Georgia is creating the pattern to capture the election

Our entire country has been held hostage by Trump’s mental and emotional deficits. He doesn’t “lose.” He is unwell and cannot publicly acknowledge defeat. Democracy was vulnerable before Trump, but its fragility could be fatal because of him.

  The Bulwark

[T]he Georgia State Election Board has drawn well-deserved national attention with its outrageous actions on Tuesday to pass antidemocratic changes to the battleground state’s election rules.

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Trump’s 2020 election interference playbook hasn’t changed, but the MAGA operation has become more sophisticated. Now, there are election deniers holding local elections positions in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania (in addition to Georgia). GOP officials have resisted certifying results in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada.

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[E]arlier this year, the GOP-controlled [Georgia] state Legislature appointed two new members to the five-person panel, transforming it into a Trump-aligned government body. Three of the board’s five members have expressed doubts that President Joe Biden won the state in the 2020 election. The board’s meetings have become a haven for false election conspiracy theories.

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Now the board’s MAGA majority is trying to change Georgia’s election rules just ahead of the contest. Its first attempt came last month, only to be reversed after a lawsuit accused the three members of holding an unlawful meeting to ram through the changes.

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One of the two new rules passed by the board on Tuesday lets local elections officials halt vote-counting and delay or even outright refuse certification if they contend there are any irregularities, essentially making the certification of election results discretionary. (Georgia law states in multiple places that local election board officials shall perform their duties — meaning their duties are mandatory, not discretionary). Other proposed changes would increase workload demands on overburdened election workers, which could overwhelm county elections offices and ultimately slow down or stop certification.

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And all this builds on similar efforts in 2020, when a Coffee County elections official delayed certification of Biden’s Georgia victory and refused to validate the recount results, citing MAGA-backed election conspiracies. The same official allegedly helped Trump campaign operatives breach Coffee County’s voting data days before Jan. 6. According to CNN, Coffee County was specifically cited in draft federal executive orders for seizing voting machines that were presented to Trump in a chaotic Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020.

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These newly passed rules changes, along with other proposed changes still being considered by the board, follow refusals from Republican county election board members in Georgia to certify election results in the 2023 local elections and the 2024 primary even though there is no legitimate doubts about the results.

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After failing to overturn his 2020 loss, it seems Trump aims to win Georgia by any means, aided by the State Election Board. Trump may be hinting at this strategy, recently claiming he “didn’t need the votes,” an odd statement for a presidential candidate.

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Georgia law gives [Governor Brian] Kemp the authority to investigate members of the election board and remove and replace them if they’ve violated Georgia law, which it certainly seems they did by holding an unlawful meeting.

  MSNBC

Trump has been lambasting Kemp lately. We'll see if that cows him into doing Trump's bidding or steels him to uphold Georgia law.

Voters are the last and ultimately most critical line of defense. The best way to ensure election results are certified in a timely manner is with large turnout and decisive margins. Voters everywhere should also check their voter registration status regularly and get their friends and family registered today.

An investigation by Rolling Stone identified “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania . . . at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results.” Of those 70, 22 of them already have “refused or delayed certification” in recent past elections. Nationwide, Republicans have refused to certify results at least 25 times since 2020, in eight states—the most in Georgia.

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There are more than enough such individuals in these key posts to bring us to a constitutional crisis.

“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias told Rolling Stone. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”

  The Bulwark

UPDATE 08/17/2024: