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It’s like déjà vu all over again. Like many of you who lived through the contentious recount of 2000 in Florida when the separation of votes was in the mere hundreds and the subsequent legal challenges that ultimately resulted in putting George W. in the White House – be prepared to agonize and scream at your television once more about the upcoming recount for both the senate and possibly even the gubernatorial race in Florida.
As conservatives, we honor tradition. And it’s traditional for Democrats to win the ballots-in-a-car-trunk vote.
Yep, that’s how it’s done.
And now McSally is behind….
There is also a circus in Georgia over the governor race.
That is what they call a rhetorical question, right? Just checking.
Can’t the other side just find two boxes of votes that have been “left behind”?
Not that I know, but isn’t that how this works? Both sides keep a number “extra” boxes of votes–in reserve. If the vote is close, the losing side’s boxe(s) materialize first. Neither side wants the other to know how many they hold in reserve. So, the losing side says, predictably, “Oh my goodness, look what I’ve found here! The missing votes! They must have been left in the back of someone’s car. We need to count these.” So those votes get counted, and miraculously, they take the lead. Now, the other side has to make a choice here. They know the other side is lying. They can either let the other side steal the election, or they can fight back. Obviously, they decide to fight back. Then, the other side says, in effect, “That’s very very interesting. I just happened to find three boxes of uncounted votes in the back of a van for our candidate.” Gave over.
To believe otherwise is to believe that an intrenched incumbent loses an election that they thought they were entitled to win and whose seat his party counted on keeping because they mistakenly thought the other side had weaker candidates and because they started believing their own b.s. about a “blue wave” and about the appeal of Democratic Socialism to voters–even though that message lost not just in the state in question but also around the country in several high-profile races–that they actually had the votes to reverse the results on election night.
For a great read on the famous disputed election of 1876, see this book. In this book, the Democrats attempt to steal the Florida election by suppressing the black vote, in an attempt to influence the outcome of the Presidential election of 1876 in favor of Tilden–who is said to have favored an end to the federal occupation of the Sunshine State. The Republicans are victorious in the end, but, as Rhenquist mentions, the Democrats successfully craft a counter-narrative in which the GOP steals the election–earning Hayes the nickname of “Rutherfraud.”
Or, as we used to say in Oregon: The vote-counting won’t be complete in Multnomah County (Portland) until the Democrats find out how many they need to win.
Oh sure the system is rigged against you. Probably because you are white cis males or something. They never win narrowly they cheat!
I am going to scream bloody murder if the FL races get reversed. This is so ugly. If they get reversed, I probably won’t work the polls next year. It’s just too disgusting. But I’m taking a deep breath . . .
Mark Levin suggested that if they look hard enough they should find some Al Gore votes, thus rendering the Bush 43 administration invalid.
I recall during the 2016 campaign Trump saying the Republicans have to win in a landslide to prevent this sort of thing.
Yes.
It’s not the winning narrowly, as much as the losing narrowly, then without fail, miraculously “finding” just that razor thin number of “found” votes to win …. it’s another miracle win for the (D)’s …. again???
Remember the last time the (R)’s lost then held the vote open to “find” just enough votes to win …. me either.
It’s the Democrats that look like the desperate ones, to me. They’re not even in charge yet and they’ve decided to “get the money out of politics” — code language for gutting the First Amendment. They can’t be trusted with power. How quickly people forget.
Imagine the shenanigans if the president was chosen by popular vote! You would have the opportunity for corruption in all 3,000 counties. No thanks Dems, I just don’t trust you.
It seems like the margin by which Republicans need to win to prevent Democrat cheating stealing the election is growing. It used to be hundreds of votes. Now it’s thousands.
The margin of cheating remains between 1% and 0.5%. Always has been. That is because a lead that small can be flipped by a few corrupt large counties. I am not sure what the solution is. Possibly someone in another county starting a lawsuit to prevent counting of “found” ballots on equal-protection grounds.
Scott looks like he’s gonna fight back.
I’d like to see the FBI get involved before any of these votes are touched – they’re in sealed boxes, one would assume.
Then forensics the bejezus out of them, fingerprints, pen markings, the works.
Then (assuming they find that they’ve all only been handled by a single person, or in any case that there aren’t unique fingerprints on each ballot) prosecute anyone involved to the fullest extent of the law, and the nastiest extent of public opinion.
As someone was pointing out last night, the three NFL stadiums in Florida hold between 60,000 to 68,000 people. So more than a stadium full amount of votes have been found.
How many oops-I-forgot-I-left-these-in-my-car trunks would it take to hold that many votes?
Depends. Optical scan ballots – probably a shipping container. Thumb drives or other electronic media? The glove compartment of an Austin Mini would work.
If these are honest-to-God provisional ballots you are talking a long envelope with the equivalent of four sheets of 8-1/2×11 paper in them. 78,000 would probably fill a 2-1/2 ton truck. If they really are provisional ballots at least 3/4s will be invalid and should not count. (This based on 10 years experience as an election judge.)
Regarding my earlier post about involving the FBI – it occurs to me that a box of late votes certainly qualifies as a Suspicious Package.
It happens over and over again in King County (Seattle) also. We can stop this all over the nation by each state adopting a firm rule for an election night declaration of number of ballots submitted as the polls close. End of story. No more mysterious appearances of boxes of hitherto unknown ballots days after the election.
Provisional ballots should not be allowed anywhere. If someone is too stupid to know where or how to vote, good riddance.
At least with respect to the Senate races in Florida, Arizona, and possibly-eventually in Mississippi, where there is a Nov. 27th runoff election, the constitution provides that the Senate stands as the ultimate judge of its elections. In 1974, following the bloodbath from the 1974 Watergate election, two incumbent Republicans faced challenges from Democrats – Ed Edmondson challenged Henry Bellmon’s reelection by less than 4,000 votes in Oklahoma, while Sen. Louis Wyman was certified the winner after a second recount in New Hampshire by a whopping two votes. A heavily Democratic Senate rejected Democrat Edmondson’s challenge but set up a special election in September 1975, that Democrat Durkin won handily. Republicans will have control of the Senate, including the Rules and Administration Committee (chaired by Roy Blunt, R-MO), for whatever petitions whichever candidates may file. The Senate’s official website, courtesy of its Senate Historical Office, documents both challenges.
From FoxNews (emphasis mine):
Provisional ballots serve an important role in allowing errors to be corrected. In 2012 someone showed up at my polling place with a voter registration card and photo ID, He was not in the voter register though, and I could not vote him regularly according to Texas laws then on the books, I instead had him vote provisionally (with the note that he had a voter registration card).
Turned out the county screwed up and sent the wrong register. The provisional vote was accepted as valid. Since the guy was leaving the county on business later that day he would not have been able to vote without the provisional ballot rules. (Unless I chose to ignore state law – but that is what an election judge is not supposed to do.)
Provisional ballots – in my experience – are valid between 15-20% of the time.
I heard someone suggest (or read it somewhere on Rico) that federal election rules should be decided by the federal government. That may just encourage other kinds of fraud . . .
Brian,
I’ve seen this for such a long long time. The polls close at 7 pm along about 11:00 there is a one-sentence announcement on the news that in such and such district (always a big city heavily democratic district) the voting machines have been ‘misplaced’. If it’s really close you can bet they’ll be found late in the night with almost 100% votes for the democrat.
Do the voting machines you’ve seen look like something that could be ‘misplaced’?! The explanation is as idiotic as the cretins who would perpetrate this fraud. Here on Ricochet, we are so polite (almost as polite as Canadians) that we pass this off with “a Republican must win by more than the margin of fraud”. No, I don’t think so. We should hunt down these idiots and prosecute them and win the election. The idea that a few days later ballots are being “discovered” that weren’t counted is so stupid that the person who claims this should be slapped before being indicted.
Regards,
Jim
Why would anyone think that?