In America, the most important function of an election is — obviously — determining who fills the various positions of election officials. After all, the government has a monopoly on violence, and it’s important for free people to have a voice in who wields that power.
However, another important aspect of elections is ensuring the losing side feels confident in the result of said elections. After all, the government has a monopoly on violence, and it’s important the losers don’t feel cheated and subsequently persecuted.
Indeed, election integrity is to elections what monetary policy is to economics — everything flows from this central point. Without solid elections, confidence in government (and government power) wanes — and for good reason: history is replete with undemocratic governments who wielded power illegitimately. (Many such governments were established by the CIA, but that’s for another time.)
Our elections fail miserably on this point.
Democrats complained for four years that the 2016 election was stolen (by Russia via Facebook meme!) and called Trump an illegitimate president. Government then introduced HUGE integrity holes into the election process (mainly via littering the cityscape with “legal” ballots), yet now it’s a dangerous conspiracy theory (THE BIG LIE!!) to state that we might want to shore up the integrity of our elections.
That’s why it’s so frustrating seeing Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis bicker at one another like angry middle schoolers. Yes, I understand there’s a primary election going on. Yes, I understand that in an election, beating the other guy is the #1 goal. But these two SHOULD have an overarching goal that transcends the GOP primary election.
Here’s what I wrote after Trump officially announced:
Speaking of million-to-one pipedreams, here’s my IDEAL scenario for a Trump/DeSantis primary race:
Both candidates agree on the need for secure elections. DeSantis can point out how Florida’s rules cleaned up the process there, Trump can point to 2020/2022 ‘irregularities’. At this point, the GOP takes advantage of the fact that primaries aren’t actual ‘elections’ as we think of them. They are ‘private events’ run by the parties — thus, those parties can set (and change, much to the chagrin of Ron Paulers) the rules of their primary elections.And the candidates agree on some very simple election rules: Make it easy to vote (keeping in mind possible Democratic shenanigans in primaries), use in-person voting, with a few days (maybe a week) of early in-person voting. Paper ballots counted at the polling stations in front of everybody. Results within hours of polls closing. Basic rules that everybody can agree on. Then, the entire primary season, praise the process for being transparent and verifiable. Run the best set of primary elections the country has ever seen. The bar is pretty low.
Needless to say, we’re not on track for our one-in-a-million longshot to come through. And without fixing the integrity of our elections, we’re going to relieve the 2020 election just like we did in 2022. It’s simply too easy to cheat — and from the Swamp’s point of view, there’s too much at stake not to.
I’ve said it couple times already and I’m sure I’ll say it again — you don’t have to be a criminal mastermind to steal from a multi-billion dollar company like Walmart, you just need to know where the holes in the company’s security are. (Pro tip: Seattle is one of them.)
In that vein, you don’t need to be a criminal mastermind to steal an election, you just need to know where the integrity holes are — an easy prospect when you’re the one who opened them in the first place. The “best” part about this scheme is that you can continually scream ‘THERE’S NO PROOF OF ELECTION FRAUD’ when the system is designed to eliminate the ability to gather proof of election fraud. (And when there is proof, nothing happens anyway.)
Both Trump and DeSantis are doing a disservice to the American people by ignoring the giant elephant in the room. Instead, we’re supposed to pretend that the Swamp won’t do in 2024 what they’ve done in 2020 and 2022. What kind of sense does that make?
If our democracy Republic’s rules of government are as important as Biden claims (they are), then one of the most fundamental aspects of the election is knowing your ballot won’t be counteracted by a fraudulent ballot. (Or 18,000 of them.) Yet now it’s standard procedure not to be able to determine if the ballot that showed up in the box at 2 am is a legally cast one.
This is the path to increasing distrust in our elections — a bad sign when over half of voters already believe the 2020 election was shady. We already know Democrats have no interest in shoring up our elections, so at the very least Trump and DeSantis could make it a central plank of their platforms and get the country talking about it.
Instead, they’re allowing the media to once again set the narrative of the election, which they’re doing with childish glee after Donald Trump’s arrest and indictment in a case relating to documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Indeed, Trump’s (second) arrest warranted wall-to-wall coverage……..until Trump actually spoke about it. Then, the cable news media got creative in defending their decisions to NOT air his speech:
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
The fucking gall of these people to stare into the camera after spending the last decade (at least) outright lying to the American people about Russiagate, covid, Joe Biden, and basically everything else The Swamp wanted to push. (Like wars!)
Oh wait, I happen to have a handy list right here:
But now it’s so important to “get it right” that they won’t cover a speech by the leading candidate in the Republican party. Yeah, right.
To its credit, PBS decided air Trump’s speech — but they made sure you were still reminded that Orange Man Bad.
All of these clips remind me — ironically — of other forms of media these days. A hit zombie show comes around, and suddenly every studio is pumping out zombie shows. A superhero movie smashes box office records, so everybody is pushing out superhero movies. CNN and MSNBC know that they had record ratings after TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP, so they’re assuming that TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP will get them record ratings again. But since Orange Man Bad (and now Dangerous), they won’t actually show him talking, they’ll just tell you why what he said is Bad and Dangerous.
They really do think you’re that dumb and easily controlled. “Don’t listen to the Bad Orange Man! He’ll corrupt you into voting Republican! Only the superhuman powers of Rachael Maddow can hear The Bad Words without falling to their siren song!”
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Even if the Swamp is unable to force Trump from the race, the non-stop smearing gives them a plausible explanation for Biden’s “miraculous” 2024 win. And when they can cross-pollute this to also affect DeSantis, that’s what they do:
For those of you who can’t stand to hear Joy Reid speak, here’s the important bit — she’s scared Trump won’t be convicted because the trial is in Florida:
"Florida is now home to one of the largest concentrations of extremist groups in the country. It has now become a beachhead for racial extremism, Nazism, open Nazism, and people marching in the streets even in places like South Florida and places like Orlando. It has become a kind of headquarters. The Proud Boys have a huge base in Florida."
And holy shit would you guess what happened THE VERY NEXT DAY? A totally not-a-setup Nazi protest outside Disneyworld, COMPLETE WITH RON DESANTIS SIGN! (Remember the tiki torch idiots, who were hired by the Lincoln Project?)
This is how the media will push the primary narrative: Trump is Bad and Dangerous, and DeSantis is even Badder and Dangerouser! And if you can break all the normal rules in order to keep Literally Hitler out of office, certainly you can do the same thing for Even Worse Than Literally Hitler.
And without serious election reform, they’ll get away with it. Again.
My favorite is Rachel Maddow saying that MSNBC refused to air Trump’s remarks following his Tuesday arraignment because “there is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcast untrue things.” The absolute gall of this woman, who has arguably spread more lies about all things Russiagate and Donald Trump than anyone else on the planet.
I’m in one bad ass nasty mood. The two year old brats continue to win. The Government leaks to the media today that the Wuhan Virus was a GOF oopsie leak... and no one other than FOX mentions it. We are fucked and I don’t know how we stop this insane manipulation of the fucking truth. Trump, Trump, Trump. It occurs to no one that something reeks in DC? My apologies. $2 in the Swear Jar.