2020 US Election - Current Events

I'm really going to wait for the highlights reel, and a fact check for the false and unsupported claims that have been raining down left and right.
It was crazy. They appear to be genuinely pushing the Venezuela/Dominion theory, which was widely derided days ago.
 
In the press conference, after 27:45, Giuliani mentions Jessy Jacob. But that evidence was dismissed in court days ago, here's an article dated Nov 13th:
Article:
Kenny rejected Jacob’s assertion of a “sinister motive” on the part of election officials, pointing specifically to her claims that supervisors told her not to compare signatures to verify voter eligibility and directed her to pre-date absentee ballots received at Detroit’s TCF Center the day after Election Day.

“Evidence offered by long-time State Elections Director Christopher Thomas, however, reveals there was no need for comparison of signatures at the TCF Center because eligibility had been reviewed and determined at the Detroit election headquarters,” the ruling states. “As to the allegation of ‘pre-dating’ ballots, Mr. Thomas explains that this action completed a data field inadvertently left blank during the initial absentee ballot verification process.”
 
I found a very simple legal argument in a decision by the US Court of Appeals of the 3rd Circuit in Philadephia:
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The Campaign tries to repackage these state-law claims as unconstitutional discrimination. Yet its allegations are vague and conclusory. It never alleges that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes.

That applies to a lot of the "evidence" that is being claimed. A "fair election" fundamentally means that every vote is treated the same. And there's just no evidence that that didn't happen.
 
The second thing that indicates Mr. Giuliani may be a bit out of practice is this:
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1. The Campaign had to plead plausible facts, not just conclusory allegations. Plaintiffs must do more than allege conclusions. Rather, “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ ” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). “Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice.” Id. The Second Amended Complaint does not meet Twombly and Iqbal’s baseline standard of specifics.
[..]
So is the claim that, “Upon information and belief, a substantial portion of the approximately 1.5 million absentee and mail votes in Defendant Counties should not have been counted.” Id. ¶¶ 168, 194, 223, 253. “Upon information and belief” is a lawyerly way of saying that the Campaign does not know that something is a fact but just suspects it or has heard it. “While legal conclusions can provide the framework of a complaint, they must be supported by factual allegations.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679. Yet the Campaign offers no specific facts to back up these claims.

The Supreme Court decisions are Bell Atlantic v. Twombly (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal (2009), so if a lawyer's courtroom days were a while ago, they might not be aware of these developments.

Article:
A particular issue that arises is how to treat facts alleged based on "information and belief." The Second Circuit has set out what appears to be the developing consensus: "The Twombly plausibility standard … does not prevent a plaintiff from pleading facts alleged 'upon information and belief' [1] where the facts are peculiarly within the possession and control of the defendant, or [2] where the belief is based on factual information that makes the inference of culpability plausible." Arista Records, LLC v. Doe 3, __ F.3d __, 2010 WL 1729107, *8 (2d Cir.). Thus, the "information and belief" label is a signal to consider whether the plaintiff has met one of these requirements. A paradigm for the first is when a case turns on the content of records of the defendant. Where a fact is truly within the defendant's exclusive possession, a court may be less likely to find a claim implausible for not alleging that fact. When the second requirement is at issue, it is worthwhile to consider whether the plaintiff has pleaded any of the factual information on which it purports to base its "information and belief" allegation. In either case, plaintiffs still must allege enough underlying facts to allow a plausible inference of liability in the context of their particular claim. Twombly itself confirms this, given that the complaint alleged an antitrust conspiracy based on information and belief, but failed because it did not support that allegation with sufficient subsidiary factual allegations. [..]
3. Assess plausibility. After identifying the allegations not entitled to an assumption of truth, a defendant must show that the real factual allegations that remain have not "nudged [the] claims … across the line from conceivable to plausible." Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1951. Iqbal, following Twombly, adds that assessing the plausibility of a claim is a "context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense." Id.

Basically, these legal standards prevent conspiracy theories from being discussed in court: the unproven claims you're putting forth must have factual evidence that make them plausible; you can't just appear with a "conceivable" theory and expect the court to resolve it.
"Conceivable" is apparently fine for Internet conspiracy theories, but it doesn't hold water in court.
 
All 6 contested states have certified Biden's win and Trump's loss.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drNygNGqn48


Georgia​

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Arizona​

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Nevada​

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Wisonsin​

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Michigan​

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Pennsylvania​

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The Washington Post surveyed all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate beginning [Dec 3rd] the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president. Attorney General William P. Barr said the Justice Department found no evidence to overturn the election results.

A team of 25 Post reporters contacted aides for every Republican by email and phone asking three basic questions:
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Reps. Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.) and Mo Brooks (Ala.) are the only Republicans in Congress who have publicly insisted Trump is the winner.
 
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The website that Powell mentions at the closing of that interview (kraken-wood.com) is a collection of links to other sources, including some twitter posts.
Kraken-Wood.png
Her court filings are available for download as PDFs at https://defendingtherepublic.org/?page_id=157 ; she has filed in Arizona District Court, Georgia: Eleventh Circuit, and Georgia District Court.
 

Source: https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1336116867845517312?s=20

Wisconsin's response to Sidney Powell's lawsuit points out that the Dominion voting machine she says were part of a big election-rigging plot weren't used in most of the counties she's complaining about, and in the two that did use them, Trump won.
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Source: https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1336119040679555074

Including an affidavit from the guy behind QAnon remains a puzzling strategic choice, but seems entirely in keeping with the rest of the Kraken litigation.
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One hundred six members of the US Congress, today, committed an act of sedition.

Texas v. Pennsylvania Amicus Brief of 106 Representatives
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163403/20201210153048641_Texas v. Pennsylvania Amicus Brief of 106 Representatives.pdf

Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or rebellion against, established authority.
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Explaining the Supreme Court lawsuit from Texas


https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/10/politics/trump-texas-supreme-court-election/index.html

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit Tuesday. The President on Wednesday filed a motion to intervene -- basically a request to join the lawsuit, asking for the same result. Seventeen GOP states are backing the effort as well.

They're asking for the court to block the electors from Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, pushing Biden back under the magic 270-vote total to win.
First the court would have to allow Paxton to file the suit. Then the court would have to block certification of the Electoral College vote, determine that the four states had allowed massive amounts of "illegal" votes, have the states revisit their vote counts and then resubmit the numbers. The court could also, Trump's filing suggests, let state legislatures determine who wins each state or throw the entire election to the US House of Representatives, where each state delegation would have one vote -- and since Republican delegations outnumber Democratic delegations, Trump would win.

Is there any precedent?

No
...the President is asking the Supreme Court to exercise its rarest form of jurisdiction to effectively overturn the entire presidential election.
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-Will this particular suit prevail?
No.

-Will Biden still be inaugurated as our president on January 20?
Yes.

-Does the Texas Attorney General have a venal personal reason for pursuing this?
Probably.

-How many of the 106 members of Congress believe that the election was stolen? Probably none.

-Why then did they sign on to this frivolous suit?
Because it's not acceptable - politically or psychologically - to openly call for the overthrow of the US Government, but that is their intent. They are hiding behind this thin veil.

There are undoubtedly a number of people who believe in the Stolen Election Narrative and individual conspiracy theories. The most dangerous people don't believe the Narrative.

The truly dangerous trend is toward open sedition. People are looking around at each other and getting signals that sedition is in the air, and there's an increasing safety in numbers to commit seditious acts. The "Ripple Effect" - a shared social process - is a feedback loop in which each iteration of the cycle reinforces the previous one.

It's a quirk of human psychology that hiding behind a thinly veiled lie - one that everyone is aware is a lie - makes unacceptable behaviors and beliefs acceptable. The Stolen Election Narrative is just such a thing. It allows the people who are committing sedition to frame themselves as the patriots fighting against sedition. They will continue to cling to this Narrative.

Where is this leading?
 
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They don't. You can't commit sedition if you're willing to submit to the authority of the highest court of the land.

The suit is a fiction which they do not believe in themselves. The intent is to foment political and social unrest and to normalize the idea that legal elections are irrelevant. This is sedition.

The intent is not to overthrow this election. They are looking toward the future; an effort to establish a dominant party authoritarian regime. The modern form of autocracy is the authoritarian democracy. There is no sudden coup. Power is consolidated through ostensibly legal means.
 
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From the amicus brief:
Article:
National polls indicate a large percentage of Americans now have serious doubts about not just the outcome of the presidential contest, but also the future reliability of our election system itself. Amici respectfully aver it is the solemn duty of this Court to provide an objective review of these anomalies and to determine for the people if indeed the Constitution has been followed and the rule of law maintained.

Thankfully, the actually complaints are all like "this official got more people to vote", which basically is a good thing.
They'd have to either prove fraud (they don't) or that Trump and Biden ballots were treated unequally (they don't). It just looks like the Republicans don't want certain people's votes to be counted.
Which is not an outlook the judges are likely to share.

Every citizen has the right to vote; if officials act to ensure everyone can exercise that right, it's legal.
 
Nuclear war is a disturbing possibility. The mechanism is fully established.

That's the way I see our present political situation. I think we probably will not see the establishment of a dominant party authoritarian regime. But it has become a disturbing possibility, in a way that it was not until very recently.

This situation won't fix itself. It's going to take active measures to fight this. And that is happening.



From the office of:
JOSH SHAPIRO Attorney General of Pennsylvania


PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
Since Election Day, State and Federal courts throughout the country have been flooded with frivolous lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising large swaths of voters and undermining the legitimacy of the election. The State of Texas has now added its voice to the cacophony of bogus claims. Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees. Its request for this Court to exercise its original jurisdiction and then anoint Texas’s preferred candidate for President is legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy.

What Texas is doing in this proceeding is to ask this Court to reconsider a mass of baseless claims about problems with the election that have already been considered, and rejected, by this Court and other courts. It attempts to exploit this Court’s sparingly used original jurisdiction to relitigate those matters. But Texas obviously lacks standing to bring such claims, which, in any event, are barred by laches, and are moot, meritless, and dangerous. Texas has not suffered harm simply be-cause it dislikes the result of the election, and nothing in the text, history, or structure of the Constitution supports Texas’s view that it can dictate the manner in which four other states run their elections. Nor is that view grounded in any precedent from this Court. Texas does not seek to have the Court interpret the Constitution, so much as disregard it.

The cascading series of compounding defects in Texas’s filings is only underscored by the surreal alternate reality that those filings attempt to construct. That alternate reality includes an absurd statistical analysis positing that the probability of President-Elect Biden winning the election was “one in a quadrillion.” Bill of Complaint at 6. Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and un-mistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.
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AG of Maryland Brian Frosh
I think it's a coup attempt.
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https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/22o155.html has all the files pertaining to the Texas case before the US Supreme Court.


From the 106 House Republicans' brief at https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163403/20201210153048641_Texas v. Pennsylvania Amicus Brief of 106 Representatives.pdf :
The unconstitutional “guidance” stated: “The Pennsylvania Election Code does not authorize the county board of elections to set aside returned absentee or mail-in ballots based solely on signature analysis by the county board of elections.”
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The Republicans don't allow investigation if a signature doesn't look right; throw the vote out instead!
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 9 without any authorization by the Pennsylvania General Assembly, usurped legislative power by extending that deadline to three days after Election Day.
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Deadline extended because USPS was slow? Throw the votes out!
making it far more difficult to challenge defective signatures beyond the express mandatory procedures
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Republicans complain about not being able to throw votes out in Georgia.
In clear violation of the law, the State Election Board — not the legislature — purported to change Georgia law and allow processing of ballots up to three weeks before Election Day.
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"Processing" means checking the outer envelopes, signatures etc.; not counting. This may lead to voters learning their mail-in vote being rejected and voting in person; that's unconstitutional, say Republicans.
Michigan’s Secretary of State [..] set up a website whereby persons could request an absentee ballot without a signature.
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Can't have people getting their ballots the easy way; must have that administrative overhead, or too many people might vote!
Michigan’s Secretary of State violated Article II of the Constitution when she seized local power granted by the legislature and distributed 7.7 million absentee ballot applications.
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Can't have the elections office distribute applications efficiently, that would be unconstitutional, say Republicans.
Election officials in Wayne County, Michigan [..] consciously and systematically refused to follow the inspection and security requirements set by the Michigan Legislature to ensure absentee ballots were cast by actual voters
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Republicans can't have ballots of legitimate voters counted if you could have refused them! (There is no proof of someone who was not an "actual voter" voting.)
Wisconsin Elections Commission (“WEC”) and other local officials unconstitutionally created “hundreds of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots — including the use of unmanned drop boxes.”
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Putting up drop boxes that aren't explicitly authorized by state law is only ok if the California Republican Party does it unoffically (yes, that really happened).

All of these complaints boil down to "legitimate voters had their legitimitate ballots counted when there was red tape that would've allowed us to ignore them". That's it. No allegations of fraud or unequal treatment for any candidate.

More picks from the docket:

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The District of Columbia together with the States and territories of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington (collectively, the “Amici States”) move for leave to file the enclosed brief as amici curiae in support of defendants

ARGUMENT
I. The Electors Clause Provides No Basis To Second-Guess State Courts And Local Actors In Their Interpretation Of State Law
II. States' Common-Sense Measures Taken In Response To The Coronavirus Pandemic Did Not Introduce Widespread Fraud

There's news that a group of states is supporting Texas, e.g. State of Alaska joins 19 other states supporting Texas’ lawsuit that challenges presidential election results, but I don't see a collective amicus filing for those on the docket. Maybe someone ought to keep track of that so we'll know in advance how the Union splits this time -- I have a feeling the Confederates are going to be flanked from both sides this time around.

Article:
Plaintiff makes very few “factual” allegations relating to Michigan, with all allegations of supposed fraud arising from debunked claims about the processing and tabulation of absent voter ballots by the City of Detroit (the “City”) in Hall E of the TCF Center, a convention center in downtown Detroit. Those sparse allegations are derived from three affidavits first submitted in Costantino v. Detroit et al, Wayne County Circuit Case No. 20-014780-AW, by Melissa Carone, Jessy Jacob and Zachary Larsen. The City submits this brief to address those allegations, because, contrary to Plaintiff’s averment that Wayne County processed and tabulated the ballots, the City did so. The City is therefore uniquely able to respond directly to the allegations.

The allegations have already been deemed not credible by the Chief Judge of Michigan’s Third Judicial District and deemed not worthy of injunctive relief by the Michigan Supreme Court in two separate cases. Re-stating the allegations here does not make them any more credible or more worthy of relief.

The Detroit Amicus brief thoroughly debunks these allegations in detail; it's a great read.

Trump intervened as well:
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President Trump prevailed on nearly every historical indicia of success in presidential elections. For example, he won both Florida and Ohio; no candidate in history—Republican or Democrat—has ever lost the election after winning both States.

That sounds like something a baseball commentator would say.

https://xkcd.com/2383/ , posted November 9th 2020
 
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Trump intervened as well:
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President Trump prevailed on nearly every historical indicia of success in presidential elections. For example, he won both Florida and Ohio; no candidate in history—Republican or Democrat—has ever lost the election after winning both States.
Why did I even assume that easily checked fact was true? It's false:
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1960 US Election.png

Trump "corrected" himself on Twitter 13 hours ago:

Source: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1337195257776238592

No Presidential candidate ever came even close to losing an Election who won Iowa, Florida and Ohio. I won all three, by a lot!
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The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

That seems to correspond to the first argument in the "blue states" brief.

The Electoral College is due to meet on Monday, hopefully that settles it for good.
 
Joe Welch asked, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last"? And that was the inflection point for McCarthyism. I keep hoping there will be an inflection point for Trumpism. A sobering up moment.

I was hoping this might be it. It doesn't look as if it will be. I'm afraid, instead, this will be marked in history as a day when the anger deepened. A significant moment of radicalization.
 
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The Electoral College is due to meet on Monday, hopefully that settles it for good.
It should settle the immediate issue of who is the next President. It will do nothing to resolve the underlying issues of outdated Constitutional provisions and practices or an election system that is wide open to causing problems whether real or invented.

All of which is deeply embedded in and supported by the US culture. This election has reinforced the expectation that court battles are the ultimate determinant of who wins. Shifting the actual voting towards being merely a preliminary process.
I'm afraid, instead, this will be marked in history as a day when the anger deepened. A significant moment of radicalization.
Yes. The astonishing aspect for me - British born Australian - is not Trump's incompetent narcissism and gross dishonesty. It is the extent to which for so many Americans party loyalty outweighs honesty. Blatantly obvious in the lawyers and team supporting Trump.

The "day" should be "marked in history". I suspect the underlying real causes will be glossed over - essentially unrecognised and no critical mass to address reform.
 
Article:
The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

That seems to correspond to the first argument in the "blue states" brief.

The Electoral College is due to meet on Monday, hopefully that settles it for good.
I don't think I'll unclench until count day, because there are still ways to screw around and drag that out for who knows how long. Both chambers have a nuclear option, but those end with the newly chosen Speaker becoming acting president on the 20th, so there's no way to keep Trump in office, but if we get to that point a functioning government isn't a guarantee, either.
 
We shouldn't get distracted from the real issue. Trump isn't going to steal this election. The real issue is that the radicalized GOP is becoming more radicalized. That's not going away on January 20.
 
You could argue, with some validity, that these members of Congress were aware that the Texas Suit was a fantasy and they were only committing a fantastic act of sedition. A "Just Kidding!" version of sedition. Something like Diamond and Silk's tweet calling for a military coup. (No link. You can find it if you care to.)

But members of Congress aren't allowed that kind of thing. They have signaled that sedition is becoming an acceptable thing. It's a trend. The Ripple Effect is a shared social process - a feedback loop in which each iteration of the cycle reinforces the previous one. Each round makes the idea of open sedition more socially acceptable.

I'll let this Senator express what I feel is the truth of this.





It is true this effort to overthrow the 2020 election is not going to bear fruit. And so it is tempting to just work on the other things and to ignore this lawsuit and these attempts; because this time it won't be successful.

But all of this effort, supported by so many mainstream Republicans... it's setting a precedent; and it's creating conditions that could easily overthrow the next election. And if the Republican party just allows for this assault on the 2020 election to continue, no matter whether it ultimately is successful, then by 2022 or 2024... I'm telling you it might be too late to save our democracy.
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You could argue, with some validity, that these members of Congress were aware that the Texas Suit was a fantasy and they were only committing a fantastic act of sedition.
Again, you cannot commit sedition by going to court!
You might as well be saying that an attorney defending a murderer supports murder, when they just ensure them a good legal defense, which is a safeguard of the system.

Calling for armed protest against the election outcome is treason, going to court and submitting to the court's ruling is not. For the same reason, "I'll sue you" isn't legally recognized as a threat anywhere in the world.

You have a large portion of the electorate who think, "all those people at the rally voted for Trump with me, so Biden can't have won", and you need to demonstrate to these people that every option to test this conviction has been taken, and that it came up negative: that there really were more legal, constitutional votes for Biden that make him president. Every elected Republican has to be able to confront their voters and tell them, "I did all I could to make this election fair".

There will definitely be some lawmakers who challenge electoral votes on January 6th. Democrats have done it before in recent elections. But neither the House nor the Senate are going to deny the votes of these electors.

The real threat are those armed Trumpers who, by flying their Confederate flags, are showing that they won't accept a loss over 100 years after it happened. I believe the responsible Republicans are riding a tiger right now, because they have been telling these people "we're going to win this in court", which presumably held off violence, and gave them more time to come to terms with the idea that Donald Trump lost this election.

Everyone who calls for violence or use of arms in this situation is committing treason sedition. But going to the court isn't that.

By making a sedition a talking point, you are aiding those who want to destabilize your country, and you are deepening the divide, instead of acknowleding that most Trump voters or GOP politicians do not want that. Nobody likes to be demonized.
 
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Mendel - Calling for armed protest against the election outcome is treason, going to court and submitting to the court's ruling is not. For the same reason, "I'll sue you" isn't legally recognized as a threat anywhere in the world.
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This is not US law. Treason involves collaborating with an enemy during wartime. I'm using sedition as defined in the US: See The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

In those acts, sedition includes "[to] print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous, and malicious writing." The Texas suit published all of those things.


The intent is to overthrow a legal election. What do you want to define that as? I'm not going to be moved from using the word.

The law can be subverted. When an election is overturned in 2022 or 2024 it will be done by appointed or elected officials in an ostensibly legal way. That's the modern authoritarian method.
 
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The intent is to overthrow a legal election. What do you want to define that as?
You Can Not Do Something Illegal By Going To Court
(if you're not lying outright in your accusation).
To overthrow the election means to call for violence. Please read the last paragraph of my previous post.
 
See previous post. The word has a certain meaning in this country, and is being used by people who are lawyers; e.g the Attorney General of Pennsylvania.

Trump was clearly hoping that the Supreme Court would immorally hand him the election by ignoring the law. He simply has no perception that other people have morality. It's not a part of his consciousness.
 
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I don't think I'll unclench until count day
Article:
January 6, 2021: Joint Session of Congress to Count Electoral Votes and Declare Election Results Meets
On January 6, or another date set by law, the Senate and House of Representatives assemble at 1:00 p.m. in a joint session at the Capitol, in the House chamber, to count the electoral votes and declare the results(3 U.S.C. §15). The Vice President presides as President of the Senate. The Vice President opens the certificates and presents them to four tellers, two from each chamber. The tellers read and make a list of the returns. When the votes have been ascertained and counted, the tellers transmit them to the Vice President. If one of the tickets has received a majority of 270 or more electoral votes, the Vice President announces the results, which “shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons, if any, elected President and Vice President."

Joint Session Challenges to Electoral Vote Returns
While the tellers announce the results, Members may object to the returns from any individual state as they are announced. Objections to individual state returns must be made in writing by at least one Member each of the Senate and House of Representatives. If an objection meets these requirements, the joint session recesses and the two houses separate and debate the question in their respective chambers for a maximum of two hours. The two houses then vote separately to accept or reject the objection. They then reassemble in joint session, and announce the results of their respective votes. An objection to a state’s electoral vote must be approved by both houses in order for any contested votes to be excluded. For additional information, see CRS Report RL32717, Counting Electoral Votes: An Overview of Procedures at the Joint Session, Including Objections by Members of Congress, coordinated by Elizabeth Rybicki and L. Paige Whitaker.

(Emphasis mine.) Short of Mike Pence committing outright treason sedition, this is going to confirm Joe Biden, there is no other way.
 
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They have signaled that sedition is becoming an acceptable thing. It's a trend. The Ripple Effect is a shared social process - a feedback loop in which each iteration of the cycle reinforces the previous one. Each round makes the idea of open sedition more socially acceptable.
Agreed. I've been describing it as an "evolutionary process" - downhill - which embeds acceptance of the situation into the US culture.

There is a multitude of sub-issues - I'll identify just one topic as an example: The focus of debate is on short term immediacies like vote counting with little discussion of why a supposed first world country cannot count votes and accept the result.
 
. I'm using sedition as defined in US law.
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Seditious Conspiracy and Federal Law: The Basics

The federal law against seditious conspiracy can be found in Title 18 of the U.S. Code (which includes treason, rebellion, and similar offenses), specifically 18 U.S.C. § 2384. According to the statutory definition of sedition, it is a crime for two or more people within the jurisdiction of the United States:

  • To conspire to overthrow or destroy by force the government of the United States or to level war against them;
  • To oppose by force the authority of the United States government; to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the United States; or
  • To take, seize, or possess by force any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof.

Do you see the words "by force" in all of these points?
 
But all of this effort, supported by so many mainstream Republicans... it's setting a precedent; and it's creating conditions that could easily overthrow the next election
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This is divisive "slippery slope" rhetoric, a case that can't be made rationally.

You need to acknowledge that most voters who voted for Trump want the president who got elected to be president, otherwise you are working to divide the country, and undermining Joe's expressed goal to reunite it.
 
I think it's time to stop going round and round. You've made your point. I disagree. This isn't going to go away by being understanding. It has to be exposed and met with moral firmness. The target is these elected officials who don't believe the election has been stolen.
 
See The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
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The Sedition Act and the Alien Friends Act were allowed to expire in 1800 and 1801, respectively.


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The Republican minority in Congress complained that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protected freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But the Federalist majority pushed it through, arguing that English and American courts had long punished seditious libel under common law, and that freedom of speech must be balanced with an individual’s responsibility for false statements.

Adams signed the Sedition Act into law on July 14, 1798. It was set to expire on March 3, 1801, the last day of his term in office.

[..]

All told, between 1798 and 1801, U.S. federal courts prosecuted at least 26 individuals under the Sedition Act; many were editors of Republican newspapers, and all opposed the Adams administration. The prosecutions fueled furious debate over the meaning of a free press and the rights that should be afforded to political opposition parties in the United States.

In the end, widespread anger over the Alien and Sedition Acts fueled Jefferson’s victory over Adams in the bitterly contested 1800 presidential election, and their passage is widely considered to be one of the biggest mistakes of Adams’ presidency.


Do not use this outdated definition of sedition.
 
This is not US law. Treason involves collaborating with an enemy during wartime.
Agreed. I'm trained (not practising) in AU law and not conversant with relvant US Statute law.

I'm using sedition as defined in the US: See The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

In those acts, sedition includes "[to] print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous, and malicious writing." The Texas suit published all of those things.
That gives me a starting point for research. Thank you.
The intent is to overthrow a legal election.
I've taken that fact as my starting point. "Why are Trump et al not being criminally indicted with something like conspiracy to overthrow the election?" And the related cultural question "Why are uS people so tolerant of para-criminal dishonesty surrounding the election process?"

I recognised that it is not treason but haven't confirmed what is relevant statute. Yet. I'll take your reference as prima facie where to look.
 
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Agreed. I'm trained (not practising) in AU law and not conversant with relvant US Statute law.


That gives me a starting point for research. Thank you.

I've taken that fact as my starting point. "Why are Trump et al not being criminally indicted with something like conspiracy to overthrow the election?" And the related cultural question "Why are uS people so tolerant of para-criminal dishonesty surrounding the election process?"

I recognised that it is not treason but haven't confirmed what is relevant statute. Yet. I'll take your reference as prima facie where to look.
Because it's politically impossible. He would have to be indicted by the House of Representatives (impeached) and then tried by the Senate. The Senate is controlled by the Republicans. Not only is it time consuming, it's futile. We already went through the process.
 
Let me explain something to our non-American friends. My ancestors, on three sides of my family, go way back (1600's). On the maternal, Southern side, of the family one branch is made up of French Creoles and Arcadians of Louisiana. The other branch is made up of English of Virginia. In fact I'm descended from several First Families of Virginia - The Armisteads, the Lees, Lightfoots, Warners, Corbins, the Smiths of Gloucester, Mathews (who go back to Jamestown). I have many, many slave owners and two Confederate soldiers as direct ancestors; something I've had to come to terms with. (In fact Generals Robert E. Lee and Lewis Armistead are distant cousins.) (Through the Warners and Lightfoots, I'm also indirectly related to the first five Presidents.) Grandma was born in Picayune, Mississippi in 1892, and told me family stories about the Civil War. She made it sound as if it had just happened.

On the paternal, French Canadian, branch, I have a great-grandfather who was a Union soldier. He was wounded at the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania.

What's going on now is very much a continuance of US history. Look at this map

download (2).png


This is a cultural fight that goes back to the earliest days. Take it from me, White Supremacy is very much a part of this. The same cultural forces are at work. One culture feels outnumbered and disrespected. The Senate was created, in part, to give the Southern Slave Holding States more political power then they would otherwise have with their relatively small population. Presently, a minority element of the US population can and does elect the majority of Senators.

Essentially the same culture... is being radicalized... for many of the same reasons it became radicalized before the Civil War. Only slavery itself is missing. Still, this culture feels itself losing political power through an overwhelming population growth - a population that includes outlandish foreign immigrants. It feels disrespected, and it feels repulsed by the rival culture. The pre-Civil War era was also an era of egregious conspiracy theories.

The decisive votes in this 2020 presidential election came from Black People in northern cities (and Atlanta). These are the votes that the Texas Lawsuit targeted. These are the votes that are consistently being targeted as illegitimate. Believe me, there is a very strong racist element to this rebellion.
 
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Because it's politically impossible. He would have to be indicted by the House of Representatives (impeached) and then tried by the Senate. The Senate is controlled by the Republicans. Not only is it time consuming, it's futile. We already went through the process.
Yes. I'm aware of the broad historic issues and the evolution of the constitutional practices. As I see it the debate is mostly about working within the limitations imposed by current systems. In my opinion those systems and related aspects of the constitution are past their "use by date". Leave the detils aside for now but take two examples:

You say:
Because it's politically impossible. ..... The Senate is controlled by the Republicans. Not only is it time consuming, it's futile. We already went through the process.

I'm aware of that. IT is "futile" within the current system so the need is to fix the system. If a system of trying and sanctioning alleged misconduct is needed it cannot, will not work when the trial is by loyal members of his own political party. iF those members put party loyalty ahead of honesty. Both the reality and the appearance of "conflict of interst" need to be addressed. As I understand it the impeachment process was designed before political parties became as influential as they now are. The process needs fixing. There are serious barriers to achiving that which I am aware of but won't address at this time.

Second example - the whole of the election process is cumbersome. Let's just address one aspect - vote counting. To a foreigner looking in it looks as if the USA is culturaly committed to not being able to count votes. And having fun arguing about the outcome after the event. A lot of the problems arising from using machines. I wont over simplify BUT if the machines are not accurate fix them or stop using them. If the systrem of using mechines has problems fix the problems. The current Trump/Republican campaign has a de-facto clear objective of destroying faith in the election system. It is an attack on the foundation of democracy as I see you have identified in previus posts. One other member disagrees. I could add many more issues. Just one. Why is the unsuccessful candidate for election left in power for months to commit more mischief?

The
 
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Let me explain something to our non-American friends.

This is a cultural fight that goes back to the earliest days.
As one "non-American" - thanks for the summary. I'm reasonbly familiar with the history as it impacted on the evolution of the practical application of the Constitution. I'm Australian, career qualification in engineering but in my 60s I took a degree in law. Then my involvement in on-line discusion gave me an interest in US Constitutional law.

My own focus on these maters is on the legal and administrative machinery aspects. Thanks for reminding me of the socioological factors esp the big issues of race and slavery.
 
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