At what point do Election Deniers get their comeuppance in the media, in the courts, and especially in public opinion? Some of the tribe of lawyers are already getting sanctioned, and some commentators say MAGA = Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.
Every single person who challenges the results of the 2020 election should read at LEAST the Wikipedia summary of the Bush V. Gore election: Bush v. Gore - Wikipedia
Just 1 sub-paragraph in that entry should be enough to convince someone who SERIOUSLY believes elections are not trustworthy, that the 2000 election was FAR more suspect than the 2020 election:
On November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush won with 48.8% of the vote in Florida, a margin of victory of 1,784 votes. [8]
The margin of victory was less than 0.5% of the votes cast, so a statutorily-mandated [9] automatic machine recount occurred. On November 10, with the machine recount apparently finished in all but one county, Bush's margin of victory had decreased to 327 votes. [10]
Keep in mind that this 327 - 1,784 vote difference is far less than any of the vote differences between Biden and Trump. Biden won no state by less than 10,000 votes, and it would have taken 3 state reversals to give Trump the victory instead of Biden. No Supreme Court decision put a recount on hold, Florida was rife with nepotism, with Bush's brother the Governor in Florida then, and 1,000s of mostly minority voters were wrongly purged from the voting roles by legislation enforced by Governor Jeb Bush and his corrupt Secretary of State.
Yet Gore conceded the election, when as V.P. and titular head of the Senate, he had options to keep fighting the outcome, which many, including me, still think to this day he should have done. See the first 20 minutes of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 to see how controversial Bush's "victory" was back then. It's gone down the national memory hole, but shouldn't have.
The reason we have the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that has now produced such automated voting processes is due to the mess of the 2000 election - for better or worse (worse in NYC, where I live, since the old analog mechanical machines were unhackable and could not produce a disputed result, though they could break in a binary way: either they worked or they didn't). Still, the past election and the 2020 election didn't have "hanging chads," teams of partisan observers and SCOTUS controversy that suppressed the count, so it's much better and cleaner today.
The objections to the election 2000 results have all been repeatedly debunked, or dismissed due to lack of standing or timeliness (just like the SCOTUS 2000 decision ran out the clock, deliberately in that case). Independent audits (and even a biased one in Arizona), mandatory recounts, and additional oversight provide integrity that couldn't be dreamed of in 2000.
Voter suppression reduced the Georgia runoff by a significant degree this year, 2022, up to a million votes, says Greg Palast, a former statistics teacher and investigative reporter who's been following voter suppression since at least 2016. See his new movie, "Vigilante" for how Georgia's (probably) racist Governor suppressed the vote, along with Raffensburger, who did everything he could to disenfranchise minorities voters, short of outright breaking the law.
I'm not naive. I know that nothing, no amount of proof or argument, will persuade the MAGA crowd that TFG lost the election. But it's become even worse, with election subversion - and that's what it is, and not a sincere effort to make elections more secure - having become a defining feature of MAGAism - a movement that may transcend and outlast Trump. This rogue element needs to be shut down, with each and every objection forcefully rebutted in a public forum available to all. We have enough evidence from the January 6 committee and many others, including court cases and legitimate media, to do so. Sanctions need to be leveled against the lawyers too, as they're starting to be, and some acceleration in hearing those cases needs to be undertaken, though that has begun too. Judges generally know what the jig is, the endless delays in hopes that a more favorable administration will just override the judicial system. They are fighting back with accelerated hearings, but it needs to go further to punish frivolous lawsuits. Free speech does not extend to court proceedings, where lies and deliberately misleading the court can and should be punished.
I hope the Dominion cases bankrupt some of the greatest Election Subverters, and in some cases, they should be charged with Seditious Conspiracy too, if they knowingly tried to undermine the electoral process and prevent the lawful change of power.
There should be no doubt: subverting the integrity of elections and casting needless doubt on the process threatens democracy itself. The electorate, though suppressed and threatened, has spoken at the ballot box, though perhaps not as fully as it would have without gerrymandered states and closed primaries that independents can't vote in.
Oh, and one more thing: it is WAY past time to charge and prosecute Trump.
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