Rs made gains in state legislatures in 2020. Even where manual audits are conducted, they rarely include state races. 😢

“Ds spent big to take control of state legislatures but lost their key targets. Now they’ll be on the sidelines as new maps are drawn”

@AlexandraChalup "As MAGA World’s hopes for an election redo have slipped away, an equally improbable idea has begun to percolate among Donald Trump’s most bitterly disappointed followers: secession." 12/21/20 h/t @AlexandraChalup 1/

2/"Texas GOP chair Allen West floated the idea of a new union of 'law-abiding states,' and Texas state Rep. Kyle Biedermann—previously best known for dressing up as “gay Hitler”—pledged to file a bill in Austin to put the question of Texas secession to voters."

"Rep. Randy Weber also posted pro-secession material on his Facebook page, becoming the first official in Washington to advocate for disintegrating the U.S. Trump’s most reliable media supporters have likewise spread the idea nationally." 3/

"Rush Limbaugh, recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this month claimed the country was suddenly 'trending toward secession.'" 4/

"Actual secession in the U.S. remains, for the moment, something outside the realm of feasibility." 5/

Dear @HouseDemocrats:

HR 1 requires that the voter “have the option to mark his or her ballot by hand.”

Pls add the following for clarity: “For jurisdictions w/ in person voting, this option shall be provided to the voter at the polling place.” @RepTedLieu @katieporteroc 1/

Without this clarifying language, jurisdictions cld still force all in person voters to use risky touchscreen voting machines called ballot marking devices (BMDs), as long as vote by mail is also an option. That won’t suffice to protect election integrity & faith in elections. 2/

Unlike #HandMarkedPaperBallots (pen and paper), BMDs are vulnerable to electronic failure, screen freezes, miscalibration, disproportionate distribution (causing bottlenecks & long lines in suppressed areas), and hacking. 3/

4/ I also suggest that you supplement HR 1 to specify that BMDs “must not put votes into barcodes or QR codes.” This language is important because barcodes & QR codes are not transparent, further endangering integrity and confidence in elections.

5/ We are only beginning now to understand how these barcodes and QR code’s unnecessarily increase the attack surface for bad actors seeking to interfere in our elections. This is unacceptable & unnecessary.

Warning. With remote access to e-poll books (yes, vendors have it & I’m told they pass around a url to watch), bad actors cld track in real time how many votes they need & where to alter election outcomes. This wld NOT work w/ vote by mail. 1/

I remain very concerned about e-pollbooks, which have exploded in use since 2016. A former election official told me about the Election Day remote access & URL. 2/

I wrote about America’s largest e-pollbook vendor, Knowink, here. Knowink is managed by a former Republican election official. It’s product manager is Religious Right. It’s products are in 23 states now. 3/

I was told about the passing around of a URL re: Tenex. They can watch voters sign in as they sign in. They can tell what party they are from. 4/

In theory, w/ e-pollbooks (electronic sign ins), bad actors cld fraudulently sign in real voters who rarely vote in order to pad vote totals. This wld work best at the end of Election Day. Mail voting wld obviously throw this off. 5/

(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.

1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.

TRUMP'S COUP TIMELINE

* This thread will use military time and EST time zone for any times provided.

November 7, 2020 - The press calls the 2020 presidential election for now President-elect Joe Biden, 4 days after the election.

November 9, 2020

After meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and in violation of standing Department of Justice policy not to interfere in elections, US Attorney General Bill Barr authorizes federal prosecutors to investigate claims of electoral fraud.

Richard Pilger, the head of the DoJ’s Election Crimes Branch, resigns in response to Barr’s memo.

Trump fires Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. In response, Esper says, “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.”

Trump immediately names Christopher Miller Acting Secretary of Defense.

Trump follows Esper’s firing with firing the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and the Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, constituting a “near total decapitation of civilian leadership” at the Pentagon.

Election Litigation Update - Gohmert.

Reply brief is in. Let's have a look. They are, mercifully, underlength. They had 50 pages available, the PDF is 43 and some of that is cover page, signatures,

Interesting table of contents. Looks like they're packing a lot in, until you realize that much of the material that's important - like their response to the "you sued the wrong person" material and "injury in fact" take up very little space.

Looks like they decided to skip the table of authorities. Presumably GoogleDocWord ate it too bad for them to fix. This will certainly further endear them to the judge.

This is going to be interesting - leading off a reply brief with a "here's what our cause is about" is certainly a strategy. It's even a bold strategy.

Shall we dig deeper, Cotton?

"We live in a democratic republic in which the Vice President, who will more often than not be a candidate in the election, has the sole and unchallengeable power to decide who wins the election" is a hellofa take.

[thread]

I am going to do a thread on several numbers

1

2,996

4,494

43,730

106,158

Now

We go back into the dim and distant past in British politics

We go back over 2 decades

A lesson from the past

Now I am going to focus on the words of two politicians

Two politicians who have held high offices in this land

And I am going to agree with their words

So those with a long memory

May have already figured out perhaps what I am going to do based on the first two numbers

And you'd be right

So let me get going on the journey

In my first post

I deliberately anonymised those numbers

Let me now give them context

1 Princess Diana or Margaret

2,996 9/11

The final 3 are UK coronavirus death tolls:

4,494 (5th April 2020)

43,730 (30th June 2020)

106,158 (1st February 2021)

1. (On politics) I was once in a conversation with an elderly friend of mine who is American. He is deeply involved in politics in the States and I asked about what he had learnt. He said, "our movement pushed and mobilised and we got (.........) into the white house."

2. "However, we saw that our interests were not executed by him then we realised in a democratic setting sometimes its the people that surround the president or anyone in executive positions that really matter. Those he speaks to first and last.
We therefore changed our strategy"

3. We do support but now with the intent of placing people around the elected officers.
There is a lot of space for influence in positions that are non elective. Every executive leader leans on people to help in developing ideas and in executing them.

4. The young folks should be looking here. Elective positions like Governorship etc can be very expensive. Legitimate costs will run into hundreds of millions but there are positions for assistants, tech advisers, etc that wield alot of influence in shaping policy and direction.

5. If you want to change things you must get your foot into the room and have a seat at the table. The least position there will wield more power than being an critic on the outside. In positions like this skill, loyalty and confidentiality are the requirements and not money.