Countdown: Will the Supreme Court Help Trump Steal The Election?
October 20, 2020
Will the Supreme Court anoint Donald Trump president as it declared George W. Bush the winner in 2000 without a full recount of Florida votes that would have made Al Gore the president? (Ben Schumin)
By The Countdown
Read Part I of The Countdown analysis of Trump’s plan to steal the election on November 3.
Read Part II of The Countdown analysis of Trump’s plan to steal the election on November 3.
Read Part III of The Countdown analysis of Trump’s plan to steal the election on November 3.
Would the Supreme Court Help Trump Steal the Election?
There is little stopping Republicans from confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court, which would form a 6-3 conservative bench. [Update by BuzzFlash: She will join John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh as the third lawyer who worked on legal strategy for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, ending up in Bush’s election by the Supreme Court.]
[Furthermore, Amy Coney Barrett, a 28-year-old-lawyer at the time, played a key role in the strategy to get thousands of mail-in GOP votes counted, ironically, even after the ballots had missing voter information filled out by a Republican operative who was given the ballots by a Republican election official to correct overnight. Coney Barrett’s argument prevailed, preventing Gore from winning by thousands of votes even prior to the Supreme Court stopping a recount. This was a clear case of what Trump would call massive mail-in voter fraud, but it was for a Republican, George W. Bush, so that is okay, right? Watch out for Barrett to vote to strike down any Democratic ballots if they are handled in the same way. She’s being put on SCOTUS to be a reliable partisan hack, as vetted by the Federalist Society.]
In 2000, the Supreme Court’s controversial Bush v. Gore ruling blocked a hand recount of presidential ballots in Florida, spurring Gore’s concession. This year, the RNC and Trump’s campaign have doubled their legal budget. Fights over which ballots can and cannot be counted will be the most intense political—and legal—fight yet. Some of those legal battles may end up in front of SCOTUS.
TRUMP RELYING ON THE COURT -- During the first presidential debate, Trump said he was “counting” on the Supreme Court to “look at the ballots.” He has also said that he thinks the election “will end up in the Supreme Court” and that having eight justices is “not good.”
HE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE -- South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who as Senate Judiciary Chair is leading the charge for Barrett’s confirmation told Fox News, “I promise you as a Republican, if the Supreme Court decides that Joe Biden wins, I will accept the result,” Mr. Graham added. “The court will decide.”
WHY SCOTUS MATTERS -- In the last few weeks, SCOTUS upheld South Carolina’s witness requirements, allowed Maine’s ranked-choice voting to go ahead, okayed Montana sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters, and could still rule on several more cases, including a ballot deadline case from Pennsylvania. After election day, federal lawsuits or appeals from state supreme courts could end up in front of SCOTUS.
-- “In terms of this question as to whether or not she would recuse herself … Sure, yes, that should happen, but of course she's not going to do that. Why would she? This is the whole point of the conservative legal movement ... Her recusing in this case would be tantamount to surrender and it's just not going to happen." --The Count guest Jay Willis
New Poll: Final Presidential Results Will Come Later Than Many Voters Expect
Presidential elections used to come down to a handful of minutes on a single night where the results are called, the loser concedes, and the winner claims victory. This year, we likely won’t know the election outcome for days, perhaps weeks. And voters are not prepared.
New polling from Data for Progress and The Justice Collaborative Institute found voters are confident that results will still arrive on election night.
47% of likely voters believe they will know the winner of the presidential election on election day.
If voters expect a result on election night, it increases Trump’s ability to cast doubt on the results. Donald Trump has made clear he will contest the results of the election if results are not called for him on election night -- he will declare fraud, decry the expected “blue shift”, and set into motion his plan to steal the election. So, while it might seem like good news that over half of Americans are not confident that they will know the election results on November 3rd, it’s actually very bad news. No one should be certain that we will know the winner on November 3rd, and this lack of broad public understanding, plays right into Trump’s plot.
That’s because a focus on election night is a critical part of Trump’s strategy. Despite a group of bipartisan secretaries of state saying this week that election results will take longer this year, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, keeps talking about this as the “game day victory.” On Wednesday he said, “Here's what’s going to happen: I think 10, 11 o'clock on election night, President Trump's going to be pretty far ahead, and he's going to declare that, hey, he's the winner. ’Cause that's the real vote, the vote that counts.”
It’s crucial to educate and prepare voters about the likely election result timeline.
Telling likely voters the following three pieces of information decreased by 9% the number who were confident about getting results by election night:
Mail-in ballots take longer to count;
Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State has said not all votes will be counted by election night; and
States that have relied on mail-in ballots in the past often don’t have immediately clear results.
"[This] just shows the importance of the task that we have, the media has, that our elected officials -- at least the sane ones -- have to make sure voters are aware of the drawbacks of trying to make a conclusion about an election on election night.” -- The Count guest Jason Ganz
Follow BuzzFlash on @twitter
Continue the conversation at the BuzzFlash Nation group on Facebook.