How to Steal An Election

Mia walks through how George Bush stole the 2000 election

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome. Today could happen here. It's it's the last episode
that that there were that I'm recording this year. Um yeah,
I'm your host. Be along, and today we are going
to tell you a story of the Republican Party using
extensive political violence and attempt to manipulate an election to
install their unelected presidential Canada's dictator of the United States.

(00:25):
And of by this, of course, I am referring not
to the election, but to the election of two thousand's okay,
So for for for those of you who do not
remember this story, and this is okay, I was like
three when this was happening. But weirdly, I have a
very very this is legitimately one of my first memories.

(00:47):
Is just I have the words engraved into my mind
hanging Chad's and so we we we will get to
what exactly that is, but that the two thousand election
was one of the most chaotic elects in the history
of the United States. Now, the US has a long
history of really really weird elections. I mean, you know,

(01:10):
from from from the subspective of sort of like is
the U s representative democracy? I think there's a pretty
good argument that no election until like after the Civil
Rights Act is even sort of a legitimate election. But
you know, I mean and and so far as you
like consider elections to be legitimate, which you know, okay,

(01:31):
but you know, the u s is, no is no
stranger to someone winning an election than not taking office.
There are, in fact, there are if you if you
go back into your berking history, there are two different
elections that are called the corrupt bargain Um. There's John
Quincy Adams and I think it's four makes this really

(01:52):
really weird alliance with the original American political Slee's ball
Henry Clay to get himself often sold as president. Although
that that that's an election that's like truly an election
with there are no heroes where it's it's John Quincy
Adams Henry Clay allying to bring down Andrew fucking Jackson.

(02:16):
So you know, no no heroes there. There there's there's
another election after Reconstruction, which is the end of Reconstruction,
where the Republican Party literally trades and like trades ending
Reconstruction for putting their president in office. After a truly
genuinely wild set of voting results happens, we're like all

(02:37):
of the votes are in a box, and the two
parties are fighting over like who's going to count the votes,
because the guy who counts the votes from like the
box is the person who's going to determine who wins
the election. And so there's this whole negotiated thing where
the eight hundreds, like racist Southern Democrats are like, okay,
we'll we'll give you, we'll we'll give you this election

(02:58):
if you promised to pull troops out of the South.
So okay. You know, American elections have always been sort
of more fraudulent than people give them credit for, but
the two thousand election, even by the standards of like
an American election, is some bullshit. So let's let's let's
go back. Let's go back to the origin of the story.
The year is two thousand. For the last time in

(03:21):
human history, humanity has taken collective action to stop and
impenny catastrophe, having by the heartrending labor of a bunch
of siss admins, including a guy that I knew growing up,
who spent fucking New Year, who literally spent New Year's
Eve until the bell ring, like basically in a closet
with a bunch of computers at his job trying to
make sure what UK wouldn't happen. But you know, we

(03:43):
did it, actually we we actually did it. There was
there was, there was like you know, there was human
collective action to stop a major catastrophy from happening. And
Al Gore, a Democrat who claims we have invented the Internet,
is running against Harvard educated Harvard and actually Yale educated
oil man caused as a cowboy whose name is George Bush.

(04:04):
And I, oh god, I don't know, I I don't
I feel like people have kind of forgotten how really
genuinely sleazy George Bush was. Like he he has this
sort of public like, you know, one of the reasons
he wins elections, and he has his public images like
the guy who you know, like everyone like he he's
the presidential candidate who you'd want to have a beer with.

(04:25):
But again, like literally everything from he's like public mannerisms
down to like the minutia of his accent to like
the stupid cowboy hat that he wears, all of this
this is a bullshit, right, This is a fucking Harvard guy,
And all of this is you know, like completely intricately
manufactured by a set a set of like very very

(04:46):
very like sleazy but incredibly ruthless and efficient Republican political operatives. Now,
George Bush's father is George H. W. Bush, who was
the first to only director of the CIA to become president.
So yeah, but Bush Bushes running on this sort of
neo conservative alliance of Texas oil men, evangelical hardliners, and

(05:10):
weapons contractors. Um, the weapons contractors part uh winds up
being incredibly relevant when nine eleven happens and both Bush
and Dick his co uh what's it called vice presidential
I guess candidate at the time, but his vice presidential
selection Dick Cheney, who is like Dick Cheney like saying

(05:33):
that he's like the physical human embodiments of the military
industrial complex, is under selling how closely tied, um, Dick
Cheney is to the military dustrial complex. And you know,
like this is this is part of the reason why
the ward Rock happens, because again, like this entire coalition
is just like it is, it is the it is
is the sort of height of the military petro dollar coalition,

(05:57):
just a a coalition of peer evil like fueled by
war profits and homophobia. And but you know, part part
of part of what's been happening in this entire period
is this is this is the year after the Battle
of Seattle on the anti globalization movement hasn't been smashed again.
This is There's other thing is this is pre nine eleven, right,

(06:17):
This is this is a very very short period of
time where like in between the Battle of Seattle and
uh eleven where American politics are very very very weird.
And you get another thing that we don't really have now,
but from the nineties until about nine eleven kind of

(06:40):
existed where that which was that there was a period
where third party is kind of mattered ish like Ross
Pirot like in the nineties. Arguably maybe could have won
the election if vietn't just like given up. But yeah,
you know what one of the sort of products of
this is that the Green Party is actually a real

(07:01):
thing in in two thousands in a way that they're
kind of not right. And then this has been this
this sort of unfolding of a bunch of left wing
social movements into which is absolutely disasterous attempt to enter
party politics. Um, but they pull you know, and this
is the thing that no one has ever heard the
end of. But they pull a bunch of votes into
Ralph Nader in Florida, which winds up being a big deal.

(07:25):
But the product of this is that this election is
on a just on a knife's edge. Both sides of
this election are unbelievably close. The entire election comes down
to Florida. Now, the problem with the entire election coming
down to Florida is that the American electoral system is
a fucking joke. It is a disaster. It is a

(07:47):
a genuine embarrassment. The United States is a country that
has more resources than like, it has enough resources that,
like Genghis Khan would weep like, it has genuinely unfathomable
amounts of resources, and its election system is basically run

(08:11):
by a bunch of weird dipshit like party if like
local like a weird patchwork of like completely underfunded and
overworked local government officials who never have real budgets and
who just spends like two months not sleeping with their
like three co workers trying to make the elections work.

(08:33):
And this is really weird because like most places on
Earth that have elections, um, there's like, you know, a
national thing that sort of does the elections in the US,
like no, no, it relies heavily on volunteers. It's just
like this weird patchwork quilt of stuff, and Florida being Florida,

(08:53):
a bunch of stuff goes very wrong very quickly. Um.
There there's two very famous ballot problems, the most aimless
of which is hanging chads. So okay, okay, what what what?
What is a hanging chat for people who have forgotten?
Are people who you know weren't alive then? Which I
realize is I man, the fact that the fact that
I have coworkers who are not alive for hanging chads

(09:16):
is really really disturbing thought. But okay, so what is
a hanging chat? Um? The answer is that in Florida,
the way this ballot works is that you have to
physically punch holes in your ballot. And you know, you
punch a hole in the place, like okay, so today,
right when you fill in a ballot, you have to
like fill in a square right with a pencil in

(09:38):
in in Florida, you have to like hold punch that square.
This is maybe the worst ballot design I can possibly imagine,
and it goes terribly wrong. A bunch of these whole
punches basically don't actually remove all the paper. And there's
there are so many ways, so many ways that this
gets sucked up. The hanging chat is the most name

(10:00):
was one that Haying so a chad. Basically, it's it's
the piece of paper that when you punch the thing
with like the whole punch, it's supposed to like it's
the paper that comes out of the whole right, Haying
chad is when you do the whole punch thing, but
the chat is still connected to the piece of paper
by like one corner. But but but again less less

(10:24):
you think there's only one way that these ballots get
fucked up. No, no, no, no, no, there's there are like,
there are unfathomable number of ways that these ballots don't
punch correctly. They're they're swinging door chairs, there's tried chairs,
there's did bull chairs, there's pregnant chats. It's unbelievable, and
a bunch of people's votes just don't get counted because

(10:45):
these ballots. The reason they're doing these whole punch ballots
that these are these are you know, this is what's
supposed to be like the fancy new like voting technology.
Right then the new vote technology is the voting machines.
And the way the voting machine works is basically, the
votoing machine can check if if if there's a whole
air and if there's a hole in the paper, then
it counts you as the accounts it as the vote.
But if the entire chad hasn't been punched out, it

(11:06):
won't count your vote. This is a problem. And there's
another problem. Uh and and that problem is the butterfly ballot.
So the butterfly ballot was original Is this ballot you're
using in Florida that was originally designed to help elderly voters? Um,
it's supposed to be the goal of the ballot is
to have larger fought sizes to make it more accessible

(11:27):
for people. Which this is good, right, Like, okay, I
I support I support accessible design. Is put accessible design
for voting. The problem is this ballot is designed like ship.
The way it works is there's a two page ballot
with like a crease in it. All right, It's it's
kind of like a book, right, like you unfold the
book in the middle of the ballot, you know, And
on both of these pages there are like the different

(11:51):
different candidate names and parties The problem is, in order
to pick a candidate, you have to punch like a whole,
you have to punch one of the one of these
served circles. But these st goals are in a line
down the middle of the crease of the ballot, right,
so you have you have candidates on both You should
you should google what these look like because it's kind
of hard to explain. But basically what's happening is that

(12:12):
there are there are different party names on each side
of the ballot. But then in order to pick which
party you're voting for, you have to pick for a
specific hole that's supposed to be next to the like
that the candidate you support it in the in the
middle of the page. And the problem is these are
all on a line, right, They're all a straight line,
which means that two candidates can be like across from

(12:34):
each other on the same page or on on opposite pages.
And then there's two holes that are like right next
because because the holes are both in the middle of
the ballot, right, so that you have these situations where
for example, for and this is the one that's important
inside of the there's like two lines and then there's
like it says al Gore Lieberman in it right, and

(12:55):
inside of those two lines in the in the in
the middle of the page, there are two holes, and
one of these holds votes for Core but the other
one of those holes I is for the candidate on
the other side of the page, which is Reformed Party
candidate and cryptal fascist goal Pat Buchanan. And the result
of this and says, people start looking through these things
where Pat Buchanan has a bunch of voters from Democratic

(13:19):
Party strongholds and like also particularly like like a bunch
of like Democratic Catholic voters vote for Buchanan, and Buchanan
himself is like, there's no way this is real. Like
Buchanan's like, you know, he's he's a figure will probably
like one day do a like we'll probably talk about
more on this podcast. Yeah, that those behind the Baschard's

(13:41):
episode about him. He is a he is a fucking Nazi. Uh,
he sucks ass. But he's also so he's some a
kind of evangelical who like really really really fucking hates Catholics.
And you know, so there's a bunch of these Catholic
like Democratic voters he voted for this guy, and everyone's
like what the funk happened here. The thing that happened
here is all these people got confused. And yeah, so

(14:07):
this is a disaster on a hundred million levels. And
when we come back from ADS, we will talk about
the product of all of this, which is not good. Alright,
we're back. So on election night, the media starts to

(14:31):
call Florida for Gore based on exit pulling, but they
start getting calls for Republican political operatives saying, hold hold on,
hold on, it's actually too close to call. And the
initial count from Florida has the Republican Party ahead. But
when I say the Hublican Party is ahead, they were
ahead by like six hundred votes. And so this triggers

(14:54):
a mandatory recount. But and this, and this is another
problem with this, right we we we We've gone through
atlant all of the problems with these ballots. Right. The
recall that they do is a recall using the voting machines.
And those voting machines our guess what the ones that are.
If if you if you rerun a funked up Chad

(15:16):
ballot through the same voting machine, it's going to get
a fucked up result. So okay, so they run this
again and the difference in votes comes down to FLEC
five hundred votes. And at this point, Gore's campaign requests
a manual recount. They want people to look at the

(15:38):
ballots by hand and figure out who people actually voted for,
because these machines are a fucking shit show. But in
any kind of sort of like you know, and even
remotely competent or saying, like democratic political system, there would
be a bunch of people doing this like they're there,
you know, like when when an election happens, they would
be just a very very large number of people mobilize

(16:00):
to make sure that it runs smoothly. There's not there's
like a bunch of like unbelievably overworked and underpaid. Some
people are people who also people who are just sucking volunteers,
like a bunch of just random, like unbelievably exhausted like
local election officials who have to do this recount. And

(16:20):
this is where the Bush campaign sees their chance to
steal the election. So the election happens no November seven,
and on November eleven, the Bush campaign sues to stop
the recount. Now, we talked on a previous episode a
while back about the Democrats how they have this line
in the two thousand's about how they're part of the
quote reality based community and how this is a reflection

(16:43):
of you know, if you look at the whole quote,
which is from a Republican political strategist, I what's actually
what they're saying here is that what's happening is that
the Democrats observe reality. Well, the Republicans set out to
define reality. And this is the moment, this election is
where we get to see how the daynat we we

(17:05):
we we we get to like really first see these
these principles in action. I'm gonna read from the Washington
Post here. Unlike the Gore campaign, which focused on filing
motions in Florida courts to keep the recount going in
key counties like Miami Dodd, the Bush campaign waged a broader,
costlier effort on multiple fronts. Blakeman said it was a

(17:26):
three pronged effort. He said it was a court battle,
it was a recount organization, and it was also a
pr effort because although the voting effort ended, the campaign
never did until there was a definitive winner. So what
happens here is Republicans start this massive media blitz to
convince people that Bush actually won the election. And this

(17:46):
this is a really really important moment in sort of
American history because it's one of the things that solidifies
um is one of the things that solidifies sort of
like like owning the lib for example. It's like a
major point, and it's like like one of the key
focal points of America of Republican politics, and this is
eventually going to consume like all of their politics, right
until when we get this sort of you know, like

(18:08):
now right where that's like we're owning the Libs is
the only thing this is about. You know, this, this
owning the Libs is kind of like it's it's been
a partner of Republican politics for a long time, but
this is where we really start to see it sort
of consuming everything. And Okay, if you look at their
like like what they're saying, by modern standards, it is
incredibly weak ship, right. This is like this is a
culture that is just a burge from the nineties. Nobody

(18:31):
has invented real posted yet, but it is really on
the lips stuff. Like they have this whole campaign where
they call the goyal Libramain campaign sore loser man, and
everyone has like sore loser man hats, and like they
have all these like printed signs and like T shirts
and they're selling merch and you know, and so you know,
they're running basically an OP, and they're running an OPT

(18:54):
to convince everyone that like, no, actually we legitimately won
this election and it's over, and the recounts just people
being but heard they lost. And this is where things
get really really weird. So in Miami DoD where there's
a manual recount going on, a bunch of protesters in
fancy suits show up but starts screaming at election workers. Now,

(19:17):
if this was the old Democratic Party machine like LBJ,
would have personally pushed six of these guys out a
window and the recount would have been run by like
sixty of the earliest dudes, the entire Chicago mob. But
this is the incredibly decrepit two thousand Democratic Party, who
have replaced all their mob guys with consultants. And these
people legitimately, like you know, they believe in the rules

(19:40):
and the norms and the process. And the result of
this is that Bush literally destroys the entire United States.
And I think, like irrevocably damaged, like the entirety of
the of you know, like what what whatever is left
to the American democratic system. So how how this is achieved?

(20:01):
But back in Miami DoD this Democratic Party operative is
seen walking around the recount area with a ballot. Now
this is a blank ballot, right, this guy is going
to see he's going with an election official to go
see if he can replicate like the like how they
h has stuff happens to prove that, like this is
what's going on. But the publicans see this guy and

(20:22):
they immediately start screaming about how the Democrats are staling
in the election, and they like beat this ship out
of this guy, and just a full on riot starts
in this government building and it works. The recount stops.
The election workers are terrified. The recount yeah, like the

(20:42):
like everything stopped for the day, they can't do anything.
And the next day the recount is fully stopped. It
never resumes, And the Republicans are stunned by this. They
assumed that, like, you know, the political operatives doing the rioting,
we're gonna like face some oppositions to the Democrats on
the ground for you know, like literally assaulting and intimidating

(21:03):
a bunch of election workers in order to like stop
votes from being counted. But there's they they don't, there's
there's nothing, there's no resistance at all. Um. Here's a
quote from Douglas Hay, who is there a Republican Political Operatives,
who is one of the organizers of the Brooks Brothers riot,
who he tried to do a redemption arc in the
media to sort of like be like, oh, I was

(21:27):
part of the Brooks Brothers riot. But even I think
the stop the steel stuff is bad, which like I
think my man doth protests too much. Um, here's just
the quote. I still don't understand how it was that
we completely outmatched the Democrats, hey says, And this is
how Bush wins the election. The Supreme Court, which again

(21:47):
it should also be know the Streame Court is staffed
by a bunch of George H. W. Bush appointees. Um.
Eventually here's the Clayic case and decides that the constitution
says that the winner the winner has to be declared
by a certain time, so there's no time for a recount.
And they have the election and the Bush and this
is achieved, and this is possible because of the Brooks
Brothers riot and the Brooks Brothers, right, is what this

(22:08):
whole sort of Republican opertor things comes to be known
because they're all wearing Brooks Brothers suits. Um. Now, okay,
there are a lot of people involved in this riot
who are like at the core of modern Republican politics. Um. Yeah,
Neil Gorrich and AMYCLEMYN. Barritt, and I think there's actually
one other like Paris and Republicans of elevated senior office.

(22:29):
There are multiple people on the Supreme Court today who
were on the Bush legal team when they were doing this.
And you know, there's also the question of the extent
to which roger Stone has involved. He asked roger Stone,
he claims to have organized literally this entire thing. Um. Now,
other people who were involved with they claimed that roger
Stone was like fucked off at a hotel somewhere else

(22:53):
and didn't was just sort of around and didn't actually
organize it. But either way, this set a precedent for
how you can rig an election, which is if you
if you can seize the majority on the Supreme Court
with sort of like when you know you can put
your sort of loyal minions there and then you can
have an initial count of an election that looked that

(23:15):
that that looks like it's favoring you, even if that's
not actually true. If you then have an initial count
of an election that says that you win, and then
you can stop and then you were able to stop
votes from being counted from November until January, you will
win the election. That that is that that is the
precedents that was installed by by the two election. And

(23:38):
if you look at the Stop the Still campaign, this
is exactly what Trump is trying to do. Then literally
Roger Stone is also trying to do this. Right, Um,
this is this is this is this is what stop
is still is. Right. You can you can find Trump
talking about this monthly for the election. Right. This this,
this is why he was trying to do his whole
thing about about the mail in batt because he and

(24:01):
Roger Stone and sort of all the political operators who
are involved in the circles were like, okay, so we
know that that a bunch of Democrats are gonna do
mail in ballots because of COVID, because they don't want
to be there at the ballots. They know that the
initial count is going to favor them. And I think
people have forgotten this, but if you remember the night
of the election in I remember like like even a
bunch of my friends who were like people who were

(24:22):
you know, like like fairly serious, like I don't know
politics nowhere, people were really deeply invested in politics, like
thought that Trump had won the election because what would
have been counted on that night was just was just
the sort of initially wasn't counting the mail in ballots,
and so yeah, the plan was just to delegitimate mail

(24:43):
in ballots in the eyes of of sort of the
well mostly the Republican based, but like sort of the
American populacets the whole, and then have a bunch of
people physically assault these centers to get him to stop
the places where these votes are being counted, to get
him to stop the count and it doesn't work. And
it doesn't work I think partially because but yeah, those

(25:06):
few things, Like one of the things is that you
know you can't if you're gonna do a play like this,
you have to run it like you you you are
relying on the sort of physical intimidation of the court workers.
But mostly what you need to do is make sure

(25:26):
that it's stuck in a court fight. And the problem
is that like the sort of modern like Trump based people,
like they don't have any competent lawyers. The root of
Giuliani is like trying to do this ship or whatever.
But like that guy, I don't know that that guy
may have known what a law was in like nineteen

(25:47):
seventy three, but his brain has been just melted by
like inhaling cigar smoke and truly copious about a drug.
So you know, they're not they're not really able to
sort of pull this off, but Bush is. And the
result of this is the American reaction at eleven is

(26:11):
the war in the Rock is basically the the the
sort of complete annihilation of like then like this is
slightly an exaggeration, but like the concept of freedom in
the US, like the ability for you not to be
constantly surveiled, the ability for you to like you know,

(26:33):
live live in a society in which there's like every
single thing you do isn't being monitored by a thousand
different kinds of police stations who are all sharing your
tweets so they can fucking grab people out off of
the road and sucking unmarked fans, right, Like, that's all
stuff that is a specific product of the sort of
kind of fascism at the Bush administration deploys. And they're

(26:55):
able to do this because they just try to stole
an election. And now we all, we all sort of
just live in in the permanent afterlife of the Brooks
Brothers riot. This is what January sixth was. This is
what stop the Steel is, and it's what the that's
what the modern Republican Party is. So yeah, it's happy holidays,
ye everyone. I hope you have a good new year.
And uh, in Chlaw, we will destroy these fashion Republican

(27:19):
bastards and make sure that none of them ever get
to do this again.