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zzzeek | 2 days ago

turns out lots of people "know" that the president has no say in the affairs of US states running elections

discuss

order

pavlov|2 days ago

What are the states going to do with their local election results when the officials in Washington ignore them due to some manufactured state of emergency?

He already tried to get specific states' election outcomes discarded from the count on Jan 6, 2021.

rootusrootus|2 days ago

Could you be more specific on who the officials in DC would be that could ignore the election results? The Clerk of the House, I assume? They have a fairly limited role, and it would probably be a short-lived disruption. The members-elect themselves seem to have all of the power, if my civics knowledge is correct.

foobarchu|2 days ago

He doesn't, it's literally enshrined in the constitution. If he decides to violate that, it's him violating the constitution yet again, not proof that he has a say.

It would also probably be the last straw for a lot of people who has been limping along on the belief in free elections.

wat10000|1 day ago

More importantly, this isn’t a “who’s going to stop me?” sort of thing like having ICE violate people’s civil rights. The power isn’t there. ICE does what Trump says because the law puts them under his control and he metaphorically signs their paychecks. If Trump orders state governments to do something with elections, that carries no weight. There’s no legal obligation or tradition to comply, no paychecks involved, nothing that would compel them to do it unless they actually wanted to. He’d have to use force, and it would be a gargantuan effort that would spur great resistance.