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Merged 2024 Election Thread

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My point was, if the 1/6 Rioters held Congress at gunpoint and said "certify Trump the winner or y'all dead", courts would very likely deem that vote to be null & void.

Assuming that the courts were then free of such coercion, sure. If Congress had been coerced at gunpoint, that significantly raises the chance that the courts would end up being coerced, too, though, in practice. However, Jan 6 wasn't the scenario invoked. Given that the scenario actually invoked involves quite widespread coercion throughout for the sake of making the point, in such a scenario the courts would be nigh certain to be either complicit or under duress. If one wants to poke at a more real world example of something much closer to such an election - Russia's sham annexation elections in Ukraine. Russia's elections in general have serious issues, of course, from various legitimacy angles, even if they're not engaging in direct coercion. Going by the argument that you had started with, sufficiently widespread coercion and duplicity would make things entirely legitimate, even if they utterly trample upon... everything good, really. When that was pointed out, your attempted defense became an attempted appeal to how an institution was totally invulnerable to duress and duplicity and had the power to magically enforce its rulings, despite a long and unpleasant history of such being quite vulnerable to both duress and duplicity, here and elsewhere, and judgements being frequently difficult to enforce in the face of opposition in many cases even at good times. That's honestly not much of an argument here.

To get down to a more fundamental level, though, the issues at hand have far more to do with what legitimacy actually is and how legitimacy actually works. Those are questions that are very poorly served with superficial and overly simplistic answers, even if such answers are the easy ones.
 
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The Supreme Court would say that the vote at gunpoint is clearly Unconstitutional, and that since the regular counting of Electoral Votes is fouled up, it would have to be resolved by a vote in the House by the State Legislatures (where the Republicans have a majority).
Talk about a catalyst for a civil war. :eye-poppi
 
Contingent Election is not a recipe for civil war. Its a contingency set forth in the Constitution in case no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes.

But in this case the election would've only gotten to the contingency because of a mob of insurrectionists led by the losing presidential candidate. Fun fact though, a number of the founders believed the Presidential election would usually go to Congress because most states would have their own candidate in mind.
 
Contingent Election is not a recipe for civil war. Its a contingency set forth in the Constitution in case no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes.

I know that. But the problem happens when the Democratic candidate wins by millions of votes and the GOP pulls off a BS move allowing red states with minority populations to install the GOP candidate.
 
Its all just fantasies anyway.

It's not just fantasies! Trump actually tried something like this! It happened on live television and was witnessed by millions of people!

He sent a mob to the Capitol building to disrupt the lawful transition of power and stay in power! Many of his supporters have stated frequently that they are willing to do it again! It is absurd to minimize it simply because it didn't work the first time!
 
It's not just fantasies! Trump actually tried something like this! It happened on live television and was witnessed by millions of people!

He sent a mob to the Capitol building to disrupt the lawful transition of power and stay in power! Many of his supporters have stated frequently that they are willing to do it again! It is absurd to minimize it simply because it didn't work the first time!

Forcing Congress to certify the wrong winner and then forcing the Supreme Court to rule thst the certification under duress was legal, is a fantasy.

Surely the National Guard would step in and resolve this quickly.

Or the Marines.
 
Forcing Congress to certify the wrong winner and then forcing the Supreme Court to rule thst the certification under duress was legal, is a fantasy.

Surely the National Guard would step in and resolve this quickly.

Or the Marines.

Why would they need to force the Supreme Court to do anything?

Do the certification vote at gunpoint, then the rebels leave town, neutralizing the immediate threat. After that, there is some legal argy-bargy about whether or not that vote counts or not, it gets sent to the 6-3 Supreme Court, the Supreme Court rules the vote was invalid but that since the certification date is passed, it has to be resolved by the House delegations.

Our idiotic media would probably paint that as a sensible compromise, as they didn't validate the gunpoint vote after all...
 
Why would they need to force the Supreme Court to do anything?

Do the certification vote at gunpoint, then the rebels leave town, neutralizing the immediate threat. After that, there is some legal argy-bargy about whether or not that vote counts or not, it gets sent to the 6-3 Supreme Court, the Supreme Court rules the vote was invalid but that since the certification date is passed, it has to be resolved by the House delegations.

Our idiotic media would probably paint that as a sensible compromise, as they didn't validate the gunpoint vote after all...

Okee :)
 
Forcing Congress to certify the wrong winner and then forcing the Supreme Court to rule thst the certification under duress was legal, is a fantasy.

Surely the National Guard would step in and resolve this quickly.

Or the Marines.

With an argument like that, one sorta has to wonder whether you are intent upon claiming that coups and autocoups are simply impossible or trying to argue that we should be assuming that they're effectively impossible. "It Can't Happen Here!"

It also looks like it's little more than an attempted diversion and distraction from the issues of legitimacy, because you really have nothing to stand on when it comes to the things that were actually raised. Hence the attempted appeal to some magical invulnerability and incorruptability of the system. Hence the attempted dismissal as fantasy of the hypothetical that illustrated the nature of what you actually argued and why it's problematic, rather than actually dealing with such.

Also, "Constitution, so shut up" makes for a pretty terrible argument when you've shown yourself perfectly willing to utterly ignore the Constitution when it suits you.
 
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Probably has a lot to do with why a number of right wing propagandists were freaking out about Taylor Swift and how effective her recommendation that people vote was.

They're terrified she's gonna like be handed a mic during the superbowl and say free concert tickets for anyone who votes Biden!!!
 
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