Trump launches campaign to overturn 2024 election results

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Albuquerque International Sunport, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Fascist Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is spending the final week of his campaign focusing on efforts to undermine and discredit the vote that culminates on November 5, paving the way for an unconstitutional and anti-democratic attempt to overturn the outcome. in case he loses. .

Trump signaled the start of this effort during his remarks at a rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden. He spoke directly to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was on stage with him: “I think we’re going to do really well in the House with our little secret, right?”, adding: “Our little secret is that we have a big impact. He and I have a little secret: we’ll tell you what it is when the race is over.

In a statement to the New York TimesJohnson said: “By definition, a secret should not be shared – and I have no intention of sharing this secret.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana speaks for Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, during a fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The likely role of the House of Representatives would be to intervene in the post-election period. There are three key dates: December 17, when members of the Electoral College meet in each state to cast their votes; December 25, when the Electoral College votes must be submitted to Congress; and January 6, 2025, when Congress will meet in joint session to certify the results.

The first two dates fall during the lame-duck period in which Republicans would still have control of the House of Representatives and Johnson would still be speaker regardless of the outcome of the congressional races on November 5. If a state fails to certify its electors by December 25, Johnson could try to invalidate its electoral votes entirely, although a speaker’s power to do that has never been asserted before.

Trump has already tried to cast doubt on the validity of the elections in some of the so-called “battleground states,” the states that polls show ahead of the election as being the most contentious.

In Pennsylvania, the most populous of the seven battleground states, with 19 electoral votes, Trump posted a series of messages on his social media site Truth Social, claiming Wednesday: “Pennsylvania is cheating and getting caught, on massive levels rarely seen. for.” On Thursday he continued, “We caught them cheating in a MAJOR way in Pennsylvania. Must disclose and PROSECUTE NOW! … Who would have ever thought our country is so CORRUPT?”

Trump was referring to episodes in which election officials found errors and mistakes in routine administrative matters and blew them up in massive scandals. In reality, these were innocent actions carried out in two Republican-controlled counties (York and Lancaster) and one in a closely Democratic-controlled county (Bucks), which had no electoral significance whatsoever.

Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt — a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro for dismissing Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Philadelphia in 2020 — said a flood of false reports had been spread on social media. “Sharing social posts full of half-truths or even outright lies is damaging to our representative democracy,” he said at a news conference, warning that such posts “will likely continue in the coming days and weeks.”

The New York Times reported: “Donald Trump is turning Pennsylvania into ground zero for pre-emptive claims of rigged elections,” stating that the purpose of his claims was not to actually influence election administration, but to provide political cover for legal challenges to the decision of the voters if he loses the critical condition.

As part of a campaign to delay reporting of election results and create opportunities for lawsuits, the Republican-controlled state legislature banned local election officials from counting ballots until Election Day, a ban that has not been reversed after Democrats passed the had gained partial control in the elections. 2022. The upshot is that Pennsylvania election results on Tuesday, November 5, will largely consist of same-day in-person voting, which will likely tip in Trump’s favor, while ballots, more heavily Democratic, won’t be counted until Wednesday or even later.

Trump is expected to declare victory based on such early and incomplete results, in an effort to whip up his supporters and incite violence against election officials if they subsequently report a different outcome.

On a national scale, Trump has made repeated threats against election officials, culminating in a “CEASE & DESIST” order he posted on Truth Social on October 25, threatening “long-term prison sentences” for “corrupt election officials” and anyone who tried the the supposed “fraud and deceit” of 2020. “IF I WIN, the people who DEFEAT will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he wrote.

As has been the case since Trump’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021, when several thousand of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to block Congressional approval of the 2020 elections, the Democratic response to his threats and inciting violence and spreading complacency about the danger of a dictatorship.

Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said the election was “secure,” telling Politico: “It’s just a big eye roll, and it’s pathetic. … If they thought they were going to win and they were confident, they wouldn’t do things like this. He added that Trump was no longer in the White House and therefore unable to use the power of the federal government to interfere in the election.

A long comment The Nation by Elie Mystal outlined a series of scenarios for what the “little secret” between Trump and House Speaker Johnson could mean.

One would involve a “conditional election,” in which the House of Representatives chooses the president if the Electoral College votes are tied, 269-269. The vote in the House of Representatives would not take place by majority vote of its members, but by majority vote of state delegations, giving small states excessive power to determine the outcome, as in the U.S. Senate. The Republicans currently control 26 delegations and the Democrats 23, with one tied, and that is unlikely to change on November 5.

A more viable option for Republicans would be to delay the certification of electoral votes in states won by Harris but whose state governments are controlled in whole or in part by Republicans. (This could include all battleground states except Michigan.) Republican sabotage at the state level could prevent the submission of certified results to Congress by the December 25 deadline; Trump and Johnson would seek a ruling from the Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court that would throw out those states’ electoral votes and reduce the total needed to reach a majority.

For example, if Trump were to win only the 219 electoral votes in the states where he currently leads in the polls, beyond the margin of error, he could prevail in the Electoral College by reducing the total number of electoral votes from 538 to 436. This would require delaying the certification of states won by Democrats with a total of 102 electoral votes (for example, the battleground states’ 93 votes combined plus at least one other large state).

If Trump fails to assemble enough states with Republican governors or state legislatures, he could turn to the courts and file lawsuits even in heavily Democratic states like California and New York, falsely claiming that millions of illegal votes were cast. immigrants have been released. The Supreme Court would not have to grant such a claim, merely delaying the proceedings so that Trump could claim victory.

That Trump might be preparing to make such a claim is hardly a wild hypothesis. At a recent campaign event, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn claimed that Trump would win all fifty states in a landslide if “illegal” votes were excluded.

And election deniers represent a much larger fraction of Republican elected officials than even in 2020, when a large majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives voted not to certify Biden’s victory. Election deniers hold high positions in state legislatures and Republican parties in most battleground states.

A further indication of Trump’s blunt rejection of the conventions of American capitalist democracy, as tired as they are, is that his campaign has not agreed to participate in the official presidential transition process laid out in a 2022 law passed by both parties in Congress are supported. This prevents the General Services Administration from delaying the transition by refusing to “determine” the winner of the election, as it did in 2020 under pressure from the Trump White House. The GSA must now begin transition efforts within five days of the election and work with both parties if neither candidate has conceded.

But Trump has not signed a required ethics pledge or made any agreements on how the transition would be financed — including the role of outside interests. Nor has his transition team as a whole signed any ethical pledges regarding potential conflicts of interest.