September 14, 2020

Republicans like Mike Huckabee are counting (pardon the pun) on a close election this November, so they can cheat.

As my colleague Heather notes,

This is nothing new on the right. They've been pushing this line that "votes counted after Election Day ought to be invalid" for weeks on end now. So should we just stop counting if Biden is ahead? It's all cool with them as long as they assume they'll be disenfranchising Democratic voters only.

Mike Huckabee was on Fox's Outnumbered with Emily Compagno and Melissa Francis:

MELISSA: The Biden campaign is reportedly setting up a massive legal team that it calls "the largest election protection program in presidential campaign history." The New York Times reports the campaign has brought into company former solicitors general, and hundreds of lawyers for its so-called "special litigation unit." It will focus on legal battles already underway in multiple states that could decide how people vote and how ballots get counted this year. Joe Biden, earlier today, was asked whether he is confident all votes will be counted this November.

JOE BIDEN (VIDEO CLIP): I am confident that Trump will try to not have that happen, but I'm confident that the American public will put its foot down.

MELISSA FRANCIS: Emily, let me ask you. Is there any hope that it won't come to this on either side for Americans who would like to have this election done, done fairly? We want all the votes counted, but we don't want it to drag on and on. Or do you see it as a foregone conclusion that there is going to be quite a legal battle post-election?

EMILY COMPAGNO: There's always hope. I will say that. But I think it is, realistically speaking, a foregone conclusion. Maybe it's the attorney in me speaking, but of course Biden is creating a legal war room and a legal team that is gearing up for this huge fight. If anyone wants Trump to win, they better hope he's doing the same thing. 2020 will be the year 2000 on steroids. There will be contemporaneous public opinion battles and legal battles, and they'll be taking place in over a dozen crucial battleground states. The delayed results will create a media vacuum that needs to be filled, but it'll also create a whole host of opportunities for legal actions that will be designed to certify the results, delay a result certification, or trigger a recount, and the like. I'm not always proud of my attorney brethren, but yes, rest assured, there will be fights coming.

Melissa: Governor, if you were in your former seat as the governor, what would you do to try and protect the election in your state, or to try and have it be as fair as possible? What would you be doing right now?

HUCKABEE: The most important thing is to make sure you have poll watchers at every election site. I get it, that this is going to be full employment for lawyers, period, during all of this. The tragedy would be if the elections come in on Election Day and there is clearly a winner, and then the lawyers go to work and try to disrupt the winner by saying, "we found a few ballots here, a few here," and it changes the results. Then I think we've got a real problem. I hope the lawyers will do what lawyers should do. Make sure everyone is following the law. I don't care who you voted for.
If they try to use the law to circumvent the way people voted, or to somehow go capture and harvest ballots after they were legally due, that is not a process where lawyers out to be applauded. They ought to be disbarred.

Pure projection. By planting the seed in Fox viewers' "thinking" that "Democrat lawyers want to steal the election" they invalidate all election results that don't go for Trump.

We need a blue wave landslide. VOTE.

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