Politics Break - 27 August 2025

Now it’s time for The Week in Teh Stupid,” where we track and document the most misleading or dishonest statements from the Trump administration. This episode covers the week of August 20th through August 27th, 2025.

Before we begin, a bit of explanation. The term “Teh stupid” refers to a situation where people complain online about stupidity and misspell the word “the.” In the past, on my own Facebook account I have occasionally posted articles called “Attack of Teh Stupid.” So yes, this sounds stupid, but it's deliberate stupidity. not the other kind, which I'm also regularly guilty of. 

Claim #1: Paper Ballots Deliver Instant Results

On August 18th, President Trump stated: “They say we're going to have the results in two weeks. With paper ballots, you have the results that night.”  

Some of you may not remember the hell of your checking account. But it was hell. It was hell because before computers - and even after them - everything happened on paper. You wrote your paper check and gave it to the store, or mailed it to your electric company, or gas company, or magazine subscription. A few days later they got it in the mail, recorded it and sent it to the bank. A few days after that the bank told them they had the money. At the end of the month the bank sent you a statement - a PAPER statement - telling you about all the checks they processed. You had to compare that to the checks you wrote to ensure it was correct. AND you had to take into account the paper checks that were still in the mail and had not yet been processed. And you did THAT on paper - your checkbook register. It was a bunch of arithmetic, and IT TRAUMATIZED ME, OKAY? It traumatized me when I had it wrong, and it traumatized me even when I had it right.

Sound like hell? It was. And now Trump wants to do that to elections.

Paper ballots take longer to count than machine tabulations, especially when manual audits or recounts are required. Election officials across multiple states have repeatedly confirmed that paper-based systems typically extend the timeline, not shorten it. And when people process information, the error rate is much higher. That’s what Orange Foolius is counting on. If this goes through, the reliability and credibility of our elections systems comes under question. And thus goes democracy. And there it is.