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It honestly feels like they're trying to speedrun autocracy, but it's not clear to me the game plan here. Assuming the voting and election situation doesn't cha

It honestly feels like they're trying to speedrun autocracy, but it's not clear to me the game plan here. Assuming the voting and election situation doesn't change, they won't be in office forever, possibly even the next term. They've just weakened oversight and standards of decency that surely they will be crying about later. To be honest it's exhausting just listening to the adults supposedly running the strongest country in the world like a Twitter trolling session.

esseph 1y ago
Dominion voting machines, the company falsely accused of rigging the election that also lead to the court case that got Tucker fired from Fox, were just acquired by a (R). This was to keep the elections Fair and Balanced.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  "Fair and balanced" in the same way some animals are more equal than others? I could see that. Was this ever debunked by the way? https://michaeldsellers.substack.com/p/new-starlink-election-fraud-claims https://michaeldsellers.substack.com/p/new-starlink-election...
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    The phrase was quoted with obvious and dripping irony.
  - inemesitaffia 1y ago
    No need for debunking. Just ask anyone with a CCNP or equivalent Makes absolutely no sense
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      I don't think you can debunk this with a generic CCNP check. The concern is hacking, not normal network configurations. The Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) provider is Palantir. Tabulator Machine <- usb/serial -> UPS <- cell connection -> Internet. Not uncommon to run SNMP on a UPS either. SNMP is an unloved pile of bugs: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/09/as-many-as-2-million-cisco-devices-affected-by-actively-exploited-0-day/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/09/as-many-as-2-millio... I'm not saying anything nefarious actually happened. But as soon as you connect devices to the net in any way you are in deep water, especially when one or more of your vendors may be one of your threat actors. Complicated hacks are not common, but possible, especially when the stakes are high and competent people are on the task. Stuxnet development started 20 years ago - and the target was even airgapped, which didn't help the target in the end.
      - inemesitaffia 1y ago
        Well, the devices weren't connected to the internet. QED
- ta1243 1y ago
  I don't understand why Americans require machines to count. Dumping the ballots into a room and having dozens of people counting them while under the watch of all sorts of interested parties scales perfectly well. For president you have a piece of paper with two boxes on. You don't even have ranked voting. Mark an X next to one and put it in a ballot box. Works fine everywhere else.
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    That's not how it works everywhere else
    - iainmerrick 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country suggests that centralized electronic counting is somewhat common, electronic voting machines in polling places are uncommon. So I think it's reasonable to say that, to paraphrase the earlier comment, putting an X in a box on a piece of paper is how it's done in most of the world. It's true that the ballots aren't always counted by hand.
      - ta1243 1y ago
        Very few countries do national elections electronically (the ones most subject to interference) electronically. Sure with paper systems you might be able to swing upto say 1% of the vote without being detected (probably more like 0.1%), anything more will involve too many people for a conspiracy to remain. With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. Scaling is bad when it comes to voting.
        bilekas 1y ago
        > With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. You're going to have to give some citations for that because all electronic votes are usually backed by a paper ballot.. I've not heard of 20%~ swing and getting away with it.
Galanwe 1y ago
> it's not clear to me the game plan here. Assuming the voting and election situation doesn't change, they won't be in office forever I mean, they are in office right now, even though they already quite egregiously violated most laws in existence. It seems completely obvious to me there will be some kind of takeover for the next elections. Some new rules will be set in place that favor the current government. And the current US track record seems to prove that it'll work. There will be outraged news articles and comments on the internet, some protests, but ultimately it'll pass.
- scottgg 1y ago
  There’s quite some fresh gerrymandering going on, and because folks already “tolerate” this, it’s just incremental heat in the pot.
drumhead 1y ago
They're trying to wreck as much of the current governmental set us as they can do it'll almost impossible or very difficult to rebuild it. It's almost scorched earth, they think they're killing the "deep state"
- jimbohn 1y ago
  I think the "deep state" crusade assumes a sort of good faith that it's obviously lacking in this administration, judging their intent from their behavior and outcomes paints a much scarier picture.
  - ricardobeat 1y ago
    You only need “good faith” from voters and supporters, the people in power know exactly what they are doing.
aredox 1y ago
>Assuming the voting and election situation doesn't change, they won't be in office forever, possibly even the next term. Trump pardoned all of the Jan 6th putchists. Trump ordered full military honor for Ashley Babbitt. Trump put openly said after meeting Putin that more than ever, he believes the 2020 elections were rigged. Trump appointed an election denier as the secretary for "Election Integrity". Trump appointed pure servile hacks as heads of FBI, CIA and Justice (I mean, Kash write a book with Trump as a king). Trump ordered 800 military brass to come to Quantico to be lectured about the "Enemy from within", turn American cities into military training grounds and that anyone that disappoints him will lose everything. I mean, how many more clues do you need, to admit the next election will be cancelled as soon as they lose? He literally said what he was going to do. And there has been no pushback, neither from the military nor parliamentarians.
- bilekas 1y ago
  > I mean, how many more clues do you need, to admit the next election will be cancelled as soon as they lose? He literally said what he was going to do. And there has been no pushback, neither from the military nor parliamentarians. I'm not saying it wouldn't be done if it was possible, but I am working off the current status quoa that exists now. And I wouldn't be so sure about a lack of military pushback if something like cancelling national elections was called.
  - aredox 1y ago
    It won't be cancelling national elections. It will be "suspending" a few local ones, enough to tilt the balance, and then using any excuse - e.g. "antifa", but any protest is enough - to escalate, to justify, progressively, a military clampdown. >I wouldn't be so sure about a lack of military pushback Again, Ashley Babbitt received full military honors for trying to overrun security at the Capitol to attack congressmen and women to overturn the election. That's what happened. Nobody has said anywhere in the military "it's wrong". The "status quo" is that the president, immune from any prosecution, is saying openly he is ready to use soldiers to shoot at American citizens when he gives the order, and anyone who disobeys will be fired.
orwin 1y ago
I remember a Cyberpunk setting where basically a corp bought the voting machines in a country, and suddenly all presidents of said country were top level executives of that corp. Which is why I smiled a little when 'Liberty vote' was announced.
gcanyon 1y ago
They are planning to militarize the election. - they have the voter rolls - they are normalizing using the military domestically - they will "secure" the polling places against "voter fraud" and take the ballots to be "counted securely" This needs to be called out now, because the courts are slow to react and won't have time to do anything once it's happening.
raw_anon_1111 1y ago
But more than likely they will be. While the Presidency may turn, everything about how the US government works and how the population of the US is geared toward rural America having an outsized say in the federal government. Let’s start with Senate. Every state regardless of population gets 2 senators where South Dakota and North Dakota hace twice the number of Senators as California. While the House is not as bad, since left leaning voters are mostly in big cities, it’s easy to gerrymander and dilute their vote.

esseph 1y ago

Dominion voting machines, the company falsely accused of rigging the election that also lead to the court case that got Tucker fired from Fox, were just acquired by a (R). This was to keep the elections Fair and Balanced.

actionfromafar 1y ago
"Fair and balanced" in the same way some animals are more equal than others? I could see that. Was this ever debunked by the way? https://michaeldsellers.substack.com/p/new-starlink-election-fraud-claims https://michaeldsellers.substack.com/p/new-starlink-election...
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  The phrase was quoted with obvious and dripping irony.
- inemesitaffia 1y ago
  No need for debunking. Just ask anyone with a CCNP or equivalent Makes absolutely no sense
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    I don't think you can debunk this with a generic CCNP check. The concern is hacking, not normal network configurations. The Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) provider is Palantir. Tabulator Machine <- usb/serial -> UPS <- cell connection -> Internet. Not uncommon to run SNMP on a UPS either. SNMP is an unloved pile of bugs: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/09/as-many-as-2-million-cisco-devices-affected-by-actively-exploited-0-day/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/09/as-many-as-2-millio... I'm not saying anything nefarious actually happened. But as soon as you connect devices to the net in any way you are in deep water, especially when one or more of your vendors may be one of your threat actors. Complicated hacks are not common, but possible, especially when the stakes are high and competent people are on the task. Stuxnet development started 20 years ago - and the target was even airgapped, which didn't help the target in the end.
    - inemesitaffia 1y ago
      Well, the devices weren't connected to the internet. QED
ta1243 1y ago
I don't understand why Americans require machines to count. Dumping the ballots into a room and having dozens of people counting them while under the watch of all sorts of interested parties scales perfectly well. For president you have a piece of paper with two boxes on. You don't even have ranked voting. Mark an X next to one and put it in a ballot box. Works fine everywhere else.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  That's not how it works everywhere else
  - iainmerrick 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country suggests that centralized electronic counting is somewhat common, electronic voting machines in polling places are uncommon. So I think it's reasonable to say that, to paraphrase the earlier comment, putting an X in a box on a piece of paper is how it's done in most of the world. It's true that the ballots aren't always counted by hand.
    - ta1243 1y ago
      Very few countries do national elections electronically (the ones most subject to interference) electronically. Sure with paper systems you might be able to swing upto say 1% of the vote without being detected (probably more like 0.1%), anything more will involve too many people for a conspiracy to remain. With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. Scaling is bad when it comes to voting.
      - bilekas 1y ago
        > With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. You're going to have to give some citations for that because all electronic votes are usually backed by a paper ballot.. I've not heard of 20%~ swing and getting away with it.

Galanwe 1y ago

> it's not clear to me the game plan here. Assuming the voting and election situation doesn't change, they won't be in office forever I mean, they are in office right now, even though they already quite egregiously violated most laws in existence. It seems completely obvious to me there will be some kind of takeover for the next elections. Some new rules will be set in place that favor the current government. And the current US track record seems to prove that it'll work. There will be outraged news articles and comments on the internet, some protests, but ultimately it'll pass.

scottgg 1y ago
There’s quite some fresh gerrymandering going on, and because folks already “tolerate” this, it’s just incremental heat in the pot.

drumhead 1y ago

They're trying to wreck as much of the current governmental set us as they can do it'll almost impossible or very difficult to rebuild it. It's almost scorched earth, they think they're killing the "deep state"

jimbohn 1y ago
I think the "deep state" crusade assumes a sort of good faith that it's obviously lacking in this administration, judging their intent from their behavior and outcomes paints a much scarier picture.
- ricardobeat 1y ago
  You only need “good faith” from voters and supporters, the people in power know exactly what they are doing.

aredox 1y ago

>Assuming the voting and election situation doesn't change, they won't be in office forever, possibly even the next term. Trump pardoned all of the Jan 6th putchists. Trump ordered full military honor for Ashley Babbitt. Trump put openly said after meeting Putin that more than ever, he believes the 2020 elections were rigged. Trump appointed an election denier as the secretary for "Election Integrity". Trump appointed pure servile hacks as heads of FBI, CIA and Justice (I mean, Kash write a book with Trump as a king). Trump ordered 800 military brass to come to Quantico to be lectured about the "Enemy from within", turn American cities into military training grounds and that anyone that disappoints him will lose everything. I mean, how many more clues do you need, to admit the next election will be cancelled as soon as they lose? He literally said what he was going to do. And there has been no pushback, neither from the military nor parliamentarians.

bilekas 1y ago
> I mean, how many more clues do you need, to admit the next election will be cancelled as soon as they lose? He literally said what he was going to do. And there has been no pushback, neither from the military nor parliamentarians. I'm not saying it wouldn't be done if it was possible, but I am working off the current status quoa that exists now. And I wouldn't be so sure about a lack of military pushback if something like cancelling national elections was called.
- aredox 1y ago
  It won't be cancelling national elections. It will be "suspending" a few local ones, enough to tilt the balance, and then using any excuse - e.g. "antifa", but any protest is enough - to escalate, to justify, progressively, a military clampdown. >I wouldn't be so sure about a lack of military pushback Again, Ashley Babbitt received full military honors for trying to overrun security at the Capitol to attack congressmen and women to overturn the election. That's what happened. Nobody has said anywhere in the military "it's wrong". The "status quo" is that the president, immune from any prosecution, is saying openly he is ready to use soldiers to shoot at American citizens when he gives the order, and anyone who disobeys will be fired.

orwin 1y ago

I remember a Cyberpunk setting where basically a corp bought the voting machines in a country, and suddenly all presidents of said country were top level executives of that corp. Which is why I smiled a little when 'Liberty vote' was announced.

gcanyon 1y ago

They are planning to militarize the election. - they have the voter rolls - they are normalizing using the military domestically - they will "secure" the polling places against "voter fraud" and take the ballots to be "counted securely" This needs to be called out now, because the courts are slow to react and won't have time to do anything once it's happening.

raw_anon_1111 1y ago

But more than likely they will be. While the Presidency may turn, everything about how the US government works and how the population of the US is geared toward rural America having an outsized say in the federal government. Let’s start with Senate. Every state regardless of population gets 2 senators where South Dakota and North Dakota hace twice the number of Senators as California. While the House is not as bad, since left leaning voters are mostly in big cities, it’s easy to gerrymander and dilute their vote.