How to Steal An Election

And of by this, of course, I am referring not to the election, but to the election of two thousand's okay, So for for for those of you who do not remember this story, and this is okay, I was like three when this was happening. But weirdly, I have a very very this is legitimately one of my first memories.

Is just I have the words engraved into my mind hanging Chad's and so we we we will get to what exactly that is, but that the two thousand election was one of the most chaotic elects in the history of the United States. Now, the US has a long history of really really weird elections. I mean, you know, from from from the subspective of sort of like is the U s representative democracy? I think there's a pretty good argument that no election until like after the Civil

Rights Act is even sort of a legitimate election. But you know, I mean and and so far as you like consider elections to be legitimate, which you know, okay, but you know, the u s is, no is no stranger to someone winning an election than not taking office. There are, in fact, there are if you if you go back into your berking history, there are two different

elections that are called the corrupt bargain Um. There's John Quincy Adams and I think it's four makes this really really weird alliance with the original American political Slee's ball Henry Clay to get himself often sold as president. Although that that that's an election that's like truly an election with there are no heroes where it's it's John Quincy Adams Henry Clay allying to bring down Andrew fucking Jackson.

So you know, no no heroes there. There there's there's another election after Reconstruction, which is the end of Reconstruction, where the Republican Party literally trades and like trades ending

Reconstruction for putting their president in office. After a truly genuinely wild set of voting results happens, we're like all of the votes are in a box, and the two parties are fighting over like who's going to count the votes, because the guy who counts the votes from like the box is the person who's going to determine who wins

the election. And so there's this whole negotiated thing where the eight hundreds, like racist Southern Democrats are like, okay, we'll we'll give you, we'll we'll give you this election if you promised to pull troops out of the South. So okay. You know, American elections have always been sort of more fraudulent than people give them credit for, but the two thousand election, even by the standards of like an American election, is some bullshit. So let's let's let's

go back. Let's go back to the origin of the story. The year is two thousand. For the last time in human history, humanity has taken collective action to stop and impenny catastrophe, having by the heartrending labor of a bunch of siss admins, including a guy that I knew growing up, who spent fucking New Year, who literally spent New Year's Eve until the bell ring, like basically in a closet with a bunch of computers at his job trying to make sure what UK wouldn't happen. But you know, we

did it, actually we we actually did it. There was there was, there was like you know, there was human collective action to stop a major catastrophy from happening. And Al Gore, a Democrat who claims we have invented the Internet, is running against Harvard educated Harvard and actually Yale educated oil man caused as a cowboy whose name is George Bush. And I, oh god, I don't know, I I don't I feel like people have kind of forgotten how really

genuinely sleazy George Bush was. Like he he has this sort of public like, you know, one of the reasons he wins elections, and he has his public images like the guy who you know, like everyone like he he's the presidential candidate who you'd want to have a beer with.

But again, like literally everything from he's like public mannerisms down to like the minutia of his accent to like the stupid cowboy hat that he wears, all of this this is a bullshit, right, This is a fucking Harvard guy, And all of this is you know, like completely intricately manufactured by a set a set of like very very

very like sleazy but incredibly ruthless and efficient Republican political operatives. Now, George Bush's father is George H. W. Bush, who was the first to only director of the CIA to become president. So yeah, but Bush Bushes running on this sort of neo conservative alliance of Texas oil men, evangelical hardliners, and

weapons contractors. Um, the weapons contractors part uh winds up being incredibly relevant when nine eleven happens and both Bush and Dick his co uh what's it called vice presidential I guess candidate at the time, but his vice presidential selection Dick Cheney, who is like Dick Cheney like saying that he's like the physical human embodiments of the military industrial complex, is under selling how closely tied, um, Dick

Cheney is to the military dustrial complex. And you know, like this is this is part of the reason why the ward Rock happens, because again, like this entire coalition is just like it is, it is the it is is the sort of height of the military petro dollar coalition, just a a coalition of peer evil like fueled by

war profits and homophobia. And but you know, part part of part of what's been happening in this entire period is this is this is the year after the Battle of Seattle on the anti globalization movement hasn't been smashed again. This is There's other thing is this is pre nine eleven, right, This is this is a very very short period of time where like in between the Battle of Seattle and uh eleven where American politics are very very very weird.

And you get another thing that we don't really have now, but from the nineties until about nine eleven kind of existed where that which was that there was a period where third party is kind of mattered ish like Ross Pirot like in the nineties. Arguably maybe could have won the election if vietn't just like given up. But yeah, you know what one of the sort of products of this is that the Green Party is actually a real thing in in two thousands in a way that they're

kind of not right. And then this has been this this sort of unfolding of a bunch of left wing social movements into which is absolutely disasterous attempt to enter party politics. Um, but they pull you know, and this is the thing that no one has ever heard the end of. But they pull a bunch of votes into Ralph Nader in Florida, which winds up being a big deal. But the product of this is that this election is on a just on a knife's edge. Both sides of

this election are unbelievably close. The entire election comes down to Florida. Now, the problem with the entire election coming down to Florida is that the American electoral system is a fucking joke. It is a disaster. It is a

a genuine embarrassment. The United States is a country that has more resources than like, it has enough resources that, like Genghis Khan would weep like, it has genuinely unfathomable amounts of resources, and its election system is basically run by a bunch of weird dipshit like party if like local like a weird patchwork of like completely underfunded and overworked local government officials who never have real budgets and who just spends like two months not sleeping with their

like three co workers trying to make the elections work. And this is really weird because like most places on Earth that have elections, um, there's like, you know, a national thing that sort of does the elections in the US, like no, no, it relies heavily on volunteers. It's just like this weird patchwork quilt of stuff, and Florida being Florida, a bunch of stuff goes very wrong very quickly. Um. There there's two very famous ballot problems, the most aimless

of which is hanging chads. So okay, okay, what what what? What is a hanging chat for people who have forgotten? Are people who you know weren't alive then? Which I realize is I man, the fact that the fact that I have coworkers who are not alive for hanging chads is really really disturbing thought. But okay, so what is a hanging chat? Um? The answer is that in Florida, the way this ballot works is that you have to

physically punch holes in your ballot. And you know, you punch a hole in the place, like okay, so today, right when you fill in a ballot, you have to like fill in a square right with a pencil in in in Florida, you have to like hold punch that square. This is maybe the worst ballot design I can possibly imagine, and it goes terribly wrong. A bunch of these whole punches basically don't actually remove all the paper. And there's there are so many ways, so many ways that this

gets sucked up. The hanging chat is the most name was one that Haying so a chad. Basically, it's it's the piece of paper that when you punch the thing with like the whole punch, it's supposed to like it's the paper that comes out of the whole right, Haying chad is when you do the whole punch thing, but the chat is still connected to the piece of paper by like one corner. But but but again less less you think there's only one way that these ballots get

fucked up. No, no, no, no, no, there's there are like, there are unfathomable number of ways that these ballots don't punch correctly. They're they're swinging door chairs, there's tried chairs, there's did bull chairs, there's pregnant chats. It's unbelievable, and a bunch of people's votes just don't get counted because these ballots. The reason they're doing these whole punch ballots that these are these are you know, this is what's supposed to be like the fancy new like voting technology.

Right then the new vote technology is the voting machines. And the way the voting machine works is basically, the votoing machine can check if if if there's a whole air and if there's a hole in the paper, then it counts you as the accounts it as the vote. But if the entire chad hasn't been punched out, it won't count your vote. This is a problem. And there's another problem. Uh and and that problem is the butterfly ballot. So the butterfly ballot was original Is this ballot you're

using in Florida that was originally designed to help elderly voters? Um, it's supposed to be the goal of the ballot is to have larger fought sizes to make it more accessible for people. Which this is good, right, Like, okay, I I support I support accessible design. Is put accessible design for voting. The problem is this ballot is designed like ship. The way it works is there's a two page ballot

with like a crease in it. All right, It's it's kind of like a book, right, like you unfold the book in the middle of the ballot, you know, And on both of these pages there are like the different different candidate names and parties The problem is, in order to pick a candidate, you have to punch like a whole, you have to punch one of the one of these

served circles. But these st goals are in a line down the middle of the crease of the ballot, right, so you have you have candidates on both You should you should google what these look like because it's kind of hard to explain. But basically what's happening is that there are there are different party names on each side

of the ballot. But then in order to pick which party you're voting for, you have to pick for a specific hole that's supposed to be next to the like that the candidate you support it in the in the middle of the page. And the problem is these are all on a line, right, They're all a straight line, which means that two candidates can be like across from each other on the same page or on on opposite pages.

And then there's two holes that are like right next because because the holes are both in the middle of the ballot, right, so that you have these situations where for example, for and this is the one that's important inside of the there's like two lines and then there's like it says al Gore Lieberman in it right, and inside of those two lines in the in the in the middle of the page, there are two holes, and one of these holds votes for Core but the other

one of those holes I is for the candidate on the other side of the page, which is Reformed Party candidate and cryptal fascist goal Pat Buchanan. And the result of this and says, people start looking through these things where Pat Buchanan has a bunch of voters from Democratic Party strongholds and like also particularly like like a bunch of like Democratic Catholic voters vote for Buchanan, and Buchanan

himself is like, there's no way this is real. Like Buchanan's like, you know, he's he's a figure will probably like one day do a like we'll probably talk about more on this podcast. Yeah, that those behind the Baschard's episode about him. He is a he is a fucking Nazi. Uh, he sucks ass. But he's also so he's some a kind of evangelical who like really really really fucking hates Catholics.

And you know, so there's a bunch of these Catholic like Democratic voters he voted for this guy, and everyone's like what the funk happened here. The thing that happened here is all these people got confused. And yeah, so this is a disaster on a hundred million levels. And when we come back from ADS, we will talk about the product of all of this, which is not good. Alright,

we're back. So on election night, the media starts to call Florida for Gore based on exit pulling, but they start getting calls for Republican political operatives saying, hold hold on, hold on, it's actually too close to call. And the initial count from Florida has the Republican Party ahead. But when I say the Hublican Party is ahead, they were ahead by like six hundred votes. And so this triggers

a mandatory recount. But and this, and this is another problem with this, right we we we We've gone through atlant all of the problems with these ballots. Right. The recall that they do is a recall using the voting machines. And those voting machines our guess what the ones that are. If if you if you rerun a funked up Chad ballot through the same voting machine, it's going to get a fucked up result. So okay, so they run this again and the difference in votes comes down to FLEC

five hundred votes. And at this point, Gore's campaign requests a manual recount. They want people to look at the ballots by hand and figure out who people actually voted for,

because these machines are a fucking shit show. But in any kind of sort of like you know, and even remotely competent or saying, like democratic political system, there would be a bunch of people doing this like they're there, you know, like when when an election happens, they would be just a very very large number of people mobilize to make sure that it runs smoothly. There's not there's

like a bunch of like unbelievably overworked and underpaid. Some people are people who also people who are just sucking volunteers, like a bunch of just random, like unbelievably exhausted like local election officials who have to do this recount. And this is where the Bush campaign sees their chance to steal the election. So the election happens no November seven, and on November eleven, the Bush campaign sues to stop

the recount. Now, we talked on a previous episode a while back about the Democrats how they have this line in the two thousand's about how they're part of the quote reality based community and how this is a reflection of you know, if you look at the whole quote, which is from a Republican political strategist, I what's actually what they're saying here is that what's happening is that the Democrats observe reality. Well, the Republicans set out to

define reality. And this is the moment, this election is where we get to see how the daynat we we we we we get to like really first see these these principles in action. I'm gonna read from the Washington Post here. Unlike the Gore campaign, which focused on filing motions in Florida courts to keep the recount going in key counties like Miami Dodd, the Bush campaign waged a broader, costlier effort on multiple fronts. Blakeman said it was a

three pronged effort. He said it was a court battle, it was a recount organization, and it was also a pr effort because although the voting effort ended, the campaign never did until there was a definitive winner. So what happens here is Republicans start this massive media blitz to

convince people that Bush actually won the election. And this this is a really really important moment in sort of American history because it's one of the things that solidifies um is one of the things that solidifies sort of

like like owning the lib for example. It's like a major point, and it's like like one of the key focal points of America of Republican politics, and this is eventually going to consume like all of their politics, right until when we get this sort of you know, like now right where that's like we're owning the Libs is

the only thing this is about. You know, this, this owning the Libs is kind of like it's it's been a partner of Republican politics for a long time, but this is where we really start to see it sort of consuming everything. And Okay, if you look at their like like what they're saying, by modern standards, it is incredibly weak ship, right. This is like this is a culture that is just a burge from the nineties. Nobody has invented real posted yet, but it is really on

the lips stuff. Like they have this whole campaign where they call the goyal Libramain campaign sore loser man, and everyone has like sore loser man hats, and like they have all these like printed signs and like T shirts and they're selling merch and you know, and so you know, they're running basically an OP, and they're running an OPT to convince everyone that like, no, actually we legitimately won this election and it's over, and the recounts just people

being but heard they lost. And this is where things get really really weird. So in Miami DoD where there's a manual recount going on, a bunch of protesters in fancy suits show up but starts screaming at election workers. Now, if this was the old Democratic Party machine like LBJ, would have personally pushed six of these guys out a window and the recount would have been run by like

sixty of the earliest dudes, the entire Chicago mob. But this is the incredibly decrepit two thousand Democratic Party, who have replaced all their mob guys with consultants. And these people legitimately, like you know, they believe in the rules and the norms and the process. And the result of this is that Bush literally destroys the entire United States. And I think, like irrevocably damaged, like the entirety of the of you know, like what what whatever is left

to the American democratic system. So how how this is achieved? But back in Miami DoD this Democratic Party operative is seen walking around the recount area with a ballot. Now this is a blank ballot, right, this guy is going to see he's going with an election official to go see if he can replicate like the like how they h has stuff happens to prove that, like this is

what's going on. But the publicans see this guy and they immediately start screaming about how the Democrats are staling in the election, and they like beat this ship out of this guy, and just a full on riot starts in this government building and it works. The recount stops. The election workers are terrified. The recount yeah, like the like everything stopped for the day, they can't do anything. And the next day the recount is fully stopped. It

never resumes, And the Republicans are stunned by this. They assumed that, like, you know, the political operatives doing the rioting, we're gonna like face some oppositions to the Democrats on the ground for you know, like literally assaulting and intimidating a bunch of election workers in order to like stop votes from being counted. But there's they they don't, there's

there's nothing, there's no resistance at all. Um. Here's a quote from Douglas Hay, who is there a Republican Political Operatives, who is one of the organizers of the Brooks Brothers riot, who he tried to do a redemption arc in the media to sort of like be like, oh, I was part of the Brooks Brothers riot. But even I think the stop the steel stuff is bad, which like I think my man doth protests too much. Um, here's just

the quote. I still don't understand how it was that we completely outmatched the Democrats, hey says, And this is how Bush wins the election. The Supreme Court, which again it should also be know the Streame Court is staffed by a bunch of George H. W. Bush appointees. Um. Eventually here's the Clayic case and decides that the constitution says that the winner the winner has to be declared by a certain time, so there's no time for a recount.

And they have the election and the Bush and this is achieved, and this is possible because of the Brooks Brothers riot and the Brooks Brothers, right, is what this whole sort of Republican opertor things comes to be known because they're all wearing Brooks Brothers suits. Um. Now, okay, there are a lot of people involved in this riot who are like at the core of modern Republican politics. Um. Yeah,

Neil Gorrich and AMYCLEMYN. Barritt, and I think there's actually one other like Paris and Republicans of elevated senior office. There are multiple people on the Supreme Court today who were on the Bush legal team when they were doing this. And you know, there's also the question of the extent to which roger Stone has involved. He asked roger Stone,

he claims to have organized literally this entire thing. Um. Now, other people who were involved with they claimed that roger Stone was like fucked off at a hotel somewhere else and didn't was just sort of around and didn't actually

organize it. But either way, this set a precedent for how you can rig an election, which is if you if you can seize the majority on the Supreme Court with sort of like when you know you can put your sort of loyal minions there and then you can have an initial count of an election that looked that that that looks like it's favoring you, even if that's

not actually true. If you then have an initial count of an election that says that you win, and then you can stop and then you were able to stop votes from being counted from November until January, you will win the election. That that is that that is the precedents that was installed by by the two election. And if you look at the Stop the Still campaign, this is exactly what Trump is trying to do. Then literally

Roger Stone is also trying to do this. Right, Um, this is this is this is this is what stop is still is. Right. You can you can find Trump

talking about this monthly for the election. Right. This this, this is why he was trying to do his whole thing about about the mail in batt because he and Roger Stone and sort of all the political operators who are involved in the circles were like, okay, so we know that that a bunch of Democrats are gonna do mail in ballots because of COVID, because they don't want to be there at the ballots. They know that the

initial count is going to favor them. And I think people have forgotten this, but if you remember the night of the election in I remember like like even a bunch of my friends who were like people who were you know, like like fairly serious, like I don't know politics nowhere, people were really deeply invested in politics, like thought that Trump had won the election because what would have been counted on that night was just was just the sort of initially wasn't counting the mail in ballots,

and so yeah, the plan was just to delegitimate mail in ballots in the eyes of of sort of the well mostly the Republican based, but like sort of the American populacets the whole, and then have a bunch of people physically assault these centers to get him to stop the places where these votes are being counted, to get

him to stop the count and it doesn't work. And it doesn't work I think partially because but yeah, those few things, Like one of the things is that you know you can't if you're gonna do a play like this, you have to run it like you you you are relying on the sort of physical intimidation of the court workers. But mostly what you need to do is make sure that it's stuck in a court fight. And the problem is that like the sort of modern like Trump based people,

like they don't have any competent lawyers. The root of Giuliani is like trying to do this ship or whatever. But like that guy, I don't know that that guy may have known what a law was in like nineteen seventy three, but his brain has been just melted by like inhaling cigar smoke and truly copious about a drug. So you know, they're not they're not really able to

sort of pull this off, but Bush is. And the result of this is the American reaction at eleven is the war in the Rock is basically the the the sort of complete annihilation of like then like this is slightly an exaggeration, but like the concept of freedom in the US, like the ability for you not to be constantly surveiled, the ability for you to like you know, live live in a society in which there's like every single thing you do isn't being monitored by a thousand

different kinds of police stations who are all sharing your tweets so they can fucking grab people out off of the road and sucking unmarked fans, right, Like, that's all stuff that is a specific product of the sort of kind of fascism at the Bush administration deploys. And they're able to do this because they just try to stole an election. And now we all, we all sort of just live in in the permanent afterlife of the Brooks

Brothers riot. This is what January sixth was. This is what stop the Steel is, and it's what the that's what the modern Republican Party is. So yeah, it's happy holidays, ye everyone. I hope you have a good new year. And uh, in Chlaw, we will destroy these fashion Republican bastards and make sure that none of them ever get to do this again.