Trump and his GOP can’t win an election, heck they haven’t won the national popular vote in 16 years and an in an open seat presidential race in 32 years. But can they steal one?
Was gaming out how the GOP could mess with the election day voting here in Minnesota, and particularly in western Minnesota. The GOP has a problem- Their SOP of sending out their thug “militia”s to terrorize a voting place kinda backfires when twice as many DFLers as GOPers have already voted and they end up scaring away their own GOP voters. But the GOP party’s thugs that were dumb enough to tie up Sunday traffic across the Hudson between two states they have no chance of winning anyway will probably try it anyway…
So where would a “militia” of fat slobs with big expensive guns be able to chase away more DFL than GOP voters? Let’s do the math… With DFLers voting early at twice the rate of GOPers, an average precinct would have to have a 67% or so DFL vote to have as many or more DFL voters than GOP voters to scare away on election day. Most of Minneapolis is that democratic, but 60% of Minneapolitans have already voted so their ain’t a whole lot of DFL voters available on election day for the GOP’s thugs to intimidate. It might work for a while in Ward 4 where not quite 40% of voters have requested mail ballots and election day turnout will still be a few thousand. Not that it will help the GOP… Biden and Smith are polling well enough that they can spare a couple thousand votes, and the DFL will win every metro down ballot race by a landslide.
But out west here in rural CD7 we DFLers don’t win elections by landslides, and we lose a lot of them. Our perennial winner is Congress Member Collin Peterson, and he’s in a close race so we can’t lose any votes to GOP thuggery. So I sliced and diced the data from the 2018 election to find some “juicy precincts” where we can still benefit from some GOTV and the GOP thugs can still do some damage. I filtered for over 1000 votes cast in person, at least 10% election day new registrations, and our top vote getter Collin winning by at least a 20% margin. That gave me 6 Moorhead precincts, another precinct in a Moorhead suburb named after a railroad yard named after the father of the modern diesel-electric locomotive AKA Dilworth, and Bemidji Ward 5. Good luck GOP “militia” thugs, every one of these “targets” is in a town that don’t tolerate open carry in town and out of hunting season, and they got substantial police departments too. The rest of the over a thousand precincts in CD7 don’t have enough democrats yet to vote or voters period to throw an election, unless you’re a couple of federal appeals court judges.
But undisciplined as the GOP and their thugs are, they’ll probably try intimidating voters anyway. But Minnesota’s election system is too resilient to be so amateurishly stolen, especially with most DFLers votes already in the ballot box. With dual records of votes cast provided by the paper ballots and scanners and a third record created when the vote totals are transmitted, even a felony level theft won’t take our votes away.
So expect the GOP’s thugs to act out, and don’t expect it to work. Give them a wide berth, the real battle to protect our majority vote will begin after the polls close and the ballots get counted.
Sassy Democrat 