15 July 2022 — 1042 mdt
Montana GOP central committees adopt reality rejecting
resolutions alleging Biden was not elected legitimately
By James Conner
An excellent story at the Montana Free Press reports that the Republican Party’s central committees in Ravalli and Lewis and Clark Counties recently declared that Joe Biden is not a legitimately elected president. A report in the Western Montana News (not the newspaper in Libby) tells the story from the MAGA point of view.Across the nation Republicans are adopting similar resolutions, all premised on delusions and proven falsehoods about election irregularities. This willingness to ignore and reject is the mass psychosis of cult behavior; in this case, the personality cult of former President Donald Trump, a proven liar and a full blown sociopath.
Republicans not yet committed to passing these resolutions may want to read two reports on the 2020 election written by Republicans, one in January, one recently.
LOST, NOT STOLEN
This week, at lostnotstolen.org, Senator John Danforth, Benjamin Ginsberg (the GOP’s leading elections lawyer), The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, The Honorable J. Michael Luttig, The Honorable Michael W. McConnell, The Honorable Theodore B. Olson, and Senator Gordon H. Smith released LOST, NOT STOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. According to CNN, Danforth, et al
…looked at more than 60 court cases Trump and his supporters filed and lost in six key battleground states. It reached the “unequivocal” conclusion that the former Republican president’s claims were unsupportable — which Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security as well as election officials nationwide debunked days after the 2020 election. [CNN news report.]
In Arizona, one of the six states examined, and home of the zaniest rump recount in the history of American elections, the report attributes Trump’s loss not to fraud but to his rejection by Republicans who voted for other Republican candidates.
Disaffection for Trump among Republican voters led to ticket-splitting that hurt Trump and helped Biden. Nearly 60,000 voters did not vote for Trump even though they voted Republican down-ballot; of these, 39,000 voted for Biden. Considering only the two most populous counties in the state, more than 74,000 disaffected Republicans did not vote for Trump in 2020; 65% of these (48,577 votes) voted for Biden; those 48,577 votes alone represent 4.6 times Biden’s margin of victory over Trump. Trump lost significant ground from 2016 among college-educated white women. In 2016, he bested Clinton among that group 48% to 46%. In 2020, Biden won 56% of their vote, leaving 44% for Trump. Biden also performed well among the growing population of Spanish-speaking voters, receiving 70% of the vote.
Trump and some of his supporters maintain that Arizona’s certified results were fraudulent. Their evidence falls far short of their claims. Post-election reviews by state election officials found only 182 allegations of voter fraud that merited review. Of that number, only four allegations led to charges, and no person’s vote was counted more than once. After conducting a state investigation, the Associated Press did not find widespread voter fraud.
After Trump and his supporters alleged that rigged Dominion voting machines cost him the election, the Board of Supervisors in the largest county in the state, Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, conducted a forensic audit of their Dominion voting machines. The Board retained two independent auditing firms experienced at analyzing election counts and accredited by the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission to certify the trustworthiness of voting machines. The audit determined that the Dominion machines worked properly and found no evidence of manipulation. An independent review resulting from an agreement between the Republican State Senate and Maricopa County found that the county’s vote-counting machines were not connected to the internet and found no evidence of data deletion, purging, or overwriting or other evidence of obstruction. [LOST, NOT STOLEN, pages 7–8, footnote numbers omitted.]
CORRECTING THE RECORD
After Arizona’s rump recount was completed, the elections department of Republican controlled Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county and home of Phoenix, analyzed the rump process and issued a 92-page report, CORRECTING THE RECORD, debunking it (download the report's exhibits). Detailed and pellucid, the report also serves as a primer on conducting elections. Here’s its summary of its finding:
After an in-depth analysis and review of the reports and presentations issued by the Senate’s contractors, we determined that nearly every finding included faulty analysis, inaccurate claims, misleading conclusions, and a lack of understanding of federal and state election laws. Our review of the claims made by Cyber Ninjas, CyFIR, EchoMail, and the Senate’s Audit Liaisons, found:
- 22 were misleading. The claims lead the reader to assume a conclusion that is not supported by the evidence.
- 41 were inaccurate. The claims include flawed or misstated analysis.
- 13 were false. The claims are demonstrably false and can be proven false using materials provided to the Senate.
Republican cult behavior endangers democracy
According to Politifact, 70 percent of Republicans believe, overwhelming evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that the 2020 presidential election was won by Trump but stolen by Biden.
The danger to democracy that results from the willingness of so many Republicans to believe in the face of fact that the 2020 presidential election was stolen cannot be overstated. Much as the stabbed in the back fantasy in Germany following WWI served as a predicate for Hitler’s rise to power, the GOP’s delusion that Trump won is serving as a predicate for what amounts to a low level insurrection that has as its goal installing at all levels of our federal system conservative, indeed reactionary and radical, governments that never lose elections and that approximate a Christian theocracy.
Donald Trump apparently has decided to run for President in 2024. Were he to win, he would be our last President and first King. I find myself hoping that the Grim Reaper carries him away before his name appears on the 2024 ballot.