Switching slates of electoral college members needn't work everywhere in order to work

[skip fox]

He will try everything in every viable state to steal the election. The ploy of getting a new slate of electoral college candidates many only work in one or two states, but since he's trying many ploys, he could steal elections in other states in other ways:

After the election, he could have DOJ lawyers contesting ballots.

After the election he can bus in crowds (like R. Stone, I believe, did in 2000) to disrupt vote counting of absentee ballots (with attendant news coverage to galvanize his rabid followers).

During the election, he could encourage the most militant members of his base to stand the requisite distance from polling place doors (from 30-200 feet depending on the state) and they could even be armed.

After the election he could try to have the courts stop the counting of ballots 10 hours after the polls close.

Etc., etc. (There are better imaginations on this than mine.)

Let's not ignore or discount any of these just because one of them (like switching slates of electoral college members) wouldn't work everywhere.

Let's prepare for a blitz!

[rzemanfl]

1. Not to mention the PSYOP will be pushing every cockamamie theory

imaginable and firing up the cult.

[frazzled]

2. It's happened before, and they will try it again

By James Hohmann
with Mariana Alfaro

Trump balloting machinations heighten fears of 1876 redux

Rehnquist’s book was entitled “Centennial Crisis” because 1876 was the country’s 100th birthday. Gov. Samuel Tilden (D-N.Y.) won more votes than Gov. Rutherford Hayes (R-Ohio) in the election, but four states sent rival slates of electors to Congress. Democrats had won control of the House in the 1874 midterms while Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House. That is the same balance of power as now, although both parties are very, very, very different.

To referee the dispute, a 15-member commission was formed with seven Democrats, seven Republicans and an independent. But one of the five Supreme Court justices on the commission, an independent, was induced to quit by being offered a Senate seat. He was replaced by a Republican. This gave the GOP an 8-to-7 edge on the committee, which used it to Hayes’s advantage. But Democrats threatened to use parliamentary shenanigans in Congress to block the certification process.

There were widespread fears of a second Civil War. The outgoing president, Ulysses Grant, mobilized troops and made contingency plans for martial law in case there were dueling inaugurations.

Ultimately, the outcome of the presidential election was hashed out during a secret meeting at a D.C. hotel called Wormley’s. In a particularly odious deal, now known as the Compromise of 1877, Democrats agreed to let Republicans hold on to the White House if Hayes would commit, for all intents and purposes, to end Reconstruction and withdraw federal troops from Southern states that had been in rebellion, where they were deployed to protect the rights of freed slaves.

“Military withdrawal brought lynchings, voter suppression and segregation,” said Richard Kreitner, the author of “Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union.”