Thread by @ashbylaw

Let’s dispense with this notion that the election is rigged, shall we? -1

First, US elections are held in public places, in open rooms, in plain view of all assembled. No back rooms, no secret doors or hallways. -2

Ordinary citizens, not gov’t b'crats, serve as election officials & conduct the elex. They check in voters, confirm IDs, keep records. -3

Laws require these election officials to be Rs and Ds, drawn from lists provided by local political parties. -4

Laws also permit parties & cands to place watchers in each polling place to stand over the election offs & monitor them as they work. -5

Political parties can (and should) train their watchers so they understand how the election is supposed to be conducted. -6

Watchers can challenge the conduct of the elex by pointing out errors & irregularities to elex offs and asking to have them corrected. -7

If elex offs refuse to correct errors, party lawyers are standing by to intercede with state elex admins and courts if necessary. -8

Our elections are conducted on equipment that has been tested, in a public proceeding, that is observed by party and candidate reps. -9

Following testing, voting equipment is locked and sealed, then equipment keys are locked and sealed separately. -10

Voting machines are equipped with multiple interconnected counters that make it impossible to add or remove votes secretly. -11

Candidate and party reps get to observe & cross-check those counters at testing, before polls open and after they close. -12

When voting is complete, election officials count votes and tally results. Candidate and party reps observe this process, too. -13

Then, following the elex, there is a public canvass at which the results are redetermined, to make sure that we got it right. -14

The canvass is a public proceeding that is conducted by the same ordinary citizens who ran the election, both Rs and Ds. -15

And just as on E Day, candidate/party reps can observe the work of canvass officials, object to errors and improper procedures. -16

Throughout the elex, officials keep detailed records – who voted, where, when and how, and how many people voted overall. -17

After the election, these records are open to public inspection. Anyone who knows what they’re doing can reconstruct the elex. -18

There is human error in every elex – a lot of it, actually. But our elex laws anticipate it and are designed to catch and fix it. -19

There is attempted cheating too – and some very small fraction of it probably succeeds. That’s why laws permit party watchers. -20

But the election is not rigged. -21

To rig an election, you would need (1) technological capabilities that might exist only in Mission Impossible movies… -22

plus (2) the cooperation of the Rs and Ds who are serving as a precinct’s elex offs, plus (3) the blind eyes of R and D poll watchers… -23

plus (4) the cooperation of another set of Rs & Ds – the officials at the post-elex canvass, plus (5) the blind eyes of their watchers… -24

Then you’d still have to trick lawyers, operatives & elex admins, who are scrubbing precinct-level returns for aberrant elex results. -25

So any candidate who implies that his/her followers need to take the law into their own hands on E Day is horribly manipulating them… -26

inciting them to disrupt the election, setting them up to break laws and be arrested. Which may be exactly what he/she wants. -27

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t watch the election. We absolutely should. -28

But watching means signing up, getting trained, understanding the elex process and conducting yourself appropriately on E Day. -29

Watching doesn’t mean loitering menacingly in and around a polling place. That’s not poll watching, that’s voter intimidation. -30

Republican leaders and lawyers should speak out against this fantastical nonsense. -31

In addition to undermining public faith & confidence in our electoral system, which is foundational to the legitimacy of our government -32

It is undermining legitimate efforts to recruit & train watchers to observe this elex to ensure that it is free, open, fair and honest. -End