Trump Moves To Protect Elections From Democratic Victories
President Donald Trump announced a new election-integrity doctrine this week aimed at protecting American democracy from its most persistent threat: Americans electing Democrats. Trump declined to rule out declaring an emergency around the midterms or invoking the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law traditionally reserved for unrest and now available for counties producing an unacceptable quantity of arithmetic. Constitutional conservatives welcomed the proposal as a return to the founders’ original vision of limited government, under which federal power remains limited to whichever powers the president would currently like to use.
Under the emerging plan, troops could perform routine Election Day duties such as directing traffic, guarding ballots from unauthorized counting and standing near polling places as a friendly reminder that civic freedom is most secure when supervised by armed federal personnel. The administration said military involvement would not intimidate voters because law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from soldiers observing their political choices. Suspicious behavior would include hesitating near a voting machine, requesting a provisional ballot or wearing an “I Voted” sticker at an angle suggesting insufficient enthusiasm for the commander in chief.
“We’re going to have the safest voting anybody has ever seen, because the military understands elections and they understand winning,” Trump said. “They’ll make sure every ballot is counted correctly, and correctly means we get the result the country was supposed to give us.” White House allies emphasized that deploying troops around an election would not constitute interference, but rather a public service protecting voters from the chaos that occurs when ballots are counted in the order received instead of the order preferred by the president. Democrats objected that using emergency powers during voting might influence the outcome, a concern Republicans dismissed on the grounds that influencing the outcome is now the government’s official method of safeguarding it. The United States remains a democracy because every citizen may vote freely until the correct candidate wins.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.