Postpone the Election
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
That is now Trump’s pinned Tweet.
Ban Mail-In Voting
Mail-In Voting is already proving to be a catastrophic disaster. Even testing areas are way off. The Dems talk of foreign influence in voting, but they know that Mail-In Voting is an easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there’s no accurate count!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
“Easy way for foreign countries to enter the race. Even beyond that, there’s no accurate count!” says Trump.
Mail Boxes Will Be Robbed
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
That red informational link in the above Tweet is a Twitter fact check of unsubstantiated Trump claims.
Only Congress Can Change the Date
The WSJ accurately notes Trump Floats Election Delay, but Only Congress Can Change the Date.
The date of the election can only be changed by Congress. It was fixed as the first Tuesday after Nov. 1 by an act of Congress in 1845 and would require new legislation for it to be delayed. Election Day this year is Nov. 3.
Republicans Distance Themselves From Trump
Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) also rejected moving the election date.
“Delaying the election probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” Mr. Graham said. “I think we can be able to safely vote in person in November.”
Widespread Republican Disagreement
- Sen.
Chuck Grassley on Trump’s election delay tweet: “All these things are pretty well set and have been going on for decades. And so we’re a country based on the rule of law so nobody’s going to change anything until we change the law.” - Sen.
Ted Cruz “I think election fraud is a serious problem and we need to fight it and stop it. But no, we should not delay the election.” - Sen.
Marco Rubio “In 1845 we had an election on the first Tuesday after November 1st, and we’re going to have one again this year.” - Sen. Pat Toomey “I do not support moving the presidential election and the president does not have the unilateral authority to do so. However the president is right to point out that universally mailing ballots to people who don’t request them…would likely lead to voter fraud”
- Sen.
Lindsey Graham “I don’t believe we should delay the elections. Delaying the election probably wouldn’t be a good idea. I think we can be able to safely vote in person in November.” - Sen John Barrasso
“No we’re not going to delay the election…We may not know on Election Night the balance of the House of Representatives or the Senate or the presidency.But we will not delay the elections” - Sen.
Mitt Romney “The election will be held on the date set by Congress, the historic date. And with regards to mail-in voting, in my state we’ve had it for some time. It works extremely well the great majority — I think almost 90% — of our voters vote by mail.” - Sen. Mitch McConnell on WNKY television: “Well, never in the history of the country through wars and depressions and the Civil War have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time, and we’ll find a way to do that again this Nov. 3.”
The above thanks to a Tweet Thread by Lindsay Wise.
No Widespread Fraud
Mr. Trump and other critics of mail-in voting have said it raises the risk of fraudulent voting. But researchers have found no widespread cases of voter fraud in mail voting, and five states—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah—already conduct elections primarily by mail.
Amusing Flashback
Speaking during a virtual fundraiser in April, Mr. Biden suggested that Mr. Trump would “try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held.”
In response, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told CNN: “Those are the incoherent, conspiracy-theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality. President Trump has been clear that the election will happen on Nov. 3.”
Fraud Fact Check
Please consider Fact-checking Trump’s recent claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.
Mail ballot fraud is exceedingly rare in part because states have systems and processes in place to prevent forgery, theft and voter fraud. Most ballot envelopes have a bar code that election officials and/or the US Postal Service can track. These bar codes both allow voters to check that their ballots have been received and states to easily eliminate any duplicate ballots because a unique code is assigned to each voter. For voters able to leave their homes, many states, like Colorado, also have secure drop-off locations and drop boxes to reduce any theft or tampering of the ballots they received by mail.
According to a Fox News poll conducted in May, 63% of respondents support allowing all US citizens to vote by mail in the 2020 presidential election because of coronavirus. Trump himself has voted by mail in several elections and as recently as Florida’s primary in March.
Trump’s Own 2016 Investigation
Please consider Trump panel found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
A former Democratic member of the Trump administration’s now-disbanded election integrity commission says newly-released documents show no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and that “dissenting or even questioning voices” on the panel were unwelcome.
Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the two Republican leaders of the commission, that assertions of widespread fraud appeared aimed at fulfilling a “pre-ordained objective” of finding evidence to back up earlier unsubstantiated claims by President Trump that millions voted illegally in the 2016 election.
Dunlap said that in a draft report by commission staff, “the sections on evidence of voter fraud were glaringly empty,” and that now-released documents, prove that no such widespread fraud existed. “While individual cases of improper or fraudulent voting occur infrequently, the instances of which I am aware do not provide any basis to extrapolate widespread or systematic problems.”
Q&A on Trump Claims
Q: What’s it all about?
A: Making Excuses
Trump is gearing up excuses for when he loses.
Once again, Trump made a complete fool out of himself. Tweeting an idea before vetting it. Not even Republicans could defend it.
Only 13 Percent of Voters are Still Undecided
The undecided voters will determine the election. The problem for Trump is Only 13 Percent of Voters are Still Undecided.
The election will be won or lost at the state level, not the national level, but Trump is down in nearly all of the swing states as well.
Trump needs a clean sweep of swing states and that is highly unlikely.
Also note that Democrats Favored to Win the Senate.
Mish
Politicians never consider the consequences for their single-minded focus of getting re-elected. UNNECESSARILY shutting down the economy and not carrying out their constitutional duties could be the ultimate karma – link to armstrongeconomics.com
Looks like McConnell is going to distance the Senate Republicans from Trump. About 3.5 years too late. I guess it was trying to postpone the election that broke the camel’s back. The Republicans are going to learn that once you make a deal with Putin you better stick to it. Expect people to start disappearing soon or just end up dead.
Mish,
if the D’s sweep President, Senate and of course House, then what do you think the probabilities are of:
State finance bailouts, including IL
Public pension bailouts, including IL
Residential mortgage bailouts
Asking for a friend.
Thx!
The dems will Make It Rain
The Fed is already bailing all 3 out. Where have you been? The bonds market affects everything directly and indirectly.
If you don’t think there will be MASSIVE fraud, when no ID is required to mail in a ballot, you are a complete ignoramus and useful idiot.
Trump was stating that his next erection has been significantly delayed. Oversharing!
Looks like Biden called it before trump did it:
“Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said on Thursday night in remarks at an online fundraiser.
… and the trump humpers responded predictably to sleepy Joes statement:
“Nonetheless, Biden chose to taint the president essentially with a charge of treason. One would hope that this baseless statement could be excused as just another one of Biden’s increasingly frequent verbal hiccups. But Biden said other things Thursday night that show he believes Trump is a disloyal wannabe dictator”
Sooo… it’s treason then?
Lincoln nor FDR, not one President has ever suggested postponing a election. Not for any war, economic or bs made up story to not have a election. Fact.
To be clear, what he means is that it will be the most “innacurate & fraudulent election in history” only if he loses.
Mail-in ballots can be a fraud. Other countries who have them have onerous requirements for identification. Try that in the USA, and see what happens. The US government is simply too disorganized to pull it through with any integrity – unless you want Pentagon to run the elections.
As has been mentioned in many different posts, there are already states that have essentially all ballots cast through the mail. They have been examined and the fraud (if found at all) has been statistically insignificant.
Considering the actual state of affairs in these states, your statements about pulling this off in the US is completely false.
The biggest perpetrator of election fraud exists…in your brain.
Nah,…the Saturn-Pluto Conjunction has it under control.
The Saturn-Pluto Conjunction in Capricorn in 2020 will test the solidity of the financial system once again. Weaknesses will be exposed. Financial markets will more closely reflect the level of capital invested rather than any artificial inflation of asset values.
Trump IS the weakness in the system.
It’s amazing how much TRUMP KNOWS ABOUT FRAUD.
He sounds like an expert.
In the meantime,…O’Connell stated “The election date is set in stone”
I think that qualifies as throwing Trump under the semi.
I’m curious how voting via an app, using blockchain technology might work. Would it not be 100% auditable?
I am all for mail in voting, if and only if a fraudulent vote carries a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in prison per fraudulent vote cast. If fraudulent voting is not an issue, Democrats and Republicans should rush to support such an approach.
President Trump really goated the racist haters(democrats) with that
he was making funny and they fell for it – talk about ….
Would be his best option because then Pence could pardon him.
NPR, June 30, Morning Edition, there was an interview with Washington State’s Secretary of State about mail in voting. WA has been doing it a long time, and not too many issues. However, it’s harder than it looks, and trying to set it up in the remains time is asking for trouble, and no one is in the mood to be patient.
And in the Republicans defense, Detroit and LA both had documented fraud in 2016, as did Miami in 2018. NPR covered that too, but Pooh-poohed it as not significant. Fraudulent votes in the D column in LA probably didn’t make a difference, but in a battleground state?
It’s up to the Republicans to watch the ballot boxes.
That reminds me, I have to do my state primary ballot. It’s on the table.
If memory serves in all these cases of “voter fraud” it was engineered by GOP operatives (and a disgruntled postal worker…) again, the numbers were so small less then 1% of 1% as to not be significant. What is a tragedy is that only 45% of voters actually bother to vote1
trump also wants you to not talk about the largest dive in GDP ever recorded.
he can use the law of attraction to make it happen.
Regardless the voting result in November, tRump will stay in the Whitehorse. He will try everything to stay in power. Use your imagination to see what he will Possibly do: Declaring martial law? Claiming fraud of voting? Pick a war with China? Criminalizing and Putting Biden into prison?
All of the above. What’s happening is very similar to how Putin stayed in power in Russia.
We’ve had mail-in voting for 7 years in Colorado. Never once have we ever found a fraudulent ballot. Ask Senator C. Gardner-R of Colorado. He loves it.
Trump takes the crown! My prediction. There is a silent majority that will vote for him. I’m waiting for debates so that Trump can destroy Biden. Trump is alpha-like it or not. Biden, maybe in his younger years, but his butt kissing to the liberal kooks is not going to win votes. NOBODY wants their cities burned unless you are Antifa or some other degenerate and we have plenty of those in our country, but anyone with a brain will vote for Trump.
More Trump election rhetoric to spur distrust of the democrats… or should I say more distrust.
Are we dying because the Russians were involved in the 2016 elections too? /sarc
This reminds me of the blue team’s Russiagate temper tantrum.
What a nation of petulant children we’ve become! We can’t handle it when things don’t go our way, and that extends way beyond red/blue politics. It’s amazing how many old people are leading the way in this movement too, I bet if you showed them this vision 40-50 years ago in a crystal ball they would have been mortified.
LOL, as the Lincoln Project said this afternoon, “Today has been a along month.”
The guy that said he would listen to any information about his opponents even from foreign sources is the one complaining about voter fraud. After reading multiple books on Russian tactics in election interference, I see no way there wasn’t fraud in the 2016 election in favor of Trump.
And then there’s this:
Our host Mish commented something like “no way”,
and it is still no way – Look at all those Senators and it would never happen in the House even if the Senate had a majority
Still waiting for Mish’s apology for supporting him.
I am sorry I cast a vote for him.
Thank you Bill but you don’t run a blog which influences the votes of thousands of people.
I find it hypocritical to cast stones against the president you voted for without an admission of guilt first. Candidates like Trump and Hillary are the reason principled libertarians cast write in votes. What happened Mish?
I didn’t vote for Trump, but I understood the appeal of an outsider at the time. Everybody knew what Hillary was, but they weren’t sure Trump was lying until after the election.
Yeah I caught that then and now his whole tone has been walked back. Mish you should own up. Everyone makes mistakes.
Jezuz what a fucking moron. “Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good).” Zero difference between the two you orange dumbass. Oregon and Hawaii both have vote by mail (Oregon has no bricks and mortor precincts, it is mail only and it is cleaner, more efficient, and more secure than in person voting in most other states.
Also, there is no way YOU can postpone an election since the constitution gives ONLY the congress that authority, and I assure you house democrats are never EVER going to agree to change the date. Come January 20 of 2021 at noon if there has not yet been an election for any reason at all your term ends and speaker Pelosi will be sworn in as president, that is called the line of succession and it is in the constitution – which is just a goddamned peiece of paper when the GOP needs it to be, but it really is there and it really is the law of the land.
I am pretty sure this tweet was designed to take news space away from the death of Herman Kain, but it still must be treated as if Trump is serious because the very mention of this is heresy to our democracy, and if he is serious the only reason would be because he is so far down in the polls the only way he gets to stay in office is if elections are cancelled. Also even when they do go forward as scheduled he knows that his demographic is more likely to say screw it, I am not risking Covid for DT, he is not worth it. He knows a lot of people are not going to go in and vote for him just to make the point that they will not be forced to wear a mask.
This really is all too juicy. Fat ass stepped on a landmine with this one and just lost about a million voters with one tweet.
When it comes to politics, Mish has about as much credibility as the Onion…
Yes, but despite all the disasters by Trump, mostly self-inflicted, he’s still not that far behind in the polls… a ‘get tough with Kim’ and some spectacular decapitation strike (which would be way cool) might be enough to get Americans to ‘rally round the flag’ and allow Trump to win. I think Trump btw is an excellent public speaker (being a former Toastmaster myself); in his own unique way of course. I’m not voting for him either, just pointing out his strengths.
Speeches are meant to be listened to, not read. Also not a trump supporter but he is a great speaker and storyteller. He can pull you in, make you feel like you’re on the inside with him. I wonder if he’ll start doing live streams or if he can’t speak without the energy of the audience.
I have always thought Trump would announce a deal with North Korea in October, and the funny thing about it is it will look like the Iran deal and require a pallet of money to get Kim Jong Un to play nice.
We all expect different things from speakers. Trump doesn’t speak the same dialect politicians at his level speak. If you cannot handle his dialect, Trump rubs you the wrong way. If you’ve become hypersensitive (in a bad way) to politician-speak, Trump is a breath of fresh air.
Our expectations and preferences vary. To me, Obama is a terrible speaker. But his speeches read wonderfully. On the other hand, I would not read a transcribed Trump speech for the same reason transcriptions of conversations are always “edited for clarity.”
If you’re in DC, swing by the Lincoln Memorial. Read the two speeches on the wall. In our world and culture they’d come across OK, spoken. We’re trained to handle 30 second sound bites. But at the time – spoken? Pathetic. Lazy. Incomplete.
Now, read them. Jeez, they were good.
Trump in a weird way has an “antipositional” style that’s so bad, it’s good, like those B-movies. I rank him as a very good speaker.
You really need to stop drinking the Kool Aid.
A few months ago I posted this postponing of the Nov presidential election as a theoretical possibility, since there’s no constitutional requirement that a presidential election be held in November (it’s just a law). Our host Mish commented something like “no way”, and I wonder, if he’s reading this, whether he still agrees.
Three months is a long time in politics, especially with somebody as unpredictable as the Orange Man.
BTW if Trump Republicans, who have control of Congress last I checked, wanted to, they could delay the election… on national security or other grounds.
RL
Republicans have control of Congress?
” main-in voting”
MAIL, not main
Trump cannot postpone the elections on his own. Just floating the idea costs him votes.
How it all could go down!
It Could Easily Happen Here, Soon
Ted Rall
July 26, 2020
What a Bunch of Suckers . . . TRUMP is an Expert at pushing peoples’ Buttons and you all got suckered in . . . .
4D chess… LOL
These cliches really get old.
Fat Donnie™ is an expert. The NASDAQ is up today because everyone ignored the GDP collapse and focused on his lunacy.
I’m with Bluewin on this one. This particular instance is hardly a genius move and Trump will pay a (social/political) price. But, since this type of behavior is already expected from him, his personal price is very low … lower than the benefits.
The only suckers are Trump and his supporters.
Agreed. He has just got it established that postponing the election date is a no-no.
Anyone maintaining that mail-in is perfectly reliable in States which have no ID requirements for voters is nuts. Even the current system with so many hackable machines is a joke. American elections are probably the least reliable of any developed country. The only issue is: who gets to be the ones in control of the various fixing methods, not whether or not there is fixing.
I have always assumed that the reason the Dems refused – to this day! – to accept the 2016 election is that they knew they had it in the bag because they could control the machine votes – as has been well documented. But somebody either ensured the vote-counting wasn’t hacked and altered, or more likely they hacked and altered it so that Trump won by that sliver of votes in the rust belt.
But really: arguing that Method X or Y is reliable in the entirely corrupt, dysfunction Failed State of the USA is quite naive.
“No Widespread Fraud”
Democrats are desperate to get rid of Trump. They will do whatever it takes, including widespread mail in voting fraud.
Russia Russia Russia was a widespread fraud.
The impeachment was a widespread fraud.
Kind of reminds me of the precedence Republicans helped establish under Bill Clinton. Keep throwing stuff at him until something sticks and then impeach.
I have read investigative voter fraud reports and I assure you it is virtually non-existent. There is, however, widespread election fraud, often perpetrated by Republicans. You can find this info at the Brennan Law Center, among various reputable sites. I suggest researching election fraud yourself and not watching Fox News or listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Also suggest not reading reports by agents of one party about what the other party is doing. Practically speaking, there is only the UniParty and you are being overly naive to believe that one is all that different from the other. They just present seemingly opposing talking points, however on the same national screen which conveniently obfuscates anything important from reaching national awareness.
It is still very hard to tell, for example, if Trump is a real outsider who terrifies the insiders who have been attacking relentlessly since his election, or if this isn’t just a particularly spicy series of episodes in the ongoing American Republic Reality TV Series.
But here’s another twist for ya: internal Trump campaign polls show him doing very well indeed right now. The mainstream is projecting the opposite so that when they lose, they will accuse Trump of cheating in order to refuse to leave the WH etc.
It goes round and round forever.
The bottom line is that there is no more mutual good will in the mix. Whether this is real or a performance doesn’t matter. The country no longer can come together on anything. You can’t even go to a sporting event any more. You can’t go shopping. You can’t take your child for a walk in the park. There is endless restriction, confrontation, doubt, isolation. The country is broken.
How can such a country have an election followed by a peaceful transition of power?
It cannot.
It is not going to happen. Each side will yell that the other side is cheating.
The smart money will be figuring out: who is gaining from all this?
Trump is only doing well with his hard core Republican base which is not entirely unexpected. He is doing terribly with independent voters and even some of the more moderate Republicans. He is rightly headed for the dumpster come November.
Cultist.
Trump is a fraud.
Your tin foil hat is a fraud
I respectfully disagree that Trump is gearing up excuses for when he loses. I don’t think he plans on “losing” regardless of how the vote goes.
That’s an interesting theory and one that I think may be solid. It does seem at times he is killing his chances.
Bush vs. Gore but worse.
Trump wanted to deflect attention from the GDP number and people fell for it HOOK, LINE, and SINKER.
Actually, Trump’s game of 4D chess that you claim is so brilliant is more like a bad game of checkers. As Trump was tweeting this crap, we also noticed not only is the GDP bad but more Americans lost their jobs.
Remember when the election couldn’t come soon enough for Trump and his supporters because he was going to win by a landslide?
The problem comes from propping up a less than average economy growing at under 3% as the greatest ever that was nothing more than a bubble primed to pop.
With Covid, Trump was in a no-lose position. All he had to do was take it seriously, call for unity, and act Presidential. He did none of the three, and translated his no-lose position into a no-win situation.
As a conservative, I see the past 3.5 years as a wasted opportunity where blind faith was placed in a conman. You are right. He had the opportunity that presidents dream of to show their greatness and lead the country through the toughest of times.
Rush Limbaugh always said Bill Clinton wished he had a 9/11. Well, here we are and we have Trump playing victim and Rush defending his actions.