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We've had almost 250 years of a peaceful transition of power. Our constitution is mostly about how we elect and who can be elected or appointed to the three branches of government. The Bill of rights and other amendments that people like to argue and litigate before the supreme court came later.
It's worked pretty well for quite a while, but I'd say ran into a speed bump back on 2,000. That was when massive vote culling occured in Florida to swing the election in a state with a lot of electoral votes. Most of the hanky panky happened by simply crossing people off of voting rolls. Like people with the same names as convicted felons or for any other reason. Lots of Tyrones and what not. There were also very limited numbers of voting machines in districts that vote Dem in heavy numbers. Would you wait 5 hours in the sun to vote? Me neither.
Florida also uses a punch card system and disqualified votes if the tiny piece of paper wasn't all the way detached. When a manual recount was held to physically look at voting cards to determine the vote there were organised disruptions by imported lawyers and out of state advocates. Ultimately a Republican Supreme Court voting on party lines stopped the counting of votes to assign G W Bush the presidency, which lead to ignored warnings of 9/11, the Iraq war of choice and occupation of that country, occupation of Afghanistan, etc.
Every election since then has been tainted with that original sin of a stolen election. Gore had half a million more votes, but Bush had one more electoral vote. In 08 and 16 our government again changed hands, peacefully. As always there were quite a few shenanigans with voting rolls and machines, all things controlled by states. 2016 was a squeeker that no one saw coming. All the polling suggested Hillary Clinton would win handily, and indeed she got almost 3 million more votes, but we vote by electoral votes, not directly, and Trump won 18,000 more votes where it counted.
To legitimize the peaceful transfer of power the sitting President, Barack Obama invited Trump and his wife to the White House the very next morning to pose for photographers. That's how adults support our democracy and the constitution.
By 20 we had gotten pretty good at using paper back ups for every single vote cast by machine. No one wanted to trust to computers alone. We also have provisional ballots, people for any reason not on the rolls who insist they are legal voters. Those votes are verified and counted, also overseas votes, absentee ballots, and mail in ballots.
And then we have the sore loser Trump, who rather than losing like a grown up and congratulating the fellow who bested him, he insists he won based on nothing, and demands fealty to the big lie like an emperor's new clothes type thing. Trump had a lot of good ideas and did some real good things for our country, but he was also a covid denier and that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, so he got voted out. That's how things go.
The big question now is are we going to have peaceful transitions of power into the future. I'm confident the Republican Party will win both houses of congress in 22 and the Presidency in 24. Will they appoint someone President for life? Or will they change our system to assure 90% of the vote the way Putin does? The Supreme court is becoming ever more partisan and acrimonious, can we depend on them to uphold the constitution?
A lot depends on who is elected in 24.
It's worked pretty well for quite a while, but I'd say ran into a speed bump back on 2,000. That was when massive vote culling occured in Florida to swing the election in a state with a lot of electoral votes. Most of the hanky panky happened by simply crossing people off of voting rolls. Like people with the same names as convicted felons or for any other reason. Lots of Tyrones and what not. There were also very limited numbers of voting machines in districts that vote Dem in heavy numbers. Would you wait 5 hours in the sun to vote? Me neither.
Florida also uses a punch card system and disqualified votes if the tiny piece of paper wasn't all the way detached. When a manual recount was held to physically look at voting cards to determine the vote there were organised disruptions by imported lawyers and out of state advocates. Ultimately a Republican Supreme Court voting on party lines stopped the counting of votes to assign G W Bush the presidency, which lead to ignored warnings of 9/11, the Iraq war of choice and occupation of that country, occupation of Afghanistan, etc.
Every election since then has been tainted with that original sin of a stolen election. Gore had half a million more votes, but Bush had one more electoral vote. In 08 and 16 our government again changed hands, peacefully. As always there were quite a few shenanigans with voting rolls and machines, all things controlled by states. 2016 was a squeeker that no one saw coming. All the polling suggested Hillary Clinton would win handily, and indeed she got almost 3 million more votes, but we vote by electoral votes, not directly, and Trump won 18,000 more votes where it counted.
To legitimize the peaceful transfer of power the sitting President, Barack Obama invited Trump and his wife to the White House the very next morning to pose for photographers. That's how adults support our democracy and the constitution.
By 20 we had gotten pretty good at using paper back ups for every single vote cast by machine. No one wanted to trust to computers alone. We also have provisional ballots, people for any reason not on the rolls who insist they are legal voters. Those votes are verified and counted, also overseas votes, absentee ballots, and mail in ballots.
And then we have the sore loser Trump, who rather than losing like a grown up and congratulating the fellow who bested him, he insists he won based on nothing, and demands fealty to the big lie like an emperor's new clothes type thing. Trump had a lot of good ideas and did some real good things for our country, but he was also a covid denier and that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, so he got voted out. That's how things go.
The big question now is are we going to have peaceful transitions of power into the future. I'm confident the Republican Party will win both houses of congress in 22 and the Presidency in 24. Will they appoint someone President for life? Or will they change our system to assure 90% of the vote the way Putin does? The Supreme court is becoming ever more partisan and acrimonious, can we depend on them to uphold the constitution?
A lot depends on who is elected in 24.
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