Prepare for November’s Quiet Coup ~~ Greg Palast

 https://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=1fc1bb7b90&e=ae27806cdd

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by Greg Palast for Flashpoints (Re-prints permitted with attribution) Get ready for the quiet coup in November. Donald Trump’s dreams of overturning the vote count of 2020 can now come true in 2024, thanks to a new rule passed by the new, MAGA-controlled Georgia State Election Board. Georgia Rep. Park Cannon under arrest after attempting to witness the signing of SB202, the law creating a new, partisan Elections Board. Still from, Vigilantes Inc.: Georgia’s New Vote Suppression Hitman. Out in September. (Palast Investigative Fund.) Let me break this down. Four years ago, Trump called the Secretary of State of Georgia and demanded: "What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state." The Republican pol he was calling, Brad Raffensperger, has been played as a hero, supposedly standing up for the principle that the vote of the people cannot be overturned. But Raffensperger had another motive for turning down Trump:  staying out of prison.  Trump’s request violated Georgia law. But now, Georgia has de-criminalized rejecting the vote count. If this November’s vote, as polls now show, goes against him again, Trump won’t even have to make the call. Because, on August 6, the GOP majority on the State Election Board voted itself the right to reject the vote of any county if, in the MAGA-nauts view, a county board of elections did not conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the county’s voting process. What does “reasonable inquiry” mean? The same Republicans who railroaded in the “reasonable inquiry” rule, voted, the very next day, that Fulton County had not conducted a “reasonable inquiry” in 2020. While the Board cannot overturn Biden’s victory of four years earlier, they are clearly signaling that they are more than prepared to refuse to “certify” Fulton’s vote this November. If so, Fulton County’s ballots won’t count. Fulton County is better known as Atlanta. In other words, they are already preparing to remove the heart of Black Georgia, which Biden won by a 242,965 vote margin. Well, there you have Trump’s 11,000 votes and then some.  Trump is grateful. At a rally in Atlanta last Saturday, he called out the Board’s MAGA three from the stage: "The Georgia State Election Board. They’re on fire! Three members: Janice Johnston, Rick Jaffares and Janelle King. Three people, all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.” Note that Trump recognizes their commitment, not to fairness or objectivity, but to “victory.” Trump’s victory. Johnston, to the shock of those who think elections boards should be impartial, was in the front row waving to the crowd, glorying in Trump's praise. Trump points to Janice Johnston of the Georgia State Election Board, praising her commitment to "victory". Gerald Griggs, President of the state’s NAACP, warns that whatever the vote rustlers try in Georgia will spread like a virus to other red states. Indeed, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, five states are considering bills to impede certification. Swing state North Carolina has already passed a law throwing a wrench into certification, though courts have put that on temporary hold.   Retaliation I had been put on notice that Georgia might concoct this truly dangerous change in rules. Helen Butler, former member of the Monroe County, Georgia, Election Board, is known in the state as “Mrs. Vote,“ Georgia’s leading expert on voting procedure. While filming Vigilantes Inc., our new documentary on elections trickery, I asked Butler about Trump’s demand. “How do you ‘find’ 11,000 votes?” Butler explained, “Well, to find those 11,000 votes, you have to have members of the [county] boards of elections who will not ‘certify’ the election and say, I think we can disqualify these amounts of votes." Butler was under pressure to go along with the state’s madly partisan vote process changes.  She wouldn’t cave: “I’m not going to be a party to that. Whatever the voter intent was, that’s what it is.”  Butler has clashed with the state before. In 2018, along with the Palast Investigative Fund, she successfully sued Brian Kemp to open his files revealing his election schemes.   The Governor retaliated. Kemp’s first act in 2021 under SB 202, the infamous law that returned Jim Crow impediments to voting, was to remove Butler from the Board of Elections.   I asked Griggs, who represented us in federal court, if this was Kemp’s retribution for Butler’s resistance. He said, “They won't say it was retribution, but for what other reason would you take over that election board and remove Helen?”   America’s pundits are all concerned about a repeat of January 6, fearing another violent attack on the Capitol that could overturn the November election. But while the horn-wearing freaks turned deadly, their riot ended up nothing more than sound and fury.     The real danger this November is a quiet coup d’état carried out under cover of the arcane rules of “reasonable” certification.