Somewhere in the bowels of Mar-a-Lago a team of lawyers and fraudsters are planning on stealing the presidential election
Our white, male founding fathers didn’t trust the farmers and working class. Senators were selected by state legislators and electors, the elites selected the president. .
Corruption is deeply embedded in our political system, from blatant pay for play to declawing the Voting Rights Act to discouraging voter registration to packing local election boards with acolytes of Trump, who still maintains he won the 2020 election. Many of us have heard the recording of Trump over the phone pleading with a voting official to “find” 11,000 votes
From the 19th and into the early 20th century campaigning was done by supporters, not the candidates. The political parties ran the elections and what we would consider outrageous today, paying for votes, was commonplace. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the yoke of oppression was removed from Blacks in the South
Do we teach about the 1876 election in schools today? I doubt it.
Historians describe, “The election involved substantial electoral fraud, voter intimidation by paramilitary groups and disenfranchisement of Black Republicans,… in South Carolina an impossible 101% of all eligible voters in the state had their votes counted … an estimated 150 Black Republicans were murdered”
.Hayes was selected in a lurid “backroom deal,”
The election of 2000 was decided by the U S Supreme Court, the Florida court ordered a selective recount of a few disputed counties, the Supreme Court intervened, reversed the Florida court effectively deciding the election for Bush.
Justice Ginsburg dissented, “The Courts’ conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recounting impractical is a prophecy the court’s own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the presidency of the United States.”
Historian Heather Cox Richardson, in her almost daily Letter from an American recounts the history of our unique and quixotic election process and Trump’s strategy, Read a brief history of the Electoral College here
In the 2024 election, Trump has shown little interest in courting voters. Instead, the campaign has thrown its efforts into legal challenges to voting and, apparently, into eking out a win in the Electoral College
Trumpers dominate Georgia Election Board are passing rules to disenfranchise voters . Read here
Trump threatens to “prosecute” election officials who fail to cooperate Read here
The national polls give Harris the lead, in the handful of battleground states polls, trustworthy or not, have the candidates within the margin of error – tied! In 2020 Trump challenged the election in the courts and sixty justices ruled against him, This time intimidation at the polling centers, maybe January 6th type attacks in State capitals and trying to get to the Supreme Court where his “homeboys” are eager to hand him the scepter and orb.
Harris undoubtedly has her army of lawyers and movers and shakers set to counter Trump.
Don’t expect a president to be elected within hours of polls closing, it could take days, or longer.
Maybe Taylor and her army of Swifties can carry the election for Kamila.
Ed in the Apple: Blogging on the Intersection of Education and Politics Title 