Brad Raffensperger Serves Up The Peaches of Consternation

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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15 Responses

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    A Republican with integrity… if there be one, might there be more?Report

  2. Reminded, just a little bit, of John Slaton.Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    This is also a good example of how American politics is going to play out for the foreseeable future.

    It isn’t just a handful of Republicans who are corrupt and demanding to steal an election. The party base overwhelmingly supports this. Raffensberger will eventually be overpowered and replaced by another Republican who would happily do whatever is necessary.
    It may be too late for the 2020 election, but they will try this again in 2022 and 2024.

    And again, the Republican party voting base is encouraging this.Report

    • JS in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I mean Lindsey Graham was calling him, telling him he should thrown out all the mail-in ballots in counties that had a higher number of signature rejections.

      I mean sure, it’s only a tiny bit of a federal crime.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    Trump has enthralled the GOP base and the GOP, especially the national GOP, does not know how to step off the Trump train. What is remarkable about this is that Trump does not care about any of them and will clearly throw them under the bus if expedient. Trump does not say the GOP won the election, he says he won the election. As far as I know, he does not contend that the Democratic retention of the House is wrong and/or that McSally and other Republican Senators really won.

    Yet they all still go to bat for him because they fear the wrath of their base and that trying to standup against Trump will lead to a 100 percent chance of bus throwing. This is no way for a political party to operate and does not speak well for long-term civic health.Report

  5. Freedom is the freedom to say that 2,472,052 is greater than 2,457,896. If that is granted, all else follows.Report

  6. Kazzy says:

    Good on Raffenberger. And good on you for writing this, Andrew.

    I wonder to what extent all the media focus on the ne’er-do-wells instead of those (precious few) who are resisting them is adding fuel to the fire. We need more Raffenbergers and we need to put more energy into recognizing their efforts.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Kazzy says:

      He’s getting a lot of coverage. State officials also have a different calculus for this, especially if they don’t want to move to higher office.Report

  7. MAJC man says:

    This is a test commentReport

  8. DavidTC says:

    BTW, just a general heads up: Everyone needs to fact check claims by Republicans. Not the _conspiracies_, but supposed ‘facts’ they have built them on.

    For example, we have all fallen for the claim that, in Georgia, Biden had 100,000 of votes that were just for him with no other candidates. This is actually a complete fabrication: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/faulty-claim-about-biden-only-ballots-in-georgia/

    That claim is based on the fact that Biden got almost 100,000 more votes than Jon Ossoff. But there’s literally no evidence that any number of people left their ballot blank. It’s just ‘100,000 more people voted for a Democratic president than voted for the Democratic Senator’.

    Although we do have evidence that can’t be correct. Because…4,949,446 voted in that Senate race, and 4,995,780 in the presidential race.

    Which means that only 46,334 people could have _hypothetically_ voted for Biden (Or any presidential candidate) and left the rest of their ballot blank. Everyone who has said ~100,000 is saying something that _cannot_ be true by simply looking at the numbers. (Well, baring the microscopic amount of people who didn’t vote for president but did for Senate, which could have canceled some out, I guess?)

    46,334 is the hypothetical highest number. We don’t know it’s true…it’s probably not, people often leave random races blank, and again, people just voting against Trump and only that doesn’t indicate fraud…but, my point is, this is obvious lie.

    And yet, ‘95,901 ballots blank except for Biden, 818 ballots blank except for Trump’, has been an ‘important fact’ that _certain_ people have been repeating, including people here, and we’ve just all assumed it was true, because it sounded like a factual statement that they were drawing false conspiratorial conclusions from, instead of a literal outright lie.

    Just, at this point, assume every single supposed fact you hear ‘proving’ vote fraud isn’t not people taking things out of context…just assume it’s an outright factual lie.Report