Joplin businessman David Humphreys, who personally and with his family largely bankrolled Hawley’s state attorney general and Senate races, told the Missouri Independent on Thursday that Hawley “has shown his true colors as an anti-democracy populist by supporting Trump’s false claim of a ‘stolen election,’” and urged the Senate to censure him.
Simon & Schuster, meanwhile, said it “cannot support Sen. Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.”
How has this election process been any different than preceding ones? Oh, Crenshaw’s team lost. And no, in fact it wouldn’t have prevented anything because Trump claimed the election was rigged, even after he won. You know what would have prevented the nonsense: Trump not being so desperate for money and ratings that he conceded the election sooner. And you can add the enablers, hyenas, vultures, and opportunists like Lyin’ Ted Cruz to that list.
I think that elections are currently conducted quite inefficiently, so improvements can surely be made. What is not obvious to me is how they can be made more transparent. At the moment every step has stakeholders observing. Short of publishing every single ballot, what can be done?
It’s not the election process but Trump and his cult following which are the problem. He is claiming fraud with zero evidence so why does anyone think a different process would matter to people who don’t think rationally in the first place?
Yep. What we need going forward are two candidates who are going to act like adults, and not tell lies about the veracity of the voting process. In the last two cycles, we’ve had one and that’s not enough. When the Republicans run a candidate who will act with integrity this type of thing won’t be nearly as big of an issue. Will we still have people spreading falsehoods about large scale fraud? Sure. But without a President or candidate to stoke the flames it won’t matter nearly as much.
Also, this type of thing is good:
The people who spread lies about the election being rigged should be held accountable. They’ve caused real damage to businesses, and the people who ran the election in PA, GA etc. They should be held accountable in criminal and/or civil court. If you can be sent to jail or the poorhouse for being dishonest and spreading lies that have real consequences, perhaps you’d be less likely to do it.
This was the culmination of years spent getting his way, and was entirely avoidable, but this is the bottom line truth of the matter right here. This was a sustained attack on our institutions for the sake of either saving face or influencing… something or other.
It doesn’t even matter if antifa was in the crowd as some are suggesting in a desperate bid to shove blame off of the obvious culprit - because get this: IT DOESN’T CHANGE THE CULPABILITY of either Trump for deliberately fomenting this or the people in the crowd for carrying it out. Personal responsibility and all.
Yes. Yes indeed.
I don’t think saying we want election reform is the same as saying or implying it was stolen. I agree with @doogie on this. The election was fair, it was accurate, there was no more fraud here than any other election in modern history, and the capitol mob was shameful and treasonous, but I do think the more transparency we have in elections the better.
The difficulty will be how do you do it without stepping on the states Constitutional right to carry them out as they see fit. But it’s absolutely not a bad idea.
Great post. The only part I disagree with is the bolded (by me) part. Trump started attacking the voting process back in 2016 before he won. When he thought he was going to lose, he started questioning the process then just like he did last year. Then after he won, he claimed fraud was the reason he lost the popular vote.
Let me say something about the people who run elections.
I don’t know if I’ve met more meticulous people who are more dedicated to their job. When listening to them, they look at what they do as almost a sacred obligation.
They are continuously looking at what went wrong with the last election; how they can correct those mistakes; and how they can can do things a better the next time.
Trump is a worthless piece of shit for how he has attacked these individuals, and how he placed doubt (where there was none) in our election process.
There wasn’t outright fraud, but things like different counties applying different rules should be addressed. And laws should not be modified without the legislative branch changing them.