Election chaos
By 
Three Trumpist agents have decided to severely screw up Georgia’s election process:
Allies of former President Donald Trump who control the Georgia State Election Board approved a controversial new rule Friday requiring counties to hand-count the of ballots cast at polling places on Election Day, despite bipartisan objections from election officials and poll workers.
The vote was 3-2, with the three Trump allies supporting the move, and a Democratic and independent GOP-appointed member of the board strongly opposing it, calling it an added step that could delay the results of the presidential election in the battleground state.
The office of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, previously warned the GOP-run board that this move would likely be unlawful because state laws don’t allow local election workers to hand-count ballots before the votes are officially counted.
“These proposed rules are not tethered to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do,” his office wrote.
Carr’s office also warned the board that it might be too close to the election to make these changes – and that judges might even block these changes because of long-standing precedents that favor maintaining the status quo on the eve of elections.
“The Board runs substantial risk of intruding upon the General Assembly’s constitutional right to legislate. When such intrusion occurs, the Board rule is highly likely to be ruled invalid should it be challenged,” Elizabeth Young, a senior attorney in Carr’s office, said in the letter on Thursday, warning the board that it might be overstepping its authority.
Specifically, Young said some of the proposals to expand poll watchers and adjust mail-in ballot procedures would “very likely” be deemed invalid if challenged in court. She also said a controversial proposal from the board to increase hand-counting of ballots is “not tethered to any statute” and would likely be an “impermissible” move by the board.
These conclusions echo concerns raised by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who has previously blasted the GOP-dominated board as a “mess.”
“We’re too close to the election,” Raffensperger, a Republican, told CNN on Thursday. “We’re 50 days out before we have our election. In fact, we’re really just three weeks before we start early voting, and it’s just too late in the cycle.”
What’s interesting is that somebody like Raffensperger won’t openly oppose Trump, but is also not willing to just completely go along with Trump’s plans to subvert the election. We have to hope that there are still enough normie Republicans who aren’t actually in the cult still out there to make a difference.
In any event, it’s clear what Trump and his minions are angling for: if they can’t win an outright victory they will aim to at least produce some sort of sufficiently muddied result, with delays in certifying final voting tallies and the like, to allow some Trump-friendly federal judges, and eventually the Sinister Six, to get involved in “resolving the controversy” in a neutral, dignified, and legally majestic way.
One thing I’d be willing to bet on is that the Democrats aren’t going to roll over for anything resembling Bush v. Gore II in anything like the fashion they did 24 years ago.
Hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does I’m really hoping that Joe Biden is willing to do what needs to be done to stop another steal, including replacing Merrick Garland with someone with the stomach for the fight, if necessary. If we get to that point, the time for worrying about appearances is going to be long past.