4 ms·

>Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead

by hnaccy 6y ago

>Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead. There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's.

erichocean 6y ago
Absolutely agree, and it's essential that it remain that way if we hope to have any success with the Color Revolution playbook in November.
kyrra 6y ago
My take on all of this... Lots of states are pushing for larger scale vote-by-mail than has ever happened before. Some states have been doing this for a long time (Oregon, Colorado), but they have the processes in place to handle elections. Other states are trying to do it in a few months with no real prep ahead of time. We're already seeing this lead to ballot printing problems, ex:[0]. To build on that, many of these states aren't allowed to even open/proces absentee/vote-by-mail ballots until election day or after[0.5]. That means that problems with these ballots may not be caught ahead of time. Along with that, having to processing millions of ballets (when they are used to 5-digit amounts of ballots), means it will take a lot longer to handle those ballots. This will lead to a delay in knowing the results. As well, mail-in-ballots get rejected at a much higher rate than in-person voting[1], which will lead to lawyers fighting over which ballots are valid if things are close. Democrats are more likely to vote-by-mail than Republicans[2]. This means those delayed ballots will likely swing towards Biden, which means as days go on for counting, Biden's lead is likely to increase (which is totally fine, but it will definitely stir up controversy). Then you have lawmakers and judges changes the rules[3]. There are a few cases going on around the country where there is a push to allow late mail ballots to be counted. In this case, a Judge decided to allow ballots to arrive up to 3-days post election. These kinds of cases are going on around the country and still being fought. It's going to be messy. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/virginia-voters-receive-duplicate-ballots/2020/09/25/2e9e52bc-ff51-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/virginia-vo... [0.5] https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-t... [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468/more-than-550-000-primary-absentee-ballots-rejected-in-2020-far-outpacing-2016 https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468/more-than-550-000-p... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/18/election-2020-biden-voters-twice-likely-vote-mail-survey-finds/3394795001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/... [3] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/pennsylvania-becomes-ground-zero-for-election-lawsuits.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/pennsylvania-becomes...
- erichocean 6y ago
  > It's going to be messy. My point is: that's by design, so that Trump can be removed from office no matter what.
  - brnt 6y ago
    He has said a few times now that he (pretends to) suspect that ballots counted after election day will be increasingly fraudulous and that therefore the earliest estimates are regarded by him as most accurate. Thereby stacking the cards of chaos in his favour, which has been his motif all along of course. Can't really see how he'll be removed over this seeing he's preparing for and even fuelling this chaos.
    - erichocean 6y ago
      Unless Trump somehow has a massive blowout electoral win based on Nov 3rd voting, it won't matter how much he crows about "winning" the election. Well over half the country doesn't trust the guy, and the international community basically doesn't trust him at all. Republican leadership are, at best, ambivalent. Anyway, look at Belarus: a free and fair election was won by an ~%80 margin by a Trump-like figure. Big deal, he still is in the process of getting removed from office. Macron just last week welcomed the 20% Belarus loser as the "President-elect" to France, and refuses to recognize the Trump-like winner. That's Color Revolution 101: the election really doesn't matter, what matters is its legitimacy. Protests, the media, and any kind of election problems all help to delegitimatize an election, and allow Trump-like figures to be removed in the name of "integrity" should they actually win. This playbook works. As I've said elsewhere, I think Biden will win big electorally, including on Nov. 3rd, so all of this ground-preparation will ultimately not be needed. Better safe than sorry though…
- danjac 6y ago
  It never ceases to amaze how one of the world's oldest and proudest democracies is absolutely useless at the basic table-stakes competency of a democracy, running a free and fair election. I guess Americans just love their broken legacy system too much...
pessimizer 6y ago
> There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's. This definitely isn't true. Both parties have been repeatedly claiming that a loss for their side will be evidence that the election isn't legitimate. All mainstream Democratic Party discourse has been revolving around the delegitimisation of the results of the 2016 election, and an insistence that exactly the same process is happening during the 2020 election. It's the only reason we're paying attention to Facebook ads, because Facebook developers who claimed to be doing academic experimentation having too much access to user information has been tied through vagueness and innuendo to the claim that Russian government-sponsored targeted ads on Facebook delivered the 2016 election to Trump.

by hnaccy 6y ago

erichocean 6y ago

Absolutely agree, and it's essential that it remain that way if we hope to have any success with the Color Revolution playbook in November.

kyrra 6y ago

My take on all of this... Lots of states are pushing for larger scale vote-by-mail than has ever happened before. Some states have been doing this for a long time (Oregon, Colorado), but they have the processes in place to handle elections. Other states are trying to do it in a few months with no real prep ahead of time. We're already seeing this lead to ballot printing problems, ex:[0]. To build on that, many of these states aren't allowed to even open/proces absentee/vote-by-mail ballots until election day or after[0.5]. That means that problems with these ballots may not be caught ahead of time. Along with that, having to processing millions of ballets (when they are used to 5-digit amounts of ballots), means it will take a lot longer to handle those ballots. This will lead to a delay in knowing the results. As well, mail-in-ballots get rejected at a much higher rate than in-person voting[1], which will lead to lawyers fighting over which ballots are valid if things are close. Democrats are more likely to vote-by-mail than Republicans[2]. This means those delayed ballots will likely swing towards Biden, which means as days go on for counting, Biden's lead is likely to increase (which is totally fine, but it will definitely stir up controversy). Then you have lawmakers and judges changes the rules[3]. There are a few cases going on around the country where there is a push to allow late mail ballots to be counted. In this case, a Judge decided to allow ballots to arrive up to 3-days post election. These kinds of cases are going on around the country and still being fought. It's going to be messy. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/virginia-voters-receive-duplicate-ballots/2020/09/25/2e9e52bc-ff51-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/virginia-vo... [0.5] https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-t... [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468/more-than-550-000-primary-absentee-ballots-rejected-in-2020-far-outpacing-2016 https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468/more-than-550-000-p... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/18/election-2020-biden-voters-twice-likely-vote-mail-survey-finds/3394795001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/... [3] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/pennsylvania-becomes-ground-zero-for-election-lawsuits.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/pennsylvania-becomes...

erichocean 6y ago
> It's going to be messy. My point is: that's by design, so that Trump can be removed from office no matter what.
- brnt 6y ago
  He has said a few times now that he (pretends to) suspect that ballots counted after election day will be increasingly fraudulous and that therefore the earliest estimates are regarded by him as most accurate. Thereby stacking the cards of chaos in his favour, which has been his motif all along of course. Can't really see how he'll be removed over this seeing he's preparing for and even fuelling this chaos.
  - erichocean 6y ago
    Unless Trump somehow has a massive blowout electoral win based on Nov 3rd voting, it won't matter how much he crows about "winning" the election. Well over half the country doesn't trust the guy, and the international community basically doesn't trust him at all. Republican leadership are, at best, ambivalent. Anyway, look at Belarus: a free and fair election was won by an ~%80 margin by a Trump-like figure. Big deal, he still is in the process of getting removed from office. Macron just last week welcomed the 20% Belarus loser as the "President-elect" to France, and refuses to recognize the Trump-like winner. That's Color Revolution 101: the election really doesn't matter, what matters is its legitimacy. Protests, the media, and any kind of election problems all help to delegitimatize an election, and allow Trump-like figures to be removed in the name of "integrity" should they actually win. This playbook works. As I've said elsewhere, I think Biden will win big electorally, including on Nov. 3rd, so all of this ground-preparation will ultimately not be needed. Better safe than sorry though…
danjac 6y ago
It never ceases to amaze how one of the world's oldest and proudest democracies is absolutely useless at the basic table-stakes competency of a democracy, running a free and fair election. I guess Americans just love their broken legacy system too much...

pessimizer 6y ago

> There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's. This definitely isn't true. Both parties have been repeatedly claiming that a loss for their side will be evidence that the election isn't legitimate. All mainstream Democratic Party discourse has been revolving around the delegitimisation of the results of the 2016 election, and an insistence that exactly the same process is happening during the 2020 election. It's the only reason we're paying attention to Facebook ads, because Facebook developers who claimed to be doing academic experimentation having too much access to user information has been tied through vagueness and innuendo to the claim that Russian government-sponsored targeted ads on Facebook delivered the 2016 election to Trump.