he believes those 70 corrupt officials are going to hand him the election. That could account for why his campaign is so absurdly ineffectual. To be sure, Trump is a congenitally lazy bastard. But he occasionally lets it slip that he “doesn’t need votes,” and his reliance on corrupt officials in swing states could account for that.
In short, Trump is hoping for a less violent but more effective version of January 6. He thinks he can return to the Oval Office with the help of a handful of corrupt election officials in key positions. He’s in for another disappointment. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.