Heads up: Election Day chaos

I expect disruptions on election day.

Watch for it.

The 2020 election and its aftermath revealed points of vulnerability in our elections. Those did not get fixed. Trump's accusation that the 2020 election was stolen creates new and larger vulnerabilities. 

Absentee voting has been made harder in some states. Republicans office holders talk about the presumed "gold standard" for elections: In-person voting on election day. We are observing less early voting.

That creates a new vulnerability. Democratic voters tend to lump into urban areas. Trump and other Republicans claim cities, especially ones with majority Black voters, are hotspots of election corruption. The accusations have prepared Americans to believe the votes in Fulton County, Georgia (Atlanta), Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit), and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania are corrupt. Or at least questionable.  

The tactic is voter suppression under cover of election integrity. We already see it at work.

The men in these photos do not describe themselves as partisans trying to suppress the votes of the opposition. They say they are patriots, there to protect voter integrity by watching for fraud. I personally deposit my ballot into a drop box at a curb in front of the county election office. I would be uncomfortable, especially after dark, if I encountered masked men dressed like these men in the photo, staring at me and photographing me. They aren't attacking me, and they aren't pointing a rifle at me, but there is implied menace. This is happening now in Arizona. Courts are evaluating whether this legal. Maybe they are just exercising their right to stand quietly in public. Maybe they are intending voter intimidation. They are using the full extent of what may be just barely legal to influence who votes.

In-person voting has a vulnerability: long lines and delays. Theoretically, polling places are properly resourced so that people can get in and out, but in reality voters in urban precincts regularly face multi-hour wait times. The new laws in Georgia forbidding offering food or water to people in long lines are a sign of ongoing expectations that long lines in urban areas are a permanent fixture. Who has time or energy for a three-hour line after a long day at work?

Watch for disruptions at polling places. Like standing in tactical gear outside a drop box, it can be done perfectly legally. There is no need to call in bomb threats. One can legally disrupt votes in the "wrong" precincts by challenging voters. Insist that a potential voter, then the next one, and yet another is illegitimate  Claim one thinks the voter has moved recently and insist the polling place consider the vote provisional until the voter returns with a current utility bill. Ask questions, then more questions. Protest something. The line will slow to a crawl. Voters will be helpless and angry. Election workers will be flustered. The election integrity squad might start shouting that they see fraud. Jostle people.  Call for police. A long slow-moving line, police cars with flashing lights, and news of fighting at the election place will discourage voters.

"Brooks Brothers riot," Florida, 2000. Decisive in stopping the vote count.

The disrupters simply need to stick to their story: "We were just trying to assure election integrity and it was perfectly legal." Even if the "wrong" side wins, from the point of view of the disrupters, the election day disturbances set the stage for reversing the election. There were scuffles and arrests. Votes in those urban precincts are questionable. 

In the 2020 election, that factual basis for claiming a failed election did not exist. Accusations of suitcases of fake ballots, bamboo-infused counterfeits, and vote switching machines all turned up negative. But videotapes of disruptions at polling places would be clear evidence that something irregular happened. A fight. Chaos. It would have provided the excuse for overruling the election results in battleground states, if necessary. This can be done next week, legally, by one's own team, and under the cover of support for election integrity.

Watch for it.

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