The GOP's rampant legal attempts to Usurp Power After Biden Win.

ObsidianJones

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Since former President Donald Trump failed to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, Republicans in more than two dozen states have introduced over 100 bills to restrict voting access, an alarming development that voting rights advocates have pointed to as yet another reason for Democrats to abolish the filibuster, an anti-democratic tool currently allowing the GOP minority to block the enactment of a suite of popular pro-democracy reforms.

Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman on Thursday reported on the GOP's ongoing nationwide push to make voting more difficult—particularly for communities of color and other Democratic-leaning constituencies—and in some cases to empower state legislatures to overturn election results. He called state-level Republicans' efforts "a huge scandal that should be getting as much attention as Trump's plot to overturn the election."

Republicans across the country, Berman said, are "weaponizing Trump's lies" about fraud in an attempt to roll back voting rights after last year's historic turnout and expansion of mail-in ballots.




Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, a Republican, is a sponsor of Senate Bill 228, which was introduced in the state senate last week. The bill proposes amending existing legislation that requires a sitting governor to appoint a replacement for a departing U.S. senator to remain in office until the next election cycle.

Under Senate Bill 228, the sitting governor would be required to pick a replacement for that departing U.S. senator from a list of three candidates provided by that senator's political party. The sitting governor would be required to pick an appointee within 21 days of receiving the list of names for consideration, the bill says.

McConnell, who has represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate since the mid-1980s as a member of the Republican Party, is supportive of the bill, according to reports by WFPL-FM and The Courier-Journal.

"Leader McConnell has discussed the legislation with President Stivers and is fully supportive of the measure," McConnell spokesperson Robert Steurer said in a statement provided to local outlets.

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania—
A proposal moving through the GOP-led Pennsylvania legislature could soon make the state an extreme outlier in the country by allowing lawmakers to exert more control over the state Supreme Court and other appellate courts.

The measure, which could be before voters as soon as May, calls for abolishing statewide elections for appellate court judges and replacing them with races in partisan districts determined by lawmakers and redrawn every 10 years.

A 50-state review by Spotlight PA and Votebeat, as well as interviews with judicial and academic experts, found only two other states — Illinois and Louisiana — employ such a system, which has increased partisan campaign fights and given special interests and dark money groups more of a foothold to affect the outcome of races.

Experts said the change in Pennsylvania could risk the public’s confidence in judges because they wouldn’t answer to a statewide constituency, but rather smaller, localized districts that are more politically homogeneous. That, in turn, could affect how they rule, eroding the judiciary’s independence and making it appear more political.

“The underlying assumption [of this proposal] is that judicial rulings, decisions, and the conduct of the judiciary should reflect some kind of partisan or ideological majority,” said Kent Redfield, a political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield. “It’s antithetical to how judges should rule.”

The proposal — championed by Rep. Russ Diamond (R., Lebanon), a far-right member of the state legislature — most closely resembles the system in Illinois. With its partisan districts, the state has seen millions of dollars in dark money pumped into contentious — even fraudulent — elections as special interests vie for control of the highest court.

“All of those create circumstances under which one can introduce bias or create a situation where you have the appearance of bias,” Redfield said. “That’s not good for the health of the democratic institutions.”

If Wisconsin had picked its Electoral College delegates using a congressional district method, President Donald Trump would have received the majority of Wisconsin’s 10 votes in 2020. Six, to be precise.

And that is what a new bill authored by Rep. Gary Tauchen (R-Bonduel) would do. It would make Wisconsin a state where the winner of the popular vote does not get all — or even necessarily the most — Electoral College votes. Tauchen’s bill (LRB 0513/1) would distribute the presidential electors by assigning one vote for each of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, then giving the remaining two electors to the statewide winner of the popular vote.

That would exacerbate partisanship and give added incentive to gerrymander the map of Wisconsin’s congressional districts to favor one party over the other, says UW-Madison Prof. Barry Burden, founder and director of the Elections Research Center.

“Doing it by congressional district is actually a terrible idea, because what it will do is amp up the partisan efforts to draw those districts to favor one side or the other,” says Burden. “It’s already an ugly process, but it will be on steroids if those districts affect not only control of Congress but also control the presidency.”

It’s been less than a week since Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis publicly began an investigation into Donald Trump‘s phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Georgia Republicans are already trying in earnest to change the rules that apply to prosecutions of election crimes.

Georgia state Republicans introduced a resolution Thursday that seeks to change the Georgia State Constitution to mandate the use of state-wide grand juries in prosecutions involving election crimes. The move would force prosecutors to draw more grand jurors from predominantly Republican rural areas of the state.

Per the bill’s text:

(d) The Attorney General or his or her designee shall act as legal adviser to any state-wide grand jury. The Attorney General, in his or her discretion, may designate any member of his or her staff or any district attorney to provide legal advice, counsel, or assistance to a state-wide grand jury.
(e) The subject matter jurisdiction of state-wide grand juries shall extend to the investigation and indictment of persons or legal entities for any crime involving voting, elections, or a violation of the election laws of this state and all related crimes.
The change, if adopted, could create a significant hurdle for any case brought by Willis, who would normally bring the results of a criminal investigation before a Fulton County grand jury. As Georgia State University College of Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis commented on Twitter, using state-wide grand juries instead of county-wide ones would likely dilute the representation of Black residents on the panel.

These are just some of the ways Republicans have taken to consolidating power by stripping the power away from our fellow citizens. The outrage should be tangible.
 

Elijin

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Republicans have always relied on a combination of apathy and discouragement to keep people away from the polls. Trump did the unforgivable: he energized the country into exercising their right to vote.

Its only natural that the rules need to be changed if them damn poors are actually going to use their vote.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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An entirely predictable and logical evolution of their warpath now they've fully realised and embraced how detached their voter base is from reality. It couldn't be more important to not allow them a single inch now they've shown their hand with nary a doubt of intention, any hope of fairness, honesty or integrity has and will only be exploited as weakness, as has been their favourite set of tactics throughout history.
It's been a real watershed moment the last few years and I honestly don't see any hint of them taking the higher road from now on, along with other parts of the world under further right-wing control, tactics are only going to get uglier now the social media landscape has proven how easy it is to manipulate and confuse public opinion. It's obvious these crypto fascist types will never stop, and have never stopped over centuries of this same old bullshit, word-for-word fearmongering rhetoric like broken fucking records, and unfortunately succeeding most of the time. Anger is a more than logical and understandable reaction. Running out of swear words to effectively calm it these days though. Need to invent more swear words.
 
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ObsidianJones

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If they'd managed to get them passed before the election, they'd might not have had to bother with an insurrection.
Hey, you need to be fair to them! They tried other legal ways to usurp power BEFORE the election. They just weren't to know that Judges would actually do their jobs instead of allowing their corruption.






I mean, if you look at the facts, it's really Due Process's fault for the insurrections. If we just let the GOP limit the rights of everyone like they always did before, they wouldn't be forced to get so angry that America's vote was actually counted and Orange Man Go Bye Now.
 

Hades

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Despite pretty much everyone knowing that Trump's cries about ''fraud'' are a hoax that doesn't mean it won't get weaponized in the future.

''But don't you see! We HAD to prevent 90% of African Americans from voting otherwise the Democrats would have STOLEN the election!''
''Don't you get it! We HAD to throw out all those results from Democrat counties because they were all engaging in voter FRAUD again!''
''Why don't you understand it! Arizona HAD to overrule the will of the people and throw out the election! If they hadn't Biden would have cheated again!''
''Huh? We Republicans have been caught cheating? Well of course we cheated! If Biden was allowed to steal the election then we should be allowed to do it too!''
 

Houseman

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Despite pretty much everyone knowing that Trump's cries about ''fraud'' are a hoax that doesn't mean it won't get weaponized in the future.

''But don't you see! We HAD to prevent 90% of African Americans from voting otherwise the Democrats would have STOLEN the election!''
''Don't you get it! We HAD to throw out all those results from Democrat counties because they were all engaging in voter FRAUD again!''
''Why don't you understand it! Arizona HAD to overrule the will of the people and throw out the election! If they hadn't Biden would have cheated again!''
''Huh? We Republicans have been caught cheating? Well of course we cheated! If Biden was allowed to steal the election then we should be allowed to do it too!''
I hope to see: "We HAD to conduct the election in a transparent manner, allowing bipartisan officials, challengers, and workers, otherwise they'll storm the capitol again!"

That would really show them.
 

Avnger

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"We HAD to conduct the election in a transparent manner, allowing bipartisan officials, challengers, and workers, otherwise they'll storm the capitol again!"
It didn't stop them storming the capitol the first time. Why would it the second?

Also do you have anything relevant to the topic of the thread or are you just planning on derailing because you don't have talking points yet?
 

Houseman

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It didn't stop them storming the capitol the first time. Why would it the second?
The people who stormed the capitol weren't convinced that the election was conducted in a transparent manner. You can say that they should have been convinced, but that would only be your opinion.

Also do you have anything relevant to the topic of the thread
Nope, just jumping off of Hades' post. Feel free to not prolong this tangent by not responding.
 

Hades

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I suspect that deep down most of the freaks know Trump lost. Maybe they refuse to acknowledge that they know this, but that is not the same as genuinely not knowing it.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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I suspect that deep down most of the freaks know Trump lost. Maybe they refuse to acknowledge that they know this, but that is not the same as genuinely not knowing it.
They don't care that he lost. They want him to keep being President, so they'll do whatever it takes to make that happen, the rest of the country's citizens be damned.
 

Agema

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The people who stormed the capitol weren't convinced that the election was conducted in a transparent manner. You can say that they should have been convinced, but that would only be your opinion.
Sure, and not so long ago some people believed a paedophile ring was being run out of the basement of a pizzeria with no basement: it is likewise an opinion that they should not have believed that. There's a woman in Congress who claims Jews have built space lasers to start wildfires in the USA, and again it is just an opinion she is wrong.
 

Houseman

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Sure, and not so long ago some people believed a paedophile ring was being run out of the basement of a pizzeria with no basement: it is likewise an opinion that they should not have believed that. There's a woman in Congress who claims Jews have built space lasers to start wildfires in the USA, and again it is just an opinion she is wrong.
In a perfect world, nobody should ever believe anything that isn't objectively true. But we don't live in that world.
 

ObsidianJones

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Sure, and not so long ago some people believed a paedophile ring was being run out of the basement of a pizzeria with no basement: it is likewise an opinion that they should not have believed that. There's a woman in Congress who claims Jews have built space lasers to start wildfires in the USA, and again it is just an opinion she is wrong.
100%.

And here's the issue. There were recounts. There was as much Transparency as was allowed for a... private election. That's why we don't go into amphitheaters and yell out our selection.

But let's put all of that to the side.


Why can't we just take them at their word? They won't be convinced of anything other than what they believe. So we can hold dozens of recounts and they'll just keep saying Dominion and Deep State. We can run it by Republican Judges who owe their jobs to Trump, A Supreme Court who was basically built by Trump, Election officials who actually voted for Trump and wanted him to win... We can have all those people swear that all of their processes were legal and the vote was largely fraud-free... and that will STILL not convince them.

So why should any of us try any more? Why humor them any more if they frankly say they will refuse anything that isn't their Truth?

The Truth, as Agema so rightfully points out, which consists of Jewish Space Lasers and a Democratic Satanist Cabal that eats Children...
 

Seanchaidh

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Thaluikhain

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I suspect that deep down most of the freaks know Trump lost. Maybe they refuse to acknowledge that they know this, but that is not the same as genuinely not knowing it.
"Symbolic belief" was a phrase that got bandied about some years ago. Obama is literally the anti-christ and will destroy the US, but people just went to work as usual and maybe grumbled. I sorta respect the ones that spent all their money on bunkers and guns in a sense, they put their money where their mouth is.

Trump is literally a genius, but lets not actually drink bleach to cure covid. I don't respect the ones that tried that because he said so.
 
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