2024 tea leaves?

Agreed. The plan is to do successfully what failed in 2020. The difference? Four years of preparation instead of a spur-of-the-moment desperate Hail Mary.

 

Elections have been "stolen" in the past and on occasion by just such skullduggery. Thing is, I doubt that any state would do this that wasn't in the GOP column already. What you are seeing is the last desperate throws of the dice by the white nationalist fraction of the American electorate. The U.S. has always been more receptive to Right Wing authoritarianism than to communism but as I've quoted elsewhere, demographics is destiny. The white majority is ebbing.

 

Agree on all counts. I also don't think it will affect me personally. Except, of course, what I think it means to be an American. That makes me sad.

 

I don't understand how candidate :

• He loses the popular vote - (this is not a factor so far) popular vote is not how US president is elected.
  
• He loses the Electoral College vote - deciding factor

Becomes a president?

How such thing possible - losing Electoral College vote and become a president?

SCOTUS will not let this happen.

 

That's part of the Big Lie that the GOP has been pedaling. The Big Lie that Trump is still the president, even though he LOST both popular and electoral college.

 

The idea has consequences however. State legislatures can gerrymander districts well enough to disenfranchise blocks of opposing party voters but history shows that they can't do it forever. I also don't really think that the majority of GOP voters like the idea that they don't get to vote for President. There's no reason to take the risk of disenfranchising your own voters in a state that is already solidly Blue or Red. The risk of doing so would be greatest in swing states where it might make a difference. Note please that the majority of GOP elected officials at the State level refused to go along with Trump's attempted coup. They certainly won't immolate themselves on the altar of Trumpism just because Donald Trump tells them to.

 

Oh, as to SCOTUS...that Court is no guarantor of honest elections and hasn't been since they gutted the Voting Rights Act.

 

Read the Constitution. The part about a contingent election. (Article II, Section 1)

If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral College votes, the House of Representatives elects the president. In that situation, which has happened, each state delegation in the House will receive one vote. Republicans have majorities in more state delegations than do the Democrats.

The idea is that the candidate with fewer Electoral College votes might challenge the slates of his/her opponent from swing states. If the House cannot make a determination of whose slate of EC voters to accept, that state's EC votes could be excluded. This was the intent in 2020. Imagine if, say, Republican-controlled state legislatures in states Biden one--Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, etc.--decided to send an alternate slate of electors. The House would have to decide weather to accept those electors--who would have, naturally, voted for Trump--or reject them. Either way, Trump would have been elected.

Stay tuned for 2024, folks, because this is the plan.

 

2000. Hanging chads.

 

True. The GOP hasn't won the popular vote for President since 2004 and they lost it in 1992, 1996 and 2000 as well. This fact should not go unnoticed. However, the fact the Donald Trump received more popular votes in 2020 than any other Presidential candidate ever except for Joe Biden should also not go unremarked. Trumpism is (or maybe was) popular as a remaking of a failing national GOP. Now, though, I'm getting a sense (totally unscientific) that a slice of the GOP electorate really wants to move past the 2020 Big Lie about the election being somehow stolen. Trump's absolute unwillingness (inability?) to move on might mean that his time has passed. This set of primaries will give us a better sense.

 

The current Republican play book is very simple. The plan is for politicians in states won by Democrats but are controlled by Republicans to simply refuse to certify any slate of electors or to simply install Republican electors instead of Democrats while mouthing nonsense about Democrats rigging the election. If neither candidate has a majority of the electoral votes then the election is decided by the congress with each state delegation getting one vote.

 

We don't know who will be on the Rep Ticket. Its all speculations.
And maybe there will be no need for politicians to intervene in the states that Rep controlled and Dem's won.
I prefer to trust democracy and out legal system, SCOTUS to insure fair elections no mater who will be elected.

I don't think Americans want another 2020 (elections fighting) repeat.

 

I'm sure there are LOTS who do. The same ones who instigated the fight last time; they'll be back, with maybe a few straggling newcomers - and next time, of course, they're hoping to win. "Fight dirty, fight often."

 

Donald Trump has zero concern for our country. He only cares about himself. The Republican party spreads the Big Lie to this very day. It is the thread that poisons our democracy. Closing your eyes to it will not make it go away.

 

There wasn't a fight. There was a big, fat sore loser, a riot he instigated, and a lot of whining by his followers. Oh, and losing more than 60 lawsuits. But a fight implies there were two sides to the matter. There most certainly and demonstrably was not.

 

Thinking about the prediction of a Great GOP Plot...frankly I'm far from sure the "Republicans" are sufficiently unified in swing states to carry out any such coordinated action. Besides, so what if they do? Twice in my short life Republican candidates have become President despite losing the popular vote by wide margins. How is this really different? We don't elect the President. We never have. Barring an exceedingly unlikely constitutional amendment, we never will. No, State Legislatures get to say how their Electors are chosen. Those legislators are themselves elected by the voters and are accountable for their acts.

Not so different in other countries either. Up North Justin Trudeau lost the popular vote yet there he is, still Prime Minister. The Canadian Conservative party has outpolled the Liberals twice!

 

Besides, all the game playing might not be necessary for the GOP to win in 2024. All they really need to do is run somebody who isn't Donald Trump.

 

This is probably all true. It still doesn't restore faith in American democracy though that out of the last three times the Republicans won the election they didn't win the popular vote twice and the last time they lost, they lost by over 7 million votes and still believe that they actually won the election in a landslide but the Democrats somehow were able to rig millions upon millions of votes without leaving any evidence that could withstand the scrutiny of a court or law enforcement.

 

Take heart. If the pandemic taught us anything it's that reality ignored doesn't just go away and can prove deadly to the ignorers.