Earlier this week, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow issued a warning to America that those Republicans on election boards across the country could refuse to certify the 2024 election results if Trump loses in November.
In an op-ed in the New York Times (behind paywall) Maddow wrote:
“Election boards across the country now include Republican officials who have not only propounded Mr. Trump’s lies about the last presidential election being ‘stolen,’ they have tested how far they can go in denying the certification of the vote.”
The spread of what Maddow called “refusenik Republicans” started back in 2020, she argued, when Trump and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel pressured two election officials to certify vote totals in a key Michigan county. As The Hill stated in a recent article about this:
Since then, a number of election officials across at least eight states have been charged for alleged efforts to interfere with the certification of the 2020 election and 2022 midterm results, Maddow noted.
The left-leaning pundit laid out a potential November scenario in which the two parties are “trading swing-state victories” on election night to make her case.
Maddow wrote:
“The Democrats capture Nevada, while the Republicans take Arizona. The Republicans win the big prize of Pennsylvania, while the Democrats top them in Wisconsin and Michigan. The nation is waiting on Georgia. If Georgia goes red, it’s President Trump; if Georgia goes blue, it’s President Harris.”
“Then, local news headlines start to circulate. There are reports of unspecified ‘problems’ in the vote in Fulton County. And in Gwinnett County. And in DeKalb, Coffee and Spalding Counties. Republican officials are refusing to certify the results in their counties,” she continued. “They say they are making ‘reasonable inquiries.’”
The Hill:
Maddow warned legal challenges would follow through courts, mixed with a “wave of disinformation, confusion and propaganda swells” and claims that something is “amiss” in the Georgia counties. The Georgia State Election Board is slated Monday consider a revision to its rules that would give county election board members another option for delaying or refusing certification, Maddow said.
The proposal comes after the state election board approved a different rule earlier this month that gave election officials in each state county the option to delay or refuse certification to allow them to make a “reasonable inquiry” as to whether “the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election,” per the Times. The rule “injects a new layer of murk into the legal waters” ahead of the election, Maddow argued, pointing to a report about how Republicans in Georgia delayed or refused certification at least seven times since 2020.
Maddow wrote, “The point of these certification refusals may not be to falsify or flip a result, but simply to prevent the emergence of one.”
“Our democratic system is not invincible, but it is strong. Certification of election results is a ministerial responsibility that is not discretionary. Legitimate election challenges are handled with recounts and litigation, not by individual election board members.”
“No one should be surprised when certification refusals happen or when they are then exploited to try to maximize chaos and upset,” she said.
Should one or more states fail to hand over official results and prevent the candidates from reaching 270 electoral voters, the 12th Amendment would require a vote of the newly elected House of Representatives to determine the next president. The Hill
Maddow:
You used to have to get out into the far-flung wilds of American political life before you’d find people trying to persuade state or local officials to monkey-wrench the Electoral College by refusing to send their states’ real results to Washington for the Electoral College count. Not anymore.
I watched Rachel Maddow announce the Republican scheme to rig the National election for Donald Trump. And it seems that last night someone tried to rig the local Uptown Planners elections and the entire electronic voting system crashed.
Allow me to provide “historical context” to this election scandal. Todd Gloria convinced the City Council to remove the entire body of locally elected Uptown Planners a few months ago and to formalize their appointment of developer-friendly candidates to replace the elected Uptown Planners. Last night was the election to formalize that action, but huge numbers of local residents showed up to elect their own candidates and democratically sweep out the political hacks. The electronic election machines then “crashed.”
It seems to me that both Republican and Democrats favor rigging elections to take control of public policy in violation of the United States and California Constitutions.
There is also a clause in the Constitution that ends up requiring each state governor to send ONE representative to cast ONE vote for the president if the electors have not submitted by such & such date after the election, which negates the majority vote completely. There are more GOP governors that Dems so guess what that would look like? I’ve read a couple of articles on this the last couple weeks but didn’t save the links, but this is also a real possibility.
This is consistent with Trumps ‘delay delay delay’ strategy in just about everything he is involved in. The Fascist Trumpian privately-owned Party formerly known as Republicans, can file a lawsuit to it’s privately-owned judges on the unSupreme Court just like Wbush and Dick Cheney did in 2000 that threw the election that the Democrats actually won. THAT was also a right-wing Coup (thanks DICK!) that showed the way…
Prepare for the worst but work towards the better outcome because Trump HAS to win in order to stay out of prison. Big motivation for a life-long corrupt criminal/rapist/serial sex offender facing near bankruptcy and/or life in prison. He and his backers will do ANYTHING, just like other historical right wing coups in history (like Venezuela is dealing with right now where right wingers LOST the vote and are rioting like our Jan 6th 2021 did).
I would love to see Biden resign in the next month so she can be ready to protect the vote she’s going to win as President with a lot more power to wield against the violent domestic enemies we are facing from the so-called MAGA party. A reckoning with the Jan 6th domestic terrorists is LONG overdue including all the politicians that pushed that narrative.
Here’s hoping Biden gets the clue. I think Harris is a mean-ass DA and would be up to the task.
sealintheSelkirks
There is an interesting book “Our Final Presidential Vote” on Amazon in which a Trump-like character declares himself the winner of the 2024 Presidential election by instructing Republican local and state officials not to certify results. Chaos ensues.
So what is the political affiliation of the author or don’t you know? At this point in the political circus, that would be a key in how the book was written and who it was written for.
If/when Trump tries this in Nov, Dec, or January, after Harris wins by an overwhelming popular vote majority regardless of all the criminal voter-fraud tactics the MAGA-GOP pull in states controlled by their cult follower Governors and Sec of States, we are still going to have Biden/Harris as Commander In Chief controlling the country. And, as I said in my previous post on this thread, that should be when Biden resigns and Harris becomes President-in-Fact because a hard-ass DA may be just what is needed to wrap up the Fascist MAGA-cult infesting our country.
All the Jan 6 conspirators need to face a judge for that still. Jail the politicians and NEVER again allow them to become even the dog catcher. Banned from all positions of power for life is a good idea. This includes the billionaires/millionaires co-conspirators that funded all this political crap, too.
Hopefully Harris wouldn’t make the awful mistake that conservative rightward-leaning Obama made as he bailed out the rich who crashed the housing market into the ‘Great Recession’ and totally ignored the reality that Iceland decided to pay attention to by jailing their wealthy powerful bankers etc who set up and profited by the crash. Obama f**ked up big time but, as he publicly said, he was an admirer of Reagan. He was not smart enough to follow Iceland’s lead. My hopes is that Harris is.
Of course there’s always the chance that Trump is going to continue to melt-down like an ice cube in Death Valley and his 79 yr old obese sickly body will just blow a gasket at some point and all this will be moot…
sealintheSelkirks
MAGA/GOP voter suppression is ramping up. State cops are now ransacking the houses of old folks activists trying to register seniors to the voter rolls in Texas. Just right-wingers doing what they do best, trying to instill fear. Fear, as we all know, works pretty well.
Hispanic civil rights organization accuses Texas Attorney General of voter intimidation, suppression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEjsEQvRaE4
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Also in Texas:
Over a million people removed from voter rolls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNCDySjfTg0
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And in Georgia:
BREAKING: MAJOR UPDATE on corrupt Georgia Election Board
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84BrtcFz36w
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Also in Georgia:
WATCH: Republican Leader Says Only Christians Can Have Religious Freedom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuyMy6A3OUQ
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This is stark:
Confederate Voter Intimidation 2.0: The GOP’s Dark Strategy for Winning
From Reconstruction to DeSantis to Paxton: How Republicans Are Keeping Power by Any Means Necessary…
https://hartmannreport.com/p/confederate-voter-intimidation-20-0bd
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sealintheSelkirks
Voter suppression should be one of the biggest stories of our time. The failure of major media in our country to report this horrible assault on our democracy should not be forgiven. Republicans have done everything that they can for many years to keep people from voting. Think about how rotten and filthy that is. Republicans truly are the lowest form of scum on the face of the Earth.
It’s the Trump Republicans that have done this.
There is a little push-back coming from state courts against the never-ending MAGA-GOP sneak attacks on voting rights. As the GOP knows and have publicly said, the more voters who vote the worse the outcome is for the minority party Republicans…
Court stops Pennsylvania counties from throwing out mail-in votes over incorrect envelope dates
https://news.yahoo.com/news/court-stops-pennsylvania-counties-throwing-200025540.html
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Will it be enough to decisively defeat the Fascists? Will Trump Insurrection 2.0 happen anyway? When a federal employee trying to stop the Trumpers from holding a campaign photo-op at Arlington National Cemetery that BREAKS FEDERAL LAW refuses to file an assault charge against the men that did it because she is scared she will be attacked by MAGATS, that bodes some serious ill. Even the Pentagon is refusing to charge these 2 walking skinbags full of rotting fecal material.
AFRAID FOR HER SAFETY!!! Woman Assaulted at Cemetery by Trump Staff TOO AFRAID TO PRESS CHARGES! 16 minute vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbrkw1ehcEk
Funny that the Trump crowd said they were going to post the videos to show what happened. And, low & behold, they have not done so. Why haven’t FEDERAL CHARGES been filed BY THE PENTAGON, and the videos they say they have been demanded by some court?
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On the other hand, I can be dragged from my truck and handcuffed during a traffic stop for a broken tail-light for ‘officer safety?’ This country is completely broken and it ain’t from being WOKE and intelligent, it’s from being the exact opposite.
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At least my county’s primary ballots did NOT have a box on the OUTSIDE of the envelope that required the voter to declare themselves D or R (the only two choices) as the ballots in the mid-term election had. Somebody on the blue side of Washington must have caught it, and yes I sent a picture of it after the mid-terms to the elections board complaining about this.
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And so it goes…
sealintheSelkirks
Listen to what Trump says: Start at 3:04 to 3:27 after saying “that’s okay, he’s on our side” then he laughs and says “we get a little itchy.”
The MAGATS boy that took a shot at him was “on his side” too, ya know?
Boy this is sure fun, isn’t it? Two months left before the election and Trump is riling up his violent cult members while his own staff attacks people and (so far) gets away with it…
CHAOS: Crowd ERUPTS into ANARCHY as Trump Speech Takes DISTURBING Turn!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKkGZ9Yv7bw
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The BIG lie in their own voices in 2020. Recordings released by Former Fox top News Producer who secretly recorded Fox hosts, Trump campaign people including Lawyer and Trump Fixer Rudy Guiliani about how there WAS NO FRAUD from Dominion voting machines. 8 minute vid:
Exclusive: Hear the Giuliani off-air audio Fox News withheld from Dominion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS-E5NIDOM8
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Does all this mean the next two months are going to be the Chinese Curse of ‘May you live in interesting times?’
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sealintheSelkirks
“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” Liz Cheney
I thoroughly agree with you, James. A neo-con chip off the old block of daddy Shotgun Dick ‘The Dark Lord’ Cheney, Mr. Halliburton himself and that’s for certain. Whom I also think was the puppeteer pulling the strings on the illustrious president and the not-indicted war criminal Wbush. Mainly because I really don’t think little W had enough intelligence to think up all the awful policies he signed but then Dick was a signatory on the Project for the New American Century, an earlier version of this year’s Fascist ‘Project 2025’ that 144 Trump Administration people worked on.
But Trump, like Wbush, has always been a definite loser bankrupting every business he touched. Both GOPers were spoiled little rich boys after all!
But seeing as Liz Cheney supported all GOP policies, and nearly every policy Trump pushed in his four years in office, you shouldn’t be so hard on her. Really James, she tried so hard to swallow every bit of Trump’s lies and crap as best she could without gagging until it just overwhelmed her and she had to puke it back up after Jan. 6th and oh my she sure did prove something about Trump, didn’t she?
As for her so-called ‘state’ full of Trump’s glorious under-educated tiny voting population…you know, those Wyoming ‘constituents’ in a ‘state’ with a total population the size of Spokane/Spokane Valley including kids and babies, you couldn’t expect anything else. Ever been to Wyoming, spent time there? I have, did business in Jackson and surfed the Snake River for years, boarding Teton in winter and knew many in the snowboarding community there, and bluntly it was the Mississippi of the Rocky Mountains in more ways than one… all the while wearing cowboy hats even in the dead of winter at -20’F. Does frostbite affect cognitive processes? You bet!
But I don’t want to see her in the Harris Administration, either, dude, just like you probably don’t. She’s still an awful right-winger neo-liberal with Fascist leanings, and there will be enough of those Trumpie-types losers still around crapping all over everything they possibly can…
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Here’s more on the election:
The only thing the Republicans can do is lie about everything? WTF?
https://www.rsn.org/001/the-gop-is-making-false-claims-about-noncitizens-voting-its-affecting-real-voters.html
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sealintheSelkirks
Okay, Seal, be careful; here’s yur buddy James’ latest: “It’s quite sad to read the comments that anyone, anyone would even consider to vote for comrade Harris. She is a menace to the Democrat Party, to America, and is a two faced candidate.” Say bye-bye James
Oh dear, my poor ‘buddy’ doesn’t seem to have enough accumulated knowledge about historical backgrounds to actually understand what the descriptive noun he’s using actually applies to. Obviously; since ‘comrade’ Harris would be far more linguistically appropriate affixed to the Orange Menace who shows a decided infatuation with Putin don’t you think? Or would it be a fixation? Obsession? Many words fit what we have witnessed over the years from that guy, yes?
It is so sad that Trump’s favorite voting block, his “I love the under-educated” group, don’t seem to have the ability to process much in the way of critical thinking skills and actually ask the tougher questions, eh?
Yep, ‘b-bye James. Libraries are free education by the way.
sealintheSelkirks
Please excuse as I forgot to send this with the 11:41 reply post that I started last night. Sorry!
But it is REALLY interesting, James, and is fact-filled. Enjoy!
Mrs. Betty Bowers explains:
Where Did Trump’s Money Come From?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhIlH_iW0xQ
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sealintheSelkirks
A Very Strong Case Why MAGA Voters Are Stupid
A cartoon character strongly resembling Trump’s Steve Bannon takes us back to how this all started…Nixon and Watergate. And Lee Atwater.
5 minute short vid worth the time of people that want a better understanding of the last 50 years of GOP & DEM politics in a nutshell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrU6F-S8VMo
Fifty days until Election Day. Send all fence-sitters you know this vid!
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Even in Trump-voting GOP counties the Republican women that are election workers are getting hounded by the violence of MAGA. Local election workers are quitting at ‘an unprecedented rate’ because of ‘threats and harassment’
Female election workers are facing increasing threats due to disinformation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYIUtdKdQ2A
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sealintheSelkirks
The madness builds:
FBI investigates packages sent to election officials in over 15 states
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/18/2271192/-FBI-investigates-packages-sent-to-election-officials-in-over-15-states
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Who benefits in the disrupting of election workers and their workplaces? As we saw in the previous video interview, even their own voters are being attacked because they are willing to support voting rights.
Which party benefits with fewer voters voting?
How many embedded MAGATS are in election offices all across the country ready to corrupt the vote?
Intimidation and fear…the tactics of Fascists.
sealintheSelkirks
Stochastic terror tactics work, and MAGA-GOP knows it. This is what they do.
MAGA Sheriff TARGETS Kamala Voters—WATCH NOW
?
htts://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NdxT4i2THM
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Trump’s Talk of Prosecution Rattles Election Officials
Nick Corasaniti and Alexandra Berzon / The New York Times
https://www.rsn.org/001/trumps-talk-of-prosecution-rattles-election-officials.html
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sealintheSelkirks
Six weeks, and the corrupt-ness of the Republicans grows ever bolder. Georgia alone could kill this election by NOT sending electors because ‘they haven’t counted the vote.’ It’s that easy:
‘Chaos is the point’: MAGA-dominated Georgia election board makes IMPOSSIBLE new rule favoring Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi1HrBPTaYc
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Trump and Johnson’s Shocking Bid to Suppress Women’s Votes
The GOP’s desperate election ploy: disenfranchise women to win…
https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-and-johnsons-shocking-bid-to-1f1
sealintheSelkirks
sealintheSelkirks:
Is it true that you have admitted surfing the Snake river in Idaho? If so, good for you, Winter or Summer? Beautiful scenery.
Wyoming, but DP did surf on my twinnie the middle fork of the Salmon on a float trip through Idaho then, too.
You can read the FREE story I wrote at the links at bottom.
My best friend/surf partner from 1977 and I were definitely locals for a number of years 1988-199 at Lunch Counter, and riding twinfins I had shaped and glassed in my Ding shop on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. It was only 3 hours from the university we were at , Utah State U.
The story, about 11,000 words total, was published in three parts. Part I at start of summer 2015, Part II at the end, and Part III was published start of summer 2016. Too big for them to publish all at once due to (as they said) most people won’t read that much anymore.
It was pretty fun to write about and dig through all the old negatives.
The video clips were from dvd made from seriously deteriorating 25 yr old VHS tapes I found I still had in a box…the magazine crew did an amazing job of cleaning them up as my dvd copy is way more jerky than what they published. I wish I had their copy!
Videos from the road side bank were mostly shot by Marie, a kayaker mom of Myra one of my Kenpo kids’ class girl fighters (had one blue and one brown eye) and boy could she kick for a lanky 11 yr old! Marie’s kayaker husband Dennis is in one of the clips just taking me completely out…
The vids and photos taken on the other ‘Players’ side were various people including us.
Enjoy! I guess it WAS an adventure but we were just doing it because we are surfers, and the snow was melted off so no boarding left to do so…let’s go surfing. So we did, in snowstorms and 39’F water in mid-80 wetsuits!! It was way fun.
sealintheSelkirks
https://riverbreak.com/news/stories/the-lunch-counter-trilogy/
https://riverbreak.com/news/stories/the-lunch-counter-trilogy-part-2-camping-big-waves-and-bikinis/
https://riverbreak.com/news/stories/the-lunch-counter-trilogy-part-3-the-worlds-eyes-on-river-surfing/
Note: DP wrote the definitive history of riversurfing, and the definitive history of North American riversurfing for this site. I’m the storyteller, and he’s very very good at that kind of writing. Hawai’ians (of course) were the first riversurfers…
Just caught this mistake: 1988-1992, five spring/summer run-offs.
sealintheSelkirks
fair fight is an organization in ga working against these maga anti-democratic fascist
disenfranchising white supremacist good ol’ boy jim crow hate that has crawled up from the grave since “mr. mushroom cap” himself came on the scene blathering about otherism, immigrants, people from shithole countries poisoning the blood of the nation and other nazi dog-whistles, thereby allowing latent and occult (meaning hidden, in this case, not witchcraft, but that’s not such a wrong connotation either hehe) racism, held in check with great seething, smouldering resentment for so long, to burst forth given the slightest outlet.
https://www.fairfight.com/
Trump supporter and MAGA election fraud as County Clerk Tina Peters convicted and sentenced 9 years total for 2020 election fraud (9 counts, some felonies).
You’re a charlatan’: Judge sentences defiant Tina Peters to 9 years | Full video, 22 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqkOM5Vbbw
I hope this makes some kind of impact on all the MAGA election official that have been put in place by Republican Governors across this country who are ‘considering’ trying the same crap again….one can only hope I guess because this government official is absolutely not repentant, and as the judge says, he thinks she would absolutely do it again.
She did what Trump wanted her to do.’Just following orders.’ Where has history heard that before?
Quite damning, and it is just like what is being shown in Jack Smith’s re-indictment’s 185 pages of evidence released to the public by the Judge in order to comply with the SCOTUS ‘Dirty 6’ MAGA judges on their Presidential Immunity ruling.
sealintheSelkirks
I really hope Hartmann is wrong about this. But I don’t think he is. Look at all the guns in the MAGATS hands, and how willing they are to use them.
Read this article carefully, see if you can spot any holes in it.
This is what Fascists do, just as the coup the Fascists pulled off in 2000 to install Wbush as President. Remember how the Republicans stole that election? Or has that reality gone down the memory hole?
Remember what the Bush family did in 2000, and what Prescott Bush the founder of that dynasty supported in 1934, and who he was funding in 1942…Hitler, before the US government closed his Wall St. Bank for ‘trading with the enemy’ that October.
The 1934 US Fascist ‘Bankers Coup’ to overthrow FDR finally found a new leader in Reagan in 1980, and now they have Trump and billionaires trainloads of cash to spread around. Great wealth poisons everything and everybody.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/does-trump-have-a-2024-blueprint-6f8
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Harris will likely win the popular vote, but when did that ever matter?
sealintheSelkirks
The Big Lie: The Sequel
Coming soon to a polling station near you.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-big-lie-the-sequel/
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Up here in this county the MAGATS open carry.
sealintheSelkirks
Modern Republicans & Voting. Liars, Cheats.
A New War on the Vote
https://hartmannreport.com/p/a-new-war-on-the-vote
Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: “The Hidden History of the War on Voting”
NOTE: He’s publishing a piece every Sunday for the next few months. Unless he gets jailed by Trump’s red-hat Gestapo…
While preventing people from voting has a long and sordid history in the United States (and, frankly, around the world), the modern-day Republican Party’s reliance on voter suppression as a primary tool to win elections kicked off in a big way in 1993.
continued at link above.
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sealintheSelkirks
Here’s the latest ploy funded by very deep pocket right wing Fascists. More billionaire meddling I’m guessing?
They aren’t kidding, folks. It has to be an absolutely overwhelming landslide in this election is what I’m thinking. May we all be surprised at how big it will be?
But unfortunately I watched an old dvd of a George Carlin show and it happened to be the one that had the ‘half the population of the US is dumber than the average ignorant citizen, which as we know is already pretty low on the thinking scale. Those “I love the under-educated’ that Trump crows about.
New Ads Targeting Voting Officials Suggest They Don’t Need To Certify Results
The ads, in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, come from a group with deep ties to activists who have challenged the legitimacy of recent elections.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/new-ads-targeting-voting-officials-suggest-they-dont-need-to-certify-results/
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I wonder why they didn’t just come out and say, instead of a stupid milktoast description like their “group with deep ties to activists,” that this group is right wing MAGA-GOP Fascists tied to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 and Trump? It would have been entirely accurate with more impact. It would be nice if they relayed the information about who is funding this crap, too.
sealintheSelkirks
More ugly from the MAGATS:
These Pennsylvania Election Officials Are Pro-Trump Conspiracists
In battleground Pennsylvania, dozens of election officials are pro-Trump election deniers, ready to cause chaos
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pennsylvania-election-deniers-officials-trump-conspiracies-1235146332/
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sealintheSelkirks