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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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The Trump-Raffensperger phonecall is closer

I would agree that this was a bad action, but, being very charitable here, Trump calling the Georgia Secretary of State to "find [number] of votes" doesn't seem different in substance from the Gore Campaign in 2000 calling the county authorities in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia Counties (all very blue districts!) and demanding they do a recount to ensure all their votes were counted. We don't have readouts from the sitting Vice President calling county election officials, but "find the votes" doesn't feel completely out of the question. Maybe the fact that Gore was trained as a lawyer would have prevented him from saying it explicitly, but implicit doesn't feel much cleaner here. Ultimately the election there was decided by SCOTUS (admittedly, on party lines) ruling that the disparate recount standards applied to different counties (read: only districts where finding ballots would be expected to tip the results a specific direction) violated equal protection under the Constitution. Rather uncharitably: Gore was found to, in violation of the Constitutional rights of the voters of Florida, conspire with partisan county election officials to change outcome of the statewide election, which would have tipped the electoral college.

Here you can even see The New York Times opining that absentee ballots which tipped the election should have been discarded for things like missing signatures and late postmarks. Strange they seem less interested in the legality of mail-in ballots cast in 2020.