The Republicans chose to align themselves with those conspiracy theorists. Georgia’s GOP Senate candidates could be speaking out vocally against the likes of Trump and Powell right now, but they have chosen not to do so—even as the Trumpist conspiracy nonsense has led to death threats against officials in their own party just for doing their jobs.
I’d say that speaks directly to the comparative “merit” of the candidates, wouldn’t you?
Jesus, these people. If Wood and Powell don’t end up getting someone killed, it will not be for lack of trying. And it would be one thing if these nuts were outliers that the Republican establishment was embarrassed by, but they and their conspiracy theories are front and center in every right-wing media outlet right now–they are the ones setting the narrative.
If anyone is interested in how badly one group of attorneys can mess up the most basic, central rules of civil procedure and doom their own case, one which they claim is the most important ever brought in this country, you should check out the lawyers dissecting & liveblogging Powell’s filings. It is some remarkable stuff.
(by the way, Wood is Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyer, and that trial will be some dangerous shit)
They’re basically telling the voters to punish the GOP for not being wingnut enough, when the GOP has been increasingly more wingnut for years. “No, not enough, more crazy! NOW!”
Republicans have spent decades trying to keep eligible voters from the polls or diluted the efforts of those who did. They always lost when there was high turnout.
The lesson we learned from this election is vote by mail is a great way to circumvent the majority of polling place based disenfranchisement efforts. It also encourages higher turnout since the act of voting is made much easier and more convenient for all involved. Its why Trump hated it. All the onerous voter ID laws, removing DMV’s from cities, removing polling places in large population areas, voter intimidation schemes all become useless when one simply puts a ballot in a mailbox at their leisure.
If you notice, Trumpies throw around the term “Legal votes” or “Illegal votes” its nothing but racist dogwhistling. As anyone of color, from a city or major metropolitan suburb somehow cast “illegal votes”, while rural white people were all “legal votes”.
Lin Wood is also explicitly calling for an armed coup:
As is pardoned felon General Flynn:
I give major odds that Kyle Rittenhouse’s mother drops Lin Wood and hires a real criminal defense attorney when its clear Woods shenanigans are going to get Kyle 50-65 years in prison.
(I am figuring that a competent defense attorney would jump at a chance to cut a deal to get it cut down to 25-30 years and just get it over with)
Insiders have said one reason he’s having such a hard time accepting the election results is that the outcome wasn’t a wholesale repudiation of the Republican party; the GOP lost only a couple of Senate seats and actually made gains in the House. That he lost while other Republicans won means that the voters just didn’t like him.
So I think Trump might actually be happier if the GOP did lose the Senate, because he doesn’t actually care about the success of anyone other than himself. If other Republicans lose, he can pretend that it was the party that dragged him down instead of a personal failing.
The problem is that democracy (like most forms of government) ultimately depends on the consent of the governed. If trust in the voting system is undermined – even to short-term benefit – it’s going to be a real problem when a good 30-40% of the population refuses to accept the outcome of a free election. This is how governmental systems collapse. It’s a dangerous step that can only disserve the apparatus of state in the long run.
I think people who aren’t in any way politically informed should voluntarily abstain from voting.
It’s pointless to vote if you don’t know the differences between candidates, or their positions on issues.
It just turns out there’d be a lot of zero-info wedge issue republicans who’d be voting with no valid purpose.
ETA
I actually practice this myself. If I don’t know about the candidates for a position on my ballot, I abstain from that particular part of my ballot.
You’re right that any reasonable attorney would keep this away from trial at all costs (and that goes for both the defense and the prosecutors), but I dunno. She is a genuinely terrible person who thinks her son did nothing wrong and is a political prisoner. She’s spent the last few months going around to right-wing gatherings, being treated as a folk hero and told that her son is a modern Paul Revere.
If Wood has convinced them that he can walk on this if he gets at least one …ahem…like minded person on that jury, they probably aren’t going to be pushing it for themselves. And the unbelievably shitty part is, they might be proven right in the end. If the trial goes sideways and ends up being a circus putting the protestors on trial, would any of us be that surprised if a jury acquits or at least ends up deadlocked?
Wait… now it’s the Republicans who want to boycott a bad idea that reduces the security of elections?
Guess the rule is “never trust a voting machine that you haven’t hacked yourself”.
Mike Dunford is a new Twitter follow for me, and is doing yeoman’s work on this stuff.
It’s a nice enough thought.
But close votes like these hinge almost entirely on turnout. If one side decides not to turn out, on basis of their leaders sewing doubts about the validity of the process. That’s kinda the merits.
Their position on the state of our elections has failed to attract new voters. And it looks like its about to chase off their existing ones. Weird as this is playing out that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Additionally the GOP has done everything they can possibly get away with in terms of supressing the vote, and supressing voter turnout among likely DNC voters. And they’ve gerrymandered the country to high fuck to ensure control in excess of their actual support.
So the usual order of things for the past decade us Democrats succeed on the merits in terms of raw votes. But still don’t get proportional chunk of representation, or still lose on the technicality.
So seriously fuck that.
Huh? You mean the machines that produce a paper ballot for the voter to turn in? Since when has that been insecure?
We used to get better quality bothsideserism around here.
Ah sorry.
From over here in Europe, I did not get the information that these are the good kind of voting machines. (What is their point though? What’s wrong with a BIC pen?)
But if it were one of the countless types of voting machines that aren’t pointless but dangerous, it still wouldn’t be the “bothsideserism” you accuse me of as I was specifically calling the motive into question…
But what a right wing grifter will tell a crowd is a lot different from what they can say in court. Courts don’t let you do things like use heavily edited videos, nor is there even a legal basis for a “self-defense” claim in the state. There is a duty to retreat, you can’t use deadly force in defense of just property, castle doctrine only applies to one’s domicile, and no “Stand your ground” law in the state.
Its not a matter of finding like minded jurors, there is no legal argument or evidence to support the wingnut narrative at all. It is just for fundraising purposes.
It’s a way for republicans and democrats to hand tax money over to private enterprise. Never mind they’re being sold a solution for a nonexistent problem.
I joked about this a while back…
Answer: Surprisingly easy, as it turns out.
