grue , 2 days ago

That’s exactly the problem: the MAGA fascists have been spending 4+ years going all-in on inserting their people into exactly those positions, up to and including SCOTUS. (And I don’t just mean SCOTUS’ conservative majority in general; I mean three of them literally helped perpetrate .) Are there enough non-traitorous officials left to effectively oppose them? I don’t know! It sure doesn’t seem like it here in Georgia, even despite Raffensperger and Kemp not bending the knee to the cult leader.

I’m also extremely worried that (a) we need to be a bunch of normal people to form an organized resistance that goes well beyond just voting (e.g. to become poll watchers as a counter-balance to the MAGA ones), but also (b) any such tactics (at least ones I can think of) to counter the MAGAs’ election disruptions would themselves also be disruptive and thus play into the MAGAs’ hands anyway.

In summary:

• If MAGA election officials refuse to certify enough votes, they win.
• If MAGA election observers successfully sabotage the count, they win.
• If MAGA election observers fail to sabotage the count but cause enough disruption to cast it into doubt/get courts involved (either slow-walking it with MAGA judges like Aileen Cannon, or appealing it up to SCOTUS), they win.
• If non-fascist election observers try to intervene to stop MAGA ones, it also causes enough disruption to cast it into doubt/get courts involved and the MAGAs win.
• If non-fascists try to remove MAGAs from being in positions to do these things in the first place, they cry fraud, kick it to the courts, and win.

There apparently are some new rules non-fascist politicians have passed to try to shore up the certification process, but I fear they’ll be “too little, too late.” (In fact, they’re so few that I can’t even find a news article to cite about them right now…) As for us regular citizens, there’s fuck-all we can do (at least that I can think of) to actively oppose the blatant attempted theft of the election, and instead we can only vote as if nothing is wrong and just sort of hope the MAGAs don’t have enough manpower (despite election denialism continuing to spread!) to pull it off even without any interference.

I don’t know of any fascist movement in history that has successfully been resisted by acting like it’s business as usual in a normal functioning democracy and hoping for the best. But as far as I can tell, that’s what we’re doing.