Here's Exactly How Republican Plan to Steal the Election

Republicans have ensured we won't know the results on Nov. 6th. It's part of their plan to steal the election.

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by Justin Rosario

If you are reading this on Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024, there are exactly two weeks until the election. There is very little chance we will know who won on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024. We probably won’t know on the 6th, either. If you’ll recall (and I understand why you may have blocked this from your memory), it took four entire days to make the official call in 2020.

Unless Florida does actually flip, which is a very real, and terrifying possibility for Donald Trump, we will not know who won the 2024 election on election night. And that is by design. Not another flaw of America’s antiquated electoral system and certainly not part of a scheme by the Democrats to cheat Donald Trump, the eternal victim. It is, rather, a specific part of the Republican scheme to steal the election.

To refresh your memory (and I’m sorry if you’re still repressing), here’s how the swing states went in 2020 according the AP:

November 3rd, 2020:

19:36: WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden wins Virginia.

22:54: WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden wins New Hampshire.

Neither of these states are particularly swingy this round. Harris leads in both states by 6-7 points.

November 4th, 2020

00:19: WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump wins Ohio.

00:35: WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump wins Florida. (This is still election night although it’s technically the next day)

02:51: WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden wins Arizona.

14:16: WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden wins Wisconsin.

17:58: WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden wins Michigan.

Ok! Now we’re getting somewhere! Ohio is about as swingy as a broken baseball bat these days but I put it in for old times’ sake. Arizona is important to Trump, especially since his people tried to instigate a riot there to stop the ballots from being counted. 

Florida could be a tipping point here. While the press insists everything is going just fine for the GOP, Republican Senator Rick Scott is in a tight race he could very well lose — particularly if the polling is as off as it looks to be. And with both abortion and marijuana legalization on the ballot (and an awful lot of extremely angry Haitians), Florida might not be as safe as we are being led to believe. If Trump loses Florida, it won’t matter how long it takes the other states to finalize their counts. It will be clear that Trump has lost the election and the planned Republican coup becomes incredibly difficult (almost impossible) to pull off. More on that later.

Here we also have Wisconsin and Michigan, almost a full 24 hours after the polls closed. This delay allowed Republicans to scream bloody murder about imaginary cheating and election rigging. But that was nothing compared to our next couple of states.

November 7th, 2020

11:25: WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania.

12:13: WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden wins Nevada.

Georgia was not officially called until November 19 because the margin was so narrow, they decided to do a full hand recount. Republicans stalled the certification of Biden’s win in Nevada until November 24 but he won, anyway.

Pennsylvania, though, was the state that sealed the deal. Once Biden won there, it was all over and Republicans began claiming they had been cheated. They pointed to the delays in the count as “proof,” and they will absolutely do this again:

This is not an accident. Republicans made sure to keep those three specific states that Trump cannot afford to lose, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, from being able to count their mail-in ballots early for several reasons:

1. Mail-in ballots favor Democrats, almost always. Especially since Trump constantly tells his cult that mail-in voting is all fraud.

2. Forcing them to be counted after the election maintains the red mirage which shows Trump “winning” until all the ballots are counted. If he loses it becomes the basis for claims of “fraud.”

3. It gives Republicans a chance to stop the count while Trump is still ahead. Whether they do this through the courts, through violence, or a combination of the two doesn’t matter as long as they stop the count.

Catturd, a notorious MAGA surrogate on Twitter, is aware that these states are not allowed to count their hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots until the morning of the election. He’s aware Republicans are the ones who made sure that was the law. All Republicans who actually pay attention to how ballots are counted are aware of this. Every single one of them will still say it’s a sign of fraud that we will not have results on election night.

This is an integral part of the coming coup and we all need to be aware of it.

Republicans have been laying the groundwork for months to challenge the results of the election. They have people in place across the country who will refuse to certify the results, even in places Trump won. The goal here, especially in the places Trump won, is to make it appear as there has been widespread voter fraud of some kind. “Look!”, they’ll say, “we can’t even trust the results in places Trump won in states Republicans control! How can we possibly trust any results coming out of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?!”

None of the Republicans involved with refusing to certify the results will have any proof. Worse, they may themselves tamper with the ballots, breaking the chain of custody. Worse than that, they may allow crowds of angry MAGAs to access the ballots and machines.

The courts will then have no choice but to intervene. Who knows how *checks notes* Detroit would have voted? Maybe they would have voted for Trump! There’s just no way to know! Oh well. All of those missing ballots are gone and there’s simply nothing we can do about it. And, hey, look at that, Donald Trump won Michigan!

Alternatively, Republicans will try to delay the certification in enough places so states miss their legally mandated deadlines and, oh geez whiz, the courts have to step in and start allowing alternate slates of electors. 

And so it goes until Trump is declared the winner by the corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court. All of this is predicated on the lie that not knowing the results the night of the election means that there is fraud. That is the narrative the right will scream at the top of their lungs nonstop starting 6 PM EST on November 5th. Trump will declare he won and any delay is an obvious attempt by Democrats to steal his victory. 

Florida may prove to be a huge problem if Trump, in fact, loses there. Republicans control every lever of power. It would be quite literally unbelievable to say Democrats rigged the election in Florida. And if the Sunshine State flips, it will be all but impossible to convince the public that Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin actually voted for Trump. Florida went blue but Michigan went red? Not bloody likely.

This cannot be repeated often enough: the most important rule of a coup is that it has to seem legitimate. The coup stealing the 2000 election seemed legitimate so Republicans got away with it. The coup stealing the 2016 election was confusing enough and the public was tuned out enough that Republicans got away with it.

The entire country is watching very carefully and having the courts throw out ballots and hand states over to the loser will not be seen as legitimate. Having violent mobs attack ballot counting locations to destroy ballots and then having the courts hand states over to the loser will not be seen as legitimate. Refusing to certify the results so the courts hand states over to the loser will not be seen as legitimate.

Any of that might have worked if Republicans hadn’t spent the last four years announcing that they planned to do exactly this. 

But they did so we know what they’re planning. We know they intend to use the delay in results to claim fraud. But knowing beforehand that we will not know the results on election night makes their bullshit harder to spread. Knowing that the delay is explicitly of Republican design makes their coming lies even harder to swallow. Every time they open their mouths to complain about Pennsylvania, they should be made to answer for causing the delay in the first place. 

If the delay means fraud and Republicans caused the delay, the only reasonable conclusion is that there is Republican fraud being committed. The press can’t be counted on to do this, so we have to do it. Loudly. Louder than their fake tinfoil hat screaming. 

This is it. If they steal this election, there will likely not be another election. Not a real one. They won’t dare risk it. We either fight them now or we fight them later when they’re in control of the United States military. Which sounds more appealing to you?

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