An Arizona lawmaker who signed on to be a “fake elector” for Donald Trump after the former president lost his bid for a second term has introduced a bill that would allow members of the statehouse to overturn future election results that they don’t like.
The bill, formally known as Senate Concurrent Resolution 1014 and sponsored by state Sen. Anthony Kern, seeks to bypass the popular vote altogether.
“[I]t is the responsibility of the Arizona Secretary of State to certify elections, including elections for President of the United States, but the sole authority to appoint presidential electors is granted to the Legislature,” the four-line bill reads. Therefore, it concludes, “[T]he Legislature, and no other official, shall appoint presidential electors in accordance with the United States Constitution.”
Giving the legislature absolute power to control Arizona’s electoral college votes, regardless of who won the popular vote, would disenfranchise millions of Arizonans.
“fake elector” does not need quotes, he forged an election document and then mailed it in in an effort to falsify the election results. He is a fake elector, no quotes.
So why isn’t he in jail? The US is completely fucked.
The department of Justice is investigating everyone involved, but each state gets to choose whether or not to prosecute, and being that these conservatives are all cowards and liars, instead of admitting what they did was illegal, so far everyone’s main defense has been “there’s no specific legal code that says I can’t write election documents in specifically, this way for specifically this election and send them to the national archives and to the vice president specifically”, so the US legal system has to process their claims and each state has to decide whether or not that’s a legitimate claim.
One of the conspirators, chesebro, who I will call cheese bro from now on for sake of speech to text brevity, has pled guilty to conspiracy in Georgia and is working with authorities in Georgia and at least four other states as of last month.
So all of these investigations are still going on, but all of the people who forged these documents and mail them in are wealthy and politically connected and have lawyers and refuse to take responsibility for their actions, so they’re delaying matters as long as they can.
Despite this investigations are moving forward and after 3 years, cheese bro is working with authorities to further these investigations and prosecutions, so everything is moving forward, it’s just taking as much time as you may expect.
People have been subpoenaed but no dates are set for them to be questioned, State prosecutors can’t agree whether or not to prosecute them in state or refer cases to federal prosecutors; powerful states rights are a very cool part of the United States, you can go drive to Colorado and smoke weed tomorrow if you want to, but you’ll be shot in Texas for it, but it also makes it difficult to uniformly prosecute conspirators in different states.
And all of these states have active ongoing investigations that have developments every couple of months or so, so nothing is being put off indefinitely, everyone who wants to build these cases is just taking their time and building the cases strongly as possible, and it took three years, but they have one of the main conspirators, cheese bro, now working with them in five of the states.
A good parallel might be when Trump raped E jean Carroll. This was obviously a much smaller case involving only two people, witnesses and evidence concerning them, and that case started in 2019 and didn’t conclude until last month.
So we can expect that a seven-state conspiracy of fake electors forging documents, mailing them to the national archives and to pence, is going to take more time than that, especially with multiple criminal aspects rather than being civil cases.
I’ll add the US isn’t f*****. Trump was found liable for " sexual assault " he committed, New York is changing their legal definition of rape because the only reason Trump was found liable for sexual assault instead of rape is because New York has an antiquated legal definition of rape where it has to include a penis.
These are both good outcomes that show people in the states are working to make the legal system more fair.
The justice system is by no means fair and it won’t be for a long time, probably forever, but the US isn’t f*****, it’s just filled with people trying to make it better while it’s simultaneously trying to be pulled back into bigotry and special treatment by conservatives.
deleted by creator
Thanks. I take the time so I can learn about it myself as well, since there are usually updates or details of a case I’m not aware of, I can look them up and refine my awareness of the situation before posting about it.
You can say “fuck”
My speech to text has a curse filter with just like a couple f****** words omitted, although I can still say like dick and twat, and like half the time it doesn’t notice s***, but I find it super funny whenever it bleeps something out so I’ve just left it on.
Question: how do you compose such a long post (as above) with speech to text? Do you just have a masterful ability to dictate a point eloquently, first time, or do you have to go back and make edits manually afterwards?
I noticed verbal fillers in your (presumably lower effort, as its shorter) response, but none so noticeable in your longer initial post- which surprises me if both were only dictated
I definitely go back and make manual edits of my posts, since I hate reading errors in comments for a number of reasons.
I also want people to engage with these comments, so making them easier, or at least more clear, to read is probably a good way to go.
deleted by creator
Meanwhile: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/03/fight-to-vote-tennessee-pamela-moses-convicted
There’s something different about this person than the guy in OP, but I just can’t put my finger on it…
Because the fascists have, in reality, always been in control. We were never a democratic or a free country.
Insane that these people are still in office
That’s what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum.
That’s what happens when you don’t hang or imprison seditoinists.
id prefer the government not lock people in cages or kill them.
I 100% agree with you, actually. That’s a noble goal. But you will always end up being taken advantage of for this belief by people who will deserve imprisonment or execution.
There is a fun read by H. Beam Piper called lone star planet. In it citizen’s were allowed to assassinate government officials given the caveat they surrendered immediately. They are then brought to trial and if they are able to prove the official was doing more harm than good to the populace they were let go with no charges.
So that’s the most un-American crap I’ve read all day… The power belongs to the people damn it!
It goes to show how much of the US electoral system is based on essentially good faith and convention.
Trump has shown that our entire system is based on nothing more than good faith and convention. Not only does the Constitution not provide any guidance whatsoever about what to do when those in charge refuse to exercise that good faith and convention, but the past few years have shown that even the slightest deviation from that good faith and convention can cause the entire system to come crashing down.
If it comes between abandoning conservatism, or abandoning democracy, republicans will 100% of the time abandon democracy.
As vile as it is, it’s in line with the US Constitution. The state legislature have the authority to select electors in the manner they see fit. All currently use some kind of popular vote to select the electors, but they don’t have to do it that way. In fact, in Bush v Gore the Court hinted that the method to determine the electors could even be changed after the November election.
Prove it.
“If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy,”
We are here.
We have been here for many years now.
I highly doubt this would ever pass its clearly just insane. It’s basically asking for a civil war in Arizona to start…
I’m not saying it’s not batshit insane, but is it any worse than the “where’s your papers, brown person?” “Immigration” law from the same state?
I wouldn’t put it past Arizona Republicans to pass this.
Yes, it’s worse. One authoritarian policy is bad, but the scope of the damage is limited. The damage caused by undermining democracy enables an unlimited amount of authoritarian policies.
Hmm, good point. When you put like that, I agree.
They can’t pass anything alone. This is performative bullshit for fascists.
Gee, I distinctly remember a certain group doing similar “Papers, please” stops awhile back. And they held a lot of similar views, too… Hmm
Exactly.
Whether it would pass is beside the point. The fact that a lawmaker had the inclination, let alone the audacity, to introduce it in the first place – and especially that he hasn’t immediately been forced to resign as a result – is 1000% a severe indictment of how diseased our society has become.
I wouldn’t put that above us. This state is so red they could effortlessly pull off the mental gymnastics necessary to turn this into a win for the people. Anyone on Lemmy that lives in Arizona needs to start protesting on the weekends. Make this the second city that doesn’t sleep, because our legislature can’t keep the boards on their windows intact.
Fucking fascists are downright enemies of democracy
Lemme guess, they’re calling it the “Every Vote Counts!” bill, yes?
Forever grateful that the cold of MN kicks out the crazies, even if they grew up here. Kern can shove this bill right back up his kernhole
You don’t need a bill to do this. Electors are not required to vote the way the public does. Just do away with the electoral college. It’s a positively ancient election method. Trump lost the popular vote.
Faithless electors are illegal in a number of states.
Then why do they even exist? You could replace them with 2 lines of code.
https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/2R/bills/SCR1014P.htm
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
Republicans will never stop trying to steal elections
Why even have an election then?
So we can pretend that they represent the will of the people rather than the will of those in power who know how to game the system. A worse version of what it already is now.
I mean, fine. I live in Arizona and I have a crowbar that does let me shatter kneecaps.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
