Stop The Steal 2: Democracy Boogaloo

What if the true threat to our democracy isn't a false narrative of election fraud, but the very real possibility of election theft in 2024? Trump and his MAGA crew are gearing up for another round of election shenanigans in 2024, dusting off their favorite hits: misinformation, voter suppression, and a complete disregard for democracy. But this time, we’re not letting them steal the show—or the election. It’s up to Democrats to flip the script and take control of the narrative before MAGA runs wild again.

We’ll break down the sneaky tactics the GOP is using to rig the system—from local power grabs to outright voter suppression—and why this battle matters more than ever. The playbook is out, and the only way to win is to get ahead of it. It’s time to step up, expose the lies, and protect every vote. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and it’s our turn, if not our obligation, to stop the steal.

Learn more about the Keystone Reckoning Project at www.keystonereckoning.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Republican Attempts to Steal Election
• 10:48 Republican Efforts to Subvert Democracy
• 23:11 Strategy to Prevent Election Theft

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

For the past four years, trump and his Republican Party have beat the drum of quote stop the steal Hashtag. Stop the steal. We have to stop the steal as a way to promote the attempts to delegitimize the 2020 election. We've all seen it happen. We've all watched it in real time and pretty much anybody with common sense and half a working brain have been quick to acknowledge that there was no steal and this was quote the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. As such, anytime we hear stop the steal, we are now inclined to kind of roll our eyes and immediately brace and think that's ridiculous. Well, guess what? We are now exactly six weeks away from the 2024 presidential election and, as I'm watching this campaign unfold nationwide, I think one thing we need to start to do as Democrats, as defenders of democracy, is start figuring out how are we going to stop this deal.

Speaker 1: 1:29

Welcome to the Keystone Reckoning podcast for Tuesday, september 24th 2024. I am your host, jesse White. It's almost counterintuitive, because MAGA has really conditioned us to hear that stop the steal is this kind of negative idea? Stopping the stealing of an election is actually not a bad idea. It's actually something we should probably all be in favor of. The question is whether or not the election is actually being stolen, and that's the big distinction. In 2020, there was no evidence whatsoever that the election was being stolen. However, fast forward four years and the evidence is all around us that Trump and the Republicans are going to do everything in their power to try to steal the election. Now, what do we mean by steal? The definition of steal is to take something that doesn't belong to you. The concept of stopping something from being stolen is, in of itself, not a bad one, right? That's something where I think we could all get behind. If someone has something lawfully and someone's trying to steal it, yes, we should do everything in our power to stop that, but obviously that's a very simplistic description of a very complicated issue. So let's look at what the difference is here, let's look at what's actually happening and let's talk about what is being done and needs to be done to address it.

Speaker 1: 2:49

First of all, the claims in 2020 were baseless, and that has been proven by the dozens of lawsuits that were brought post-election by the Trump campaign. That had absolutely no merit. He lost every single one. There's just nothing to it. There was no evidence that the election was actually stolen. That was something that was kind of formulated after the fact to compensate for the fact that Trump actually lost.

Speaker 1: 3:11

What we're seeing now is something entirely different, and the thing that about it is a little bit scary actually a lot scary is that you have to remember, in 2016, trump did not expect to win at all. In 2020, they weren't really as sophisticated with what they were doing. There was a lot of kind of crying after the fact, but you have to realize something were doing. There was a lot of kind of crying after the fact, but you have to realize something. What's different between 2020 and 2024, aside from just about everything? But there's something specific about Trump that I think it's overlooked, and I tell it to people all the time who ask me you know what lengths is Trump willing to go to to win this election? And you have to understand something there has never been in the history of America a candidate who has so much hinging on whether or not they are elected to public office. There's nothing even close.

Speaker 1: 4:03

From a personal point of view, if Donald Trump wins, he has already told us exactly what he's going to do. He's going to go as far as he can to wield dictatorial power. He's going to go as far as he can to wield dictatorial power and we've also seen that the Republican Party by and large and the Supreme Court, which I guess is an extension of the Republican Party at this point are they lack the fortitude to keep him in check in any way, shape or form. That's one extreme. The other extreme is he will die in prison, and I don't mean someone's going to kill him or shank him. The guy's 78 years old. He's not the healthiest guy on the planet. One of these cases is going to get him. It's just a matter of which one. You know. Anybody that's actually read these things knows this guy is guilty of multiple crimes. We already know he's guilty of one, but I'm talking about the more serious ones. Eventually he is going to not be able to hide behind the immunity decision from the Supreme Court. They're going to figure out a way around that.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Hopefully, kamala Harris will appoint an attorney general who's willing to be more aggressive than Merrick Garland, who I think, quite frankly, has been a big disappointment to Democrats, and that he is not. That he hasn't engaged in partisan battles, because that's not what I'm talking about that he has not taken the steps that are essential to the job to which he's been appointed to discourage this kind of behavior. Right, he hasn't really made an example of anybody because everybody's so worried about, oh, what will happen if you go after the bad guys? Well, you know what. You can't operate like that.

Speaker 1: 5:37

But the point is this is such a clear black and white decision for Trump Get elected, get everything you want, lose the election, it's over. It's over Because MAGA will move on. There will be a massive power vacuum. They will be trying to figure out who the next one will be and eventually Trump at best will be a kingmaker. In quote steal the election before it even happens and before you start thinking oh, this is tinfoil hat stuff and this is this is what they do and this isn't the same thing and we need to be better than this.

Speaker 1: 6:29

Right in front of your eyes, all over the country, these Republicans are doing everything in their power to try to gin up the works in their favor. It's right there, and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the real battle may not necessarily be at the polling places, at the ballot box. It's going to be after the fact or it's going to be before the fact and the votes that aren't going to be cast, which therefore can never be counted. So let's take a quick look at what's going on.

Speaker 1: 7:04

One of the most high profile cases is in Nebraska, and it's a great example of how the Republicans are really trying to break the dam of democracy right, these kind of protections that we have in place that we all rely on to have faith that our elections are being run fairly, that ballots are being cast as they should, that people are not being disenfranchised. There's kind of a dam there, and obviously what Trump and his allies are doing is trying to crack the dam. They're trying to burst the dam and you see these cracks develop, and one of them was in Nebraska, because in Nebraska the electoral votes in the state are one of the only two states in the country where the votes are not being cast all at once, for, you know, as a group for one candidate in the Electoral College. They're done proportionally. What that means is, because of the city of Omaha, that there is going to be most likely one blue electoral vote that comes out of Nebraska. That's as long and short of as that's what we're talking about here and a group of Republicans led by Trump, obviously, and the governor of Nebraska was a willing participant and a lot of Republicans led by Trump, obviously and the governor of Nebraska was a willing participant and a lot of Republicans in the legislature there were really pushing because if they could go and change the way those electoral votes are allocated between now and election day, you could very easily see a scenario where, instead of it being 270 to 268 for Kamala Harris, it now becomes 269 to 269, which then throws the election into the House of Representatives.

Speaker 1: 8:40

One thing that a lot of people don't realize. That is crucially important to this understanding how this works. This is not a situation where every Congress member gets one vote. That's not how this works. So the way it works is, if the election goes to the House of Representatives, each state has one vote, so each state delegation has one vote, which means now you need 26 states to win. The Senate then would elect the vice president, with each senator having a vote. A majority of senators a majority of senators is needed to win. So that gets all that's of all sorts of crazy scenarios which you know.

Speaker 1: 9:21

You could actually theoretically have Kamala Harris breaking the tie in the Senate to elect, I guess, tim Walz as vice president, but she would lose. I get yeah, that's a thing, I guess that could happen. Trump would be president and Tim Walz would be vice president. I guess yeah, that's a thing, I guess that could happen. Trump would be president and Tim Walls would be vice president. I suppose or I guess they could elect anybody I don't know if they would reelect Kamala. I don't know.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Let's just hope and pray we never get to that point, the point being that that one electoral vote in Nebraska really mattered matters. It's a kind of a big deal. So their attempts to try to take it away are a big deal, and in one of the this is one of those attempted cracks of the dam of democracy, and what we saw in that instance was one of the state senators a Republican Originally it was a Democrat turned Republican and he said no, I'm not going along with it. Republican. And he said no, I'm not going along with it. They needed a super majority of the state Senate in Nebraska to make it go. They were going to call a special session. The details don't matter. The point is this one state senator said no, I'm not doing it, I'm not going along with it, and in doing so, basically stopped the entire thing in its tracks. So Mike McDonald is the guy's name, and he carried two other votes with him, senators that were going to basically go as he went. Therefore, they didn't have the votes to overturn it. They didn't have the votes to make the change. So Nebraska's electoral votes will remain as they originally were.

Speaker 1: 11:28

Unfortunately, this is one of those things where you're like, oh great, move on to the next thing. But let's understand something here this is a situation and there are way more of them out there than I think we either realize or would like to acknowledge where the thing defending us and defending democracy it's a very, very thin layer of defense, right? Mike McDonald, a state senator from Nebraska, was basically the piece of chewing gum that got put up against the crack in the dam. And you know, we've all seen, you know cartoons where they show the dam and there's a leak, and there's another leak, and there's another leak, and you know what happens Eventually you run out of gum. You know where. The cartoon character can't chew that much gum that fast. So you're starting to see all these different things. That was a pretty obvious one.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Another one, obviously Georgia. You know the state boards of elections. There are wreaking all sorts of havoc and you know they are definitely election deniers. They managed to get control of these local boards and I will give Republicans credit for something they are very good at finding things where these cracks can be and kind of slipping themselves into position under the radar, and I think that's something that frankly, democrats need to be a lot better at. You know, and unfortunately that can get us into paranoia, because you know there's no kind of no limit to how crazy you can get. But we have to be cognizant of it. But and do something about where we can I don't. In some places you just can't, but Georgia is obviously another big one, that's in the news. Places you just can't, but Georgia is obviously another big one, that's in the news.

Speaker 1: 13:00

What they've done there the State Board of Elections and what we're talking about is these local or statewide boards that have served. They have a very limited definition of what they can do or should be able to do by law, statutorily, and in many they take ironically, they go away from the strict constructionism reading of statutes and rules and they decide that they are now empowered to do a lot more than they actually are, force everybody to have to go back and try to relitigate it and, as we have seen with the immunity case with Trump, you can't simply rely on the courts to always do the right thing. Let's not be naive here. That's just not the world we're living in and I think if we didn't learn that after Bush v Gore, shame on all of us. So we've got the situation in Georgia where they've decided, they've made a rule that pretty much anybody can challenge the election and force a hand count of ballots, and I believe the board actually said they're going to ask for a hand count already.

Speaker 1: 14:07

You have to understand something A hand count of an entire state is incredibly expensive. It is wrought with potential for legitimate fraud and I'll explain what that looks like in a second and just basic human error and it will take forever, and the plan is to allow it to take so long that the results can't be certified in time certification deadlines and when the Electoral College meets and all that kind of stuff. It's setting the stage for another January 6th where hopefully they've been able to rig it in advance to where they can maneuver the system to get what they want without having to try to storm the Capitol again Not that I think they won't do that. So you have this scenario where they're trying very hard to prevent ballots from being counted in the traditional way, requiring all of these different methods, kind of taking big steps backwards in the way we count and tabulate our votes. And one of the pieces of this when we talk about the potential for fraud, really what we're talking about is intimidation. Republicans are very good and I've seen this with my own eyes. I'm not going to waste time with it now, in 2010,.

Speaker 1: 15:22

I you know, and when I was running for reelection in the state house it was one of my big reelects and it was the Tea Party year and they bust people in from all over the state and all over the country to show up at polling places and intimidate voters. That's exactly what it was. We ended up catching them on a news camera. It got wild. It got wild. It's a story for another day, but the point is they have no problem showing up and intimidating people. They will do that and if you go back and look, you'll see it happens in places where there are recounts happening. You know, in Florida in 2000 was the best example. There would be a legitimate question about the validity of a ballot, or back then it was the dimpled chads, or hanging chads for those of us that remember that and you got so much intimidation because you can typically have someone from each campaign, so someone from each party, there to supervise, to ostensibly make sure everything is on the level. But what they can do is they can be so forceful in their objections that they invariably will kind of use almost that brute force of the pressure to get what they want. And that's what you're going to see.

Speaker 1: 16:32

If we have to start hand counting ballots in Georgia and other states, it will almost certainly suppress votes, which is almost the exact opposite Not almost is the exact opposite of what a hand count supposed to do, which is to confirm votes that were cast. This is to go and take away votes that were lawfully cast. So you know, and it was so bad, it's so bad in Georgia, that the state attorney general, a Republican, issued a ruling before the board of elections did this, and they were like yo, this is super illegal, don't do it. Like we're telling you, this is illegal, don't do it. And they were like that's wonderful, we're going to do it anyway. So it's going to go through the courts and, yes, it will almost certainly be overturned, or at least some component of it. But, a you never know. B it gives them the ability to now scream fraud if something doesn't go their way and Kamala Harris wins. And C it allows them to focus energy and create divisiveness where there ought not be any. And that's the last thing we need as we head into these last six weeks before the before the election.

Speaker 1: 17:36

One of the other ones that is local to Pennsylvania. Well, first of all, pennsylvania statewide. You know, and it's funny to anybody that says oh well, you know this is a both sides issue, and you know they come back with all these stories about votes being double counted and this, that and the other that are always without merit and always without merit. Look, all you have to do is say to somebody okay, can you please show me where a Democrat has gone into court to stop somebody from having the right to vote? For as much as MAGA and the Republicans have this persecution complex, they won't be able to point to a single instance where anybody is trying to deny their right to vote.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Conversely, if you go and look at all the lawsuits and all the challenges to voting rights, whether it be purging voters from the voter rolls which almost exclusively happens in Republican states or lawsuits to try to restrict or stop mail-in voting, or in counties, at the county level, to eliminate drop boxes. These are all things that are designed to prevent people from being able to cast a ballot. These are all things that are designed to prevent people from being able to cast a ballot. We all know that's exactly what it is and it's something that we cannot be afraid to speak out on. Voter ID is another one. That's a whole other issue. I went through all that, those battles in the state house we were having them. It's an ugly issue because it's easy for the Republicans to try to make this common sense quote argument. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 18:56

What we're talking about here are things that are more complicated but, at this point in the calendar, a lot more important. So in Pennsylvania, you've got these decisions going back and forth up and down the courts about the ability to send out mail-in ballots and drop boxes and all these different things, and what it's doing now is getting us to the point where we are running out of time. Right, mail-in ballots have to go out, these things have to be printed, they have to be figured out. There are a lot of processes involved and, as someone who has worked with boards of elections in counties all over Pennsylvania and these are almost exclusively very well-intentioned, hardworking people who are out of their way to keep partisanship out of it we are making their jobs almost impossible Not that they were easy to begin with because we don't give them the resources they need. They don't have enough poll workers, all the things we already know about.

Speaker 1: 19:54

But one of the ones that jumped out at me and this was a story that started a while back and has now come back to the forefront just today is my home county of Washington County, which is just really just descended into just MAGA hell. I mean, it's just really become. It's become a cesspool politically in many ways. Not all the people there, but you know, I think about what it was like when I came into politics 20 years ago out there and I wouldn't recognize it, and I really think a lot of that has to do with the in southwestern PA, the, the redneckification that came from the fracking industry. That kind of brought that mentality and Trumpism before there was Trumpism as early as 2010,. Like we talked about. That's a whole other podcast for a whole other day, but it's nuts down there.

Speaker 1: 20:52

The Washington County Board of Elections threw them out for various technical reasons, but then didn't tell anybody the voters that their vote was not being cast, that the vote didn't count. They just were like, eh, we're not going to let you know and that's like the most you know. It's a tell me you're from Washington County without telling me you're from Washington County thing. And it went. It's gone all the way up and the Commonwealth Court today, two to one, determined that the Washington County Board of Elections denied hundreds of voters in the primary election the right to cast a ballot and have it counted. And, as someone who you know, I think I lost an election in Washington County by less than a couple hundred votes in 2016. So look, it's not nothing right, it matters. And in a state where, in this year's general, it's going to be incredibly close by all accounts, you can't have just a couple hundred votes not be counted and not even be allowed to be counted at all because of a technical detail and then not let the voters know. So this is something where these are the little things that are being figured out and they are again another crack in the dam right. A little one here, a little one there and you start putting them all together.

Speaker 1: 22:07

Look at Wyoming. I believe it was where absentee or mail-in ballots went out to, I believe, service members, and one candidate's name was left off the ballot. As printed, it was Kamala Harris. Like what, as my 10-year-old would say, what the skibbity-sigma Like? Come on, that is inexcusable. I get to say that it was done on purpose and but for that misprint, kamala Harris was going to win Wyoming. No, I might even be willing to buy that. It was a legitimate mistake, but it's a mistake that cannot be allowed to happen.

Speaker 1: 22:40

I've watched a lot of these things that have gone on and you're like how is there not a greater level of not even oversight, just kind of a second pair of eyes looking at something? These are kind of big deals. So these are the kind of things that we're talking about. They're happening all over the country. Some of them are big, nasty, statewide issues that get a lot of press. You know the Nebraska thing, the Georgia thing. Some of them are a lot more local. They're a lot smaller, like the Washington County thing, because it's all part of a web. Right Now we can put our tinfoil hat on.

Speaker 1: 23:11

Right now I sound like a conspiracy theorist. The point is sometimes, where there's smoke, there's fire, and if we don't recognize the smoke that is coming up from all these places, the fire is going to be impossible to put out. And so what happens when this all comes to pass, when election day is over and let's say that, as imagined, it's incredibly close and we were able to pinpoint certain areas where, clearly, voters have been disenfranchised. But the problem is now it's too late because you know, in a lot of instances, the you know the fix was in right, the processes were fixed in advance. You know you have to go back after the fact and have votes added back in, which is a lot harder. What do you do?

Speaker 1: 23:55

And what's going to happen is Republicans are going to, because they're so cute and so smart, are going to then take Democrats' words in response to the previous, stop the steal and they're going to flip them right back around and call us all a bunch of hypocrites, and the media will just sop it up with a biscuit. Right, it's going to be whataboutism to a degree that will blow everybody's minds. Oh well, you didn't have a problem with the legal acceptance of the election results of 2020, but now, because you lost in 2024, you do have a problem with it. And you know, there we go, we're off to the races and we're so busy at that point fighting that narrative concurrently with the legal arguments that will need to be made in one and the insane amount of pressure that will be on everybody. Because there's this thing where, if you know, election Day I've always said is the Wild West. I've seen crazy things happen on Election Day. That needs to be an episode unto itself.

Speaker 1: 24:55

And the point is is that when it's over and the votes are counted by, whatever framework is in place for that to happen and you're not the winner, anything less than acknowledging that you lost, even if you maybe didn't, is looked upon as being a sore loser. And that's just where we're at, and it's in which is why it's so important to really deal with these things in advance, to what the extent that we can, and I think we've done a good job of that, by the way, I think we've done a good job I, at least, I hope I'm. God only knows what else is hanging out there, but I think we've done a good job of finding, attacking, isolating and shining light on these things. I don't think that the media will be as willing to talk about it after the fact, because they will be under such immense pressure to basically, well, that's it, move on, we're done. And they've got this syndrome of this. Well, we have to be fair and balanced and tell both sides, and we've seen that play out. So we have to be ready.

Speaker 1: 25:57

I think we need to kind of steal. Ironically, we need to steal, stop the steal. And we need to stop the steal before it happens. And we can't be afraid of our past words being thrown back on us, can't be apologetic, we can't say yeah, well, but nope, this is different. There are laws. You've broken the laws, either in the spirit of the law or the letter of the law. You've manipulated the system. Here's how you did it, basically, you know you did it, we know you did it. So shut up, just shut up.

Speaker 1: 26:27

We're going to stand up for somebody's right to vote. We're going to stand up to voter disenfranchisement and say, no, that's not going to happen in this country, because that is one of the pillars of a democracy. So, yeah, you're trying to steal an election. You're doing it in broad daylight, everybody can see what you're doing and you know what you need to do, stop the steal. And if we do that and we do it right, hopefully we can make it work for good for once, because we have to Because of everything that's on the line.

Speaker 1: 26:55

We can't look at these brazen challenges to our democratic processes, looking at people that are being disenfranchised and saying and not being willing to stand up for them because they are, you know, generally, you know populations that are underrepresented. They, you know, and it goes to the idea of Republicans and Trump attacking people of color, attacking people that are not wealthy, attacking people that are not them and somehow making them less than right. That's the thing. They're trying to make those people less than so. Then we're supposed to feel bad for standing up for them. We can't let that happen. They have a right to vote. We have a right to vote. Everybody has a right to vote under the law. My right to vote is just as important as yours. I don't care who you're voting for. I do care who you're voting for, but I care that your vote matters as much as mine, because that's the way it has to work. There's no other option. So all we can do at this point eyes open, open, laser focused find these things as they're happening. Bring them to light, address them in the courts, address them through public pressure. Do what we need to do to make sure that every vote that can be cast is cast and every vote that should be counted is counted, and that is how we stop this deal.

Speaker 1: 28:14

Thank you for listening to the keystone reckoning podcast. If you want to support what we do, please visit our website at keystonereckoningcom. You can support the pack that way. Also, please check out our sponsor, truebluegearcom. That's truebluegearcom. It's great. T-shirts, hats, all that good stuff with all the wonderful, witty and trendy things that you would want to sport over the next six weeks and beyond to let people know where you stand. So let's do this again tomorrow. Thanks, have a great day.