Sunday Tab Clearing

So many intentions to write, so little time.

“It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of politics at NBC News, said in a memo to staff.

I have to confess, I don’t see the upside of having an election denier on the team. This is just one of the more cancerous manifestations of both-siderism that also helps legitimize misinformation and normalize Trumpism.

  • Good stuff:

“Ballot harvesting is a big term, obviously,” Allen said. “And our opponents always point to us, ‘Show us the prosecutions.’ Well, there was few prosecutions because it was so vague and there was no penalties. So, DAs and the AG, they’re just not going to focus on that particular code section on ballot harvesting.

“But we know it goes on. We receive calls. We know it happens out there. There are instances where there are paid political operatives, paid ballot traffickers, or whatever you want to call them, that go and put influence on the absentee process, going out and gathering up these applications and trying to influence the absentee process.”

I must confess that, “we receive calls” is not exactly compelling evidence of much of anything.

“We took something that worked and now broke it,” Netherland said. “We failed to guard the purity of the election with this hand count. What we just did is evidence that this hand count was not accurate.

[…]

Morrell added that the discrepancies found in Gillespie and in Travis don’t typically occur in elections where voting equipment is used. Even in parts of the process where hand counting is used, such as audits or recounts (where only one or two races are counted rather than the entire ballot), “we find that it’s easy for people to make mistakes,” she said. And that’s especially true when tallying undervotes.

Who could have known?

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Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. mattbernius says:

    I have to confess, I don’t see the upside of having an election denier on the team. This is just one of the more cancerous manifestations of both-siderism that also helps legitimize misinformation and normalize Trumpism.

    This, especially given her role appears to have gone far past simply just giving denial. At least in Michigan it appears McDaniel played an active role in attempts to not verify election results.

    https://abc7chicago.com/donald-trump-michigan-election-officials-phone-call/14215970/

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  2. charontwo says:

    After that, he will head to Arizona to campaign with Lake.

    If he talks about Satanic cults that should really help Kari Lake’s pivoting to being seen as more moderate.

  3. Beth says:

    Now, to be scrupulously fair to Sen. Potatotown, I know at least one trans woman that’s an actual Satanist. Boringly, the majority are standard issue Abrahamic monotheists. The rest of us are either mainstream polytheists or worship a melange of mostly femme coded dieties. Lots of Athena worship.

    Personally, I tend toward the night coded femme dieties. You know, Nyx, Hecate, the Fates. Lots of moon worship right here. lol, I bet I could make Tommy crap his pants with that. I mean what’s worse than Satan besides Women.

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  4. CSK says:

    @Beth:

    I laughed out loud at your very last line.

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  5. Stormy Dragon says:

    @Beth:

    This enby is a Discordian. Christian Nationalists suffer from the Curse of Greyface.

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  6. Gavin says:

    I’m glad Senator Tuberville is worried about the Republican party losing kids to Katie Britt’s Satanic cult.

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  7. LMNOP says:

    @Steven L. Taylor

    Did you even encounter Wes Allen when he worked in Troy University’s athletic dept? The fact that this guy is Secretary of State of any state is an embarrassing.

  8. Gavin says:

    Hoo boy.
    Indiana is #1!
    Link goes to text of a bill allowing universities in Indiana to revoke tenure if the prof doesn’t sufficiently promote Intellectual Diversity.
    Sufficient content of that diversity, of course, will only be determined by the nearest Drunk Young Republican.

  9. LMNOP says:

    @Steven L. Taylor

    Did you ever encounter Wes Allen when he worked in the Troy University athletic dept? Surely you felt his aura of power and ambition radiate across campus? That this guy holds any form of public office is an indictment of our political system. Not that this only applies to him of course.

  10. @LMNOP: I recall his stint as Probate Judge in Pike County, but I did not have any direct encounters. I am not sure I was aware that he worked at the university.