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Comment by landa | Hacker News Reader

> actual coup

> will be elected

An election is not a coup just because you disagree with the elected peoples' views.

I think what they're saying is that by electing "far right" secretaries of state and governors states are electing sec-states and governors who will be more willing to overturn federal election results by invalidating votes, curtailing registrations, and fiddling with electors. They're probably looking at people like Doug Mastriano[1][2]

[1] https://www.mcall.com/news/pennsylvania/capitol-ideas/mc-nws... [2] https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/experts-scorch-pennsyl...

Not the same elections. There are people running for state positions now who say that in future elections, they will overturn the results in favor of their party's side if the future election doesn't go their way.

The coup isn't the current election, it's the future one in which the votes of the people are thrown out.

Note also the people on the Democrat side who claimed that the election of 2016 was invalid. They were fewer in number and didn't get any traction, and they didn't do anything, just shot their mouths off. Still, it's concerning that both sides have people who are willing to go down that road.

Imagine that in 2024, Trump runs again. (Please, God, no!) And imagine that he wins - legitimately, genuinely wins, with no funny business in any state. Are the Democrats going to accept it? Or are they going to say, no, that's illegitimate, because all these states have extreme Republicans fudging the numbers?

Now imagine that it's the exact same scenario, except that Trump wins because those people fudge the numbers.

Will you be able to tell which scenario actually happened?

That's why the Democrats crying "illegitimate" in 2016 was so bad. They cried wolf when there wasn't one.

(Nothing in this post is intended to deny or minimized the insanity and the moral bankruptcy of the Republicans' response to Trump's 2020 loss.)

>Note also the people on the Democrat side who claimed that the election of 2016 was invalid.

Including Hillary Clinton herself, who withdrew her acceptance of the 2016 election results <https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi...>.

I think some people genuinely see the world differently. They label differences in opinions and preferences outright aggression and violence (see "silence is violence"). People are so radical and extreme these days it's no longer okay to just not be on the opposite side, you have to prove that you're serious about being on the same side.

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