No Stupid Questions

Same as happened in 2000, we'll get 8 years of the guy who lost.

I believe the goal and intent is to get enough results into question that they kick it into Mike Johnson's hands - and that mfer has almost no history at all. No bank account, nothing. He'll do the thing, it'll be contested, it'll go to supreme court, where -- surprise surprise, they'll rule in favor of Donald J Trump and he will be elected our new Dictator. At which point he'll be sworn in, because - Dems have never had any backbone - and then he'll proceed to gut every institution which questions him, and turn this nation into an autocracy.

What people don't realize yet, is that the election doesn't matter unless Kamala wins by such a large margin that they can't pull this off. They require the veil of uncertainty for this all to work. But since we're on razor-thin margins, it's going to happen anyways.

We're already boned, and nobody realizes it yet. The playbook is out in the open and the media has stopped calling this out. They're complicit in it, because they think the leopards won't eat their face too. So they're cozying up early.

The scary thing about elections is that, by design, nobody can ever "prove" they won.

Votes are designed to be anonymous. They have to be. If they're not, they're very vulnerable to manipulation. If someone can prove how they voted, then they can either be bribed to vote a certain way, or threatened to vote a certain way. If you can check that your vote was counted successfully for the candidate you chose, then someone else can check that you voted for the candidate they chose.

That means that, by design, the only security that elections can have is in the process. In a small election, like 1000ish votes or fewer, someone could supervise the whole thing. They could cast their vote, then stand there and watch. They could watch as other people voted, making sure that nobody voted twice, or dropped more than one sheet into the box. They could watch as the box was emptied. Then, they could watch as each vote was tallied. Barring some sleight-of-hand, in a small election like that, you could theoretically supervise the entire process, and convince yourself that the vote was fair.

But, that is impossible to scale. Even for 1000 votes, not every voter could supervise the entire process, and for more than 1000 votes, or votes involving more than one voting location, it's just not possible for one person to watch the entire thing. So, at some point you need to trust other people. If you're talking say 10,000 votes, maybe you have 10 people you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, and each one of you could supervise one process. But, the bigger the election, the more impossible it is to have actual people you know and trust supervising everything.

In a huge country-wide election, there's simply no alternative to trust. You have to trust poll workers you've never met, and/or election monitors you've never met. And, since you're not likely to hear directly from poll workers or election monitors, you have to instead trust the news source you're using that reports on the election. In a big, complex election, a statistician may be able to spot fraud based on all the information available. But, if you're not that statistician, you have to trust them, and even if you are that statistician, you have to trust that your model is correct and that the data you're feeding it is correct.

Society is built on trust, and voting is no different. Unfortunately, in the US, trust is breaking down, and without trust, it's just a matter of which narrative seems the most "truthy" to you.

If we're saying "Trump won" what do we mean? The election is certified and he gets to be sworn in? If that's the case then there is absolutely nothing that can be done. We'll have PBS and 60 minutes stories about what happened and we'll just have to suffer the reality that they got what they wanted.

If he claims to have won on Tuesday, but the results aren't in completely then there is room to argue. It would just be bluster, it wouldn't be officially recognized as a victory. When he does that it will be to ensure he can cry foul if the final results don't go his way. He 100000000% will be doing this.

Remember Bush v Gore?

Just like that.

First, don't panic. Harris and her staff, and Democrats around the country, they have planned for many shady actions on Trump's part. Details are scarce because they don't want Trump staff to have a heads up.

And then everything depends on the details.

But remember, anything that looks like a coup d'etat could easily get the military or spy agencies involved. And if they move, it doesn't matter what SCOTUS says. As a result, it's very hard to predict what would happen in various extra dramatic situations. There is no precedent; precedent wouldn't mean anything anyway.

They won't.

It's like MLK said - the white liberal will always prefer "a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

That's the whole reason they didn't bat an eyelid when Neo-Nazis and KKK-boys were marching under open police protection back in 2016 but collectively lost their shit when antifa showed up to physically confront them.

The premise here is that Trump loses but refuses to back down, attempting to forcibly claim victory. If Trump legitimately wins, there is a different path. Then...

Assuming multiple systematic failures occur simultaneously, including any of: actual voter fraud, fraudulent electors, congress refusing to certify, a captured supreme court acting in favour of Trump, or actual insurrection on or before Jan 6th.

I actually expect the US Military to step in. Every member is sworn to uphold the constitution. But if the constitution has been discarded, then I'd expect them to step in to restore it.

Failing that, the US likely fractures and we leave the Republic phase.

I mean, Biden has the power to do whatever he wants now and could potentially overturn the results in the interests of national security or whatever. He won't, but it's nice to think that he could do something to avert a fascist takeover. Democrats will take the high-road into letting democracy die.

depends how close it is and which state acts like shit