The Biden Campaign is Preparing a Federal Response for How to Handle Hell Breaking Loose on Election Day
We have an administration that respects the rule of law and foundational democratic norms. Hopefully the scenarios it is preparing for do not come to fruition.
This year’s presidential election is going to evince several things.
One, it’s going to demonstrate how serious we are about maintaining a functioning democracy. That’s only going to happen if we show up to vote with the same fervor we did four years ago.
Two, depending on that turnout, it will send a message to the republican party faithful, particularly those whose lips are permanently affixed to the former president’s capacious backside, that America firmly rejects fascism — or is willing to let it happen.
Three, it’s likely going to be fraught with reports of violence against election workers, politicians, and their families. We’ve seen too many instances of this already the past three years in the wake of January 6, 2021, the day we nearly lost our government to an attempted coup.
Four, the for-profit corporate media, terrified of being called “liberal,” is going to continue chasing the extreme-right demographic in an attempt to appear “balanced”. As a result, we can expect to continue hearing such euphemisms as “the documents case” when referring to Trump’s espionage, and “We’ve never had a president facing this much legal trouble” instead of explaining Trump was arrested four times last year, is out on bail, and could be a convicted felon by election day. Be prepared for more pearl-clutching over two “unpopular candidates”.
Simply, this is going to be a very consequential year.
Is the Biden administration doing anything to help thwart Trump’s promises of stealing the election should he lose the popular vote a third time? Is there anything it can legally do?
There is, and President Biden’s inner circle has been busy drawing up a comprehensive legal framework should election results be close.
As reported in Rolling Stone last month:
Over the past year, Team Biden has been conducting war games, crafting complex legal strategies, and devoting extensive resources to prepare for, as one former senior Biden administration official puts it, “all-hell-breaks-loose” scenarios. The preparations include planning for a contingency in which Biden’s margin of victory is so razor-thin that Trump and the GOP launch a tidal wave of legal challenges and political maneuvers to rerun his 2020 election strategy: declare victory anyways, and try to will it into existence.
That story quotes “a source familiar with Biden’s thinking”:
President Biden has been worried, for a while now, that Donald Trump is going to try to steal the election, if it’s very close on Election Day. If that ends up being the case, we are… also expecting the Republican party to go into overdrive to help him steal it. We are continuing to build out the infrastructure to ensure that doesn’t happen — again — if President Biden wins and Trump and MAGA Republicans try to confuse [everyone] and sow chaos.
Reporting for MSN, Jacob Miller explained:
Key to this strategy, sources say, are draft pleadings and legal motions prepared for a variety of possible emergencies related to Trump’s tactics, with Biden’s legal contingents bracing for a scenario that could “make Florida in 2000 look like child’s play.” A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee confirmed the national party’s commitment, stating, “We won’t let Republicans get away with these baseless attacks on our democracy, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to strengthen our democracy as MAGA extremists attempt to tear it down.”
This is good news, but some news is not so encouraging.
According to a piece in Common Dreams early this year, the federal government is poorly prepared to respond to those “all-hell-breaks-loose scenarios”.
Some of those scenarios include not just polling-location violence and/or threats to election officials and secretaries of state, but AI-generated ballot-tampering videos.
Jessica Corbett wrote:
One U.S. official familiar with a previously unreported meeting at the White House Situation Room in December told CNN’s Sean Lyngaas that in terms of a coordinated federal response to an election-related threat, “we’re all f — king tied up in knots.”
Leaders from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and departments of Homeland Security and Justice (DOJ) assembled for a first-ever drill simulating Chinese operatives creating AI-generated videos showing Senate candidates destroying ballots and responding to polling- site violence.
New York University School of Law Brennan Center for Justice released a report in September explaining how disinformation has fueled political violence and extremism. Co-author Allison Anderman of Giffords Law Center warned:
Though American elections have remained safe and secure, both political and gun violence pose significant risks to the safety of voters and people bravely conducting our elections. The 2024 presidential election brings an unprecedented confluence of factors that heighten these risks.
A 2022 report from researchers at the University of California Davis Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP) revealed an alarming number of 8,600 respondents — one in five — believe political violence may be necessary to achieve certain political goals.
According to the survey, half of Americans somewhat agree the country will engage in civil war “in the next few years.”
Nearly one in five assert they will soon arm themselves in situations “where political violence is justified.”
Political violence is a traditional fascist tool because it is used to intimidate those who dare oppose a seemingly “stronger” agenda.
America has traditionally regarded itself immune to the fissures that condemn weaker democracies.
We hail ourselves as the exemplar of elections, peaceful transitions of power, and civilized political discourse.
We understand intellectually we are imperfect and have done things for which we should not be proud and for which we must atone, like slavery, segregation, and the genocide of Indigenous Americans.
We have supervised elections in other countries to ensure honesty and transparency.
While economic interests and hubris have too frequently been behind our decisions more than good intentions, we want democracy to grow across the globe.
Yet we are beginning to look more like Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Mauritius, Namibia, Slovenia, and Poland, countries the Global State of Democracy (GSoD Indices) report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance states the United States’ “backsliding” democracy is beginning to resemble.
We have an administration that respects the rule of law and foundational democratic norms. Hopefully the scenarios it is preparing for do not come to fruition.
There are forces prepared to do anything to see a wanna-be dictator like Donald Trump in office again.