Today is election day and we go to choose a new president as well as other elected officials. A lot of people are breathing a sigh of relief, as they were sick of all the political ads and political controversy. But it's hardly over by a long shot.
If Trump wins, I expect Kamala Harris will probably concede if the election, if it is clearly in Trump's favor. However, something tells me this won't be the case. Although polls have shown the race to be neck and neck, I think there's a lot of people, such as myself, who don't answer strange phone calls or respond to polls. Polls showed Hillary winning in 2016, as you may recall.
The long lines at early voting stations and the vast number of mail-in ballots seem to indicate that voter turnout will be better than ever and this does not bode well for the Republicans. Republicans have always known that if they can get their base to vote and get the other party uninterested in voting, they have a better chance of winning. Voter turnout historically does not favor Republicans.
So, I think there's a good chance that Kamala Harris could win the election. But that doesn't mean that she would win the election. Already Trump is talking about voter fraud and will continue talking about it till he takes his last breath when he dies of old age.
The Trump campaign will file countless frivolous lawsuits alleging voter fraud but not providing any real evidence or data to support these allegations. Why do I know this? Because they did the same thing back in 2020 and their playbook is pretty limited.
Their goal is not to win these lawsuits but to delay, delay, delay. It's similar to the Bush v. Gore situation where each party filed lawsuits to change the outcome of the Florida election. The Bush team simply got judges to stay the recount of the votes until the clock ran out, at which point Bush took Florida and became President.
Each State selects electors based on popular vote. However, if there's a problem with the vote or even an alleged problem it could be bounced to the State House and an alternate slate of electors could be submitted. Trump tried to do this in 2020 and was rebuffed in every State. However, since then, Trump has managed to get some of his operatives onto election boards, and many of the swing States have a Republican majority in their State legislatures. Of course, this is due to gerrymandering which allows them to stay in power, even if they don't represent a majority of the population.
But it doesn't end there. Last time around on January 6th, they were counting the electoral votes in a joint session of Congress. If one member of House and one member of the Senate objects to a particular slate of electors, the Joint session of Congress adjourns to investigate the issue. They did this once after the January 6th insurrection, however even Republicans were ashamed of what was going on and put an end to it rather quickly.
This time around I'm not so sure. Speaker Johnson has promised to turn the election to Trump, regardless of the outcome of the vote. And if they decide to quash a particular slate of electors, they could turn the tide and Trump's favor. Again there's always the possibility of more lawsuits and the entire thing being bounced to a Trump-appointed Supreme court.
I know this sounds all doom and gloom, but you were around in January 6th, correct? You do remember the nauseating feeling between election day and inauguration day where all that shenanigans went down and kind of ruined everybody's Christmas.
There is, however, some hope. For example, here in Georgia - which went for Biden at 2020 - our governor flat out refused to "find 20,000 votes" for Donald Trump. This was basically attempted election fraud. You can't find votes you can only manufacture them. Trump was basically asking for our Governor to commit fraud and our Governor wisely declined.
Similarly, our Secretary of State also declined to get involved in Trump shenanigans and counted the votes legitimately even if they worked against his own party. I recently heard a press conference of his on Georgia Public Radio and it was interesting how he laid out how they have improved security and procedures to make sure that there are no problems with counting the votes this time around. Last time, so-called "Vote Auditors" showed up and banged on windows and tried to intimidate election workers. I suspect if they try that this time around they will be met with furious resistance from the government.
The good news is, more people early-voted in Georgia than voted in the last election. Turnout is good!
People like to make stereotype generalizations about the South, but they largely aren't true. There are a lot of good people in the South who don't go along with racism and misogyny and right-wing thinking. You have to remember Georgia was the state that elected Jimmy Carter as Governor. You might say Georgia swings both ways.
But I'm not sure about other States, and there might be some situations where elected officials try to turn the outcome of the election in Trump's favor. We'll just have to stay tuned. I'm sure it's going to get ugly.
What really worries me is all this talk about civil war. America is the most well-armed country in the world in terms of the civilian population. A lot of the people who own massive collections of firearms are mentally unhinged. In fact, unless you're an avid collector of vintage firearms and a real expert in these matters, having a vast arsenal of weapons and ammunition is kind of the definition of insanity. There's really no point in owning several dozen AR-15s and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition unless you plan on causing trouble.
There have been scattered reports for years now of people making ominous comments about how they want to kill Democrats. For example a Amazon driver recently threw a package at a customer's porch in muttered something about Democrats deserve to die. This strikes me is very odd as he is working for the richest man in the world (or second richest man in the world) while struggling to make ends meet is an Amazon driver. Does he truly believe that cutting Jeff Bezos' taxes will trickle down to him? It's hard to believe.
But I do believe there will be some incidents, hopefully isolated incidents, where Trump supporters will go off and start shooting people randomly, targeting Democrats in particular or anyone they feel is not a true American. And I believe that between now and inauguration day and maybe afterwards they will be episodes of political violence.
Now you may say I'm being alarmist. You may say this is all speculation. But these are things that Republicans have promised America if they don't get their way. And sadly, a lot of people feel that to avoid trouble we should just cave into Republicans, much as people during the Weimar Republic caved into nazis. I mean how bad could it get?
Stay tuned and find out!
