'National suicide': How swing states can follow Florida’s lead to 'more efficient election reforms'
14 October 2024
Political anaylst and Bulwark editor Tim Miller joined MSNBC's Alicia Menendez on Monday to discuss a pathway to more efficient elections, as Donald Trump and his allies refuse to promise certification of results if Kamala Harris wins.
Menendez pointed to an excerpt in veteran journalist Bob Woodward's new book, "War", in which the former Washington Post reporter reveals a 2020 phone call between Trump and former Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks.
It reads:
Trump phoned Republican representative for Alabama Mo brooks, a staunch Trump supporter, and asked him to publicly call for a special election to reinstate him as president. Brooks, who had supported the plan by Trump and conservative lawyer John Eastman to challenge the certification of [President Joe] Biden's win, pointed out that Joe Biden was president. Brooks said Biden's victory had been certified and there was no legal pathway for Trump to rescind it. The constitution provided no such mechanism to reinstate a president. Trump was enraged. He later withdrew his endorsement of Brooks in the Alabama Senate race. Brooks lost in the Republican primary.
"I've got a lot of thoughts, Alicia," Miller replied. "For, starters that person is a lunatic, Donald Trump — the person in that story trying to get reinstated as president. And we are committing national suicide to put somebody like that back in the White House. It's just absolutely unfathomable that you would want to put somebody in power that tried to steal the last election and then didn't believe it when he was sent home on a plane, did not participate in the transfer of power, and then had a temper tantrum and tried to get himself reinstated."
Emphasizing, "It is insane that we are here," the Bulwark writer continued, "I do just want to talk really quick about the vote counting thing because it is going to take a long time. and we appreciate all the people that are work, all of the election volunteers. I mean, God love all of them. I want to say, though, as a prodemocracy movement we need to be pushing to more efficient election reforms."
Miller continued, ""Florida figured this out a quarter century ago. Florida counts its ballots on election night because it had the crisis of 2000. Thank God it was Al Gore in 2000 and not Donald Trump. It's hard to kind of imagine how our democracy would have withheld that crisis. But after it happened, Florida figured out how to fix this. And the fact that Georgia's moving backwards, and Pennsylvania hasn't figured it out, is a massive problem and pro-democracy candidates in those states need to make this a priority going forward. It's unfortunate. It would be nice if we lived in a system we could count ballots for four days and not worry that one side was going to create problems, but we don't live in that world. And I think it's extremely alarming that we're going to have such a long gap between election day and when the election is called."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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