Trump recount fizzles, but WisGOP is still scheming. And Dems need to say more about it

Not that this was a surprise, but the last 10 days of recounts in Wisconsin's 2 largest counties allowed Donald Trump to...lose the state by even more votes.

Donald Trump's campaign spent $3 million for the #WisconsinRecount. It's done and it has confirmed Joe Biden won the state by MORE votes than was reported in the initial count. With all the ballots from Milwaukee and Dane counties reviewed, Biden is up by an additional 87 votes.

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) November 29, 2020

Hey, it's not my money that was thrown down the drain for this - it was the MAGAts and other SUCKERS who sent money to this Hail Mary grift. There was one positive out of the whole thing - a few hundred more Milwaukeeans got their votes counted!

Milwaukee County's presidential recount is complete. According to county elections director Julietta Henry, @JoeBiden picked up 257 votes and @realDonaldTrump picked up 125 votes. Officials found 386 previously unopened ballots on Tuesday, which led to the additions.

— Laurel White (@lkwhite) November 27, 2020

But this was still a disgraceful episode from a GOP that clearly has no depths it won't plumb in order to gain power and/or advantage. Jeramey Jannene of Urban Milwaukee had a great series of updates as this went on, and he and other writers showed just how frivolous and desperate the Trump/GOP tactics were. Here's an example from Tuesday, where Jannene describes a lawsuit filed by the "Christian" Thomas More Law Center that tries to invalidate large numbers of votes.

The suit issues the same three challenges the Trump campaign has used to challenge approximately 160,000 absentee ballots in Milwaukee County alone – improperly declared indefinitely confined voters, clerks completing addresses on witness signatures (mismatched ink) and in-person absentee ballots that don’t have a separate application.

In each case, the Milwaukee County Election Commission has said the municipal clerks and voters complied with the law and Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance. A similar process is playing out in Dane County during its recount.

So voters followed the rules on election day, and now TrumpWorld wanted to throw out their votes because...they had the wrong color ink? And the "lack of a separate absentee application" argument is equally insane, because it basically claims Wisconsinites can't vote early in person - which takes place after those voters have to show ID and after they are registered - because they need to treat it like absentee voting?

Some of the challenges and social media BSing by Trump/GOP were even lamer. You would see copy-and-paste memes that referenced some kind of measure against "Registered Republicans" when Wisconsin doesn't register voters by party. Or you would see these Trump Trash observers trying to challenge certain ballots when they clearly didn't understand that voting early in-person qualifies as voting "absentee." Nor did they understand that people had to download their photo ID before they could sign up on MyVote Wisconsin for an absentee ballot.

There was also (intentional?) misinformation claiming that Milwaukee's one-time addition of absentee ballots was suspicious, when it simply reflected the fact that all absentees in Milwaukee are counted at one place (they are not the only city in Wisconsin that does this), and those votes couldn't be counted and totaled until Election Day (which is something that Republicans refused to change before the election, despite requests by state Dems and GOP US Sen. Ron Johnson to do so).

In addition to the hair-splitting and the grossness in trying to disenfranchise voters who followed the instructions they were given, it also illustrates how short-sighted Trump/GOPs are. Why limit the invalidated votes to just Milwaukee and Dane Counties if it's a state law that was violated? This is why the Trump/GOPs should have had it be a statewide recount, as it makes it easy for courts to sidestep the issue by saying "The voters were following the rules, and throwing out these voters would cause different rules for different places. NOPE!"

The fact that Trumpers didn't go statewide tells you that they aren't that serious, and have other motivations behind these moves. They didn't want to spend more of their grift campaign money on a statewide recount, but instead want to deligitimize Biden's win in the state and the country, while also giving hours of topics for AM Hate Radio to keep the rubes stirred up.

All of this recount crap is basically political hackery (because WisGOPs ALWAYS choose "politics and power" over "policy and honesty."), but state Dems seem too willing to point and laugh at the idiocy instead of recognize that it's allowing far too many people to avoid the reality that GOPs got beat. Wisconsin Ethics Board member and Dem operative Scot Ross is among those rightfully asking why the GOPs get to spew this without pushback.

Republicans have made it harder for people to register to vote, harder for people to vote early and harder for people to vote on Election Day.

Now they are trying throw out voters’ votes.

Why are Wisconsin Democrats all but silent on this?

— Scot Ross (@rossacrosswi) November 25, 2020

But could the gerrymandered WisGOP Legislature or courts step in and mess with things? Not seeing it. Not because I don't think they'd consider such garbage, but because the Legislature is largely locked out of the equation, as the numbers are tallied and affrimed/denied by the Wisconsin Elections Commission under state law.

The commission shall record in its office each certified statement and determination made by the commission chairperson or the chairperson's designee. Immediately after the expiration of the time allowed to file a petition for recount, the commission shall make and transmit to each person declared elected a certificate of election under the seal of the commission, except that the commission need not wait until expiration of the time allowed to file a petition for recount if there is no aggrieved party, as defined in s. 9.01 (1) (a) 5. It shall also prepare similar certificates, attested by the commission administrator, addressed to the U.S. house of representatives, stating the names of those persons elected as representatives to the congress from this state. In the case of U.S. senators, the commission shall prepare a certificate of election for the governor's signature, and the governor shall sign and affix the great seal of the state and transmit the certificate to the president of the U.S. senate. The certificate shall be countersigned by the secretary of state. If a person elected was elected to fill a vacancy, the certificate shall so indicate. When a valid petition for recount is filed, the commission chairperson or the chairperson's designee may not certify a nomination, and the governor or commission may not issue a certificate of election until the recount has been completed and the time allowed for filing an appeal has passed, or if appealed until the appeal is decided.

(b) For presidential electors, the commission shall prepare a certificate showing the determination of the results of the canvass and the names of the persons elected, and the governor shall sign, affix the great seal of the state, and transmit the certificate by registered mail to the U.S. administrator of general services. The governor shall also prepare 6 duplicate originals of such certificate and deliver them to one of the presidential electors on or before the first Monday after the 2nd Wednesday in December.

So even if all the Republicans on the Wisconsin Elections Commission try to force a deadlock on certification, the Elections Commission's Chairperson is Ann Jacobs, a Dem. She'll sign it. The big bullet we dodged in this scenario is through the election of Governor Evers in 2018. I have little doubt Scott Walker would be trying some kind of trickery to avoid signing off on the election and in lying/misinforming about the results. But Evers will likely sign the certificate, and he can point to the official canvass numbers (and Milwaukee/Dane recounts) as proof. Besides, do the Republicans also want to have all other elections be considered illegitimate, including their downticket wins in the House of Representative, the State Senate and their 61-38 control of the State Assembly? Doubtful.

Theoretically, the GOP-controlled Supreme Court of Wisconsin could try to invalidate votes and throw the state's results into doubt. But does Chief Justice Roggen-hack really want to be facing recalls and national derision (or worse?) if they try to make something up that goes against what the voters wanted? Not even those scumbags would want to deal with that situation if they don't have to, especially since the only person being helped is Donald freaking Trump.

But that doesn't mean damage hasn't been done. In addition to the doubt that far too many dopes will have about a clean win for Biden, it will likely lead to more versions of WisGOP attempts to suppress the vote, now that a record number of voters were able to cast their ballots in the state this November. That's where Ross sees the GOP "Justices" jumping in (likely with a ruling to take effect in future elections), and I agree with him that Dems again are failing to show the outrage that will alert everyday Wisconsinites to what might be coming.

A horrific voter suppression case upheld by the Republican-run Wisconsin state Supreme Court will come from the Trump coup here. The GOP court will either throw out votes from 2020 or it will restrict future voting.

And still silence from Wisconsin Democrats. pic.twitter.com/BA3Pk0zpQu

— Scot Ross (@rossacrosswi) November 27, 2020

It's scummy, but you gotta give Trump/GOPs this - they never stop scheming. While too many Dems are celebrating a Biden/Harris victory and trying to wait out the next 52 days, GOPs are already busy trying to mess things up for that new Administration, and for Governor Evers on the state level, and you know they will try to throw up this "questionable voter practices" smokescreen to cover for their failures to do ANYTHING about this pandemic and the economic distress that is still happening due to it. The fact that GOPs even attempted any part of this scheme to overturn the will of the voters tells you that they have no problems with doing this again if future elections are closer, and will refine methods and laws to do so.

If Dems don't stand up NOW and publicly put Trump/GOPs on the spot for their frivolous lawsuits and baseless slurs against voters in cities and college towns, and assume that they will be rewarded for "going high", they are making a big mistake. In fact, it's a lot like the errors made in the Obama Years, which resulted in GOP midterm wins in 2010 that directly led to the divsiveness, idiocy and alienation that sum up the nation's politics in 2020. And we can't afford to have GOPs win in 2022 (either at the state level or in Congress), and mess up this country's elections even more than they already have.

We cannot rest for a minute, and I fear some damage has already been done by not smacking back hard against Trump/GOPs for their baseless and destructive claims after the election. These are bad people who want to do bad things, and you cannot allow these lowlifes to keep toxifying our politics without making them pay.