Stephen Richer

And perhaps in that instance, you could present law enforcement on such a significant level that election administrators would just have to throw their hands up and say, we can't operate in this environment, or we can't operate without our machinery, such that you can never get a conclusive result.

I still don't know how at the end of the day, you make the ballot say something different than what they said.

but just seizing everything and not even allowing the process to go on.

I mean, that would be pretty extraordinary, but that would have obviously a disruptive effect.

And then I guess we would never really know who won those contests.

And I think that this is especially vulnerable in California where,

where California usually takes about two weeks to complete their count because they have almost everyone votes by mail and a large percentage of people either drop off their mail ballot on election day or they even mail it.

They postmark it on election day and then it doesn't even arrive until several days later.

And so if the administration already knows that it's going to come down to just a few swing districts in California, moves in there,

California, of course, is already ready to be seen as sort of the liberal boogeyman, and so maybe the narrative writes better there.

Do not underestimate the importance of politics for a politician.

David Mayhew said politicians are single minded seekers of reelection.

And that is more true than I wanted it to be when and I learned that when I got into office.

And Republicans care about the opinion of Donald Trump because he is uniquely powerful within the Republican Party.

And so almost every single Republican that I spoke with after the 2020 election in terms of elected Republicans knew that there was very little to Donald Trump's allegations of a stolen election.

At best, they stayed quiet.

At worst, they went full-throated along with it because they knew it was a path to political riches, whether higher office or fundraising and so on and so forth.

And so I was just consistently disappointed at how few people there were who were willing to stand up and say, no, two plus two still equals four, even if the president doesn't want it to be so.

how robust are the state courts and the federal courts in election administration so i i do think that this is one thing that we can take some solace in and that was very consistent and strong from 2020 onward is that i i know that people take issue with courts of appeals and with the united states supreme courts on some highly politicized issues but in terms of election denialism in terms of saying that for instance again that the

Dominion tabulation was connected to Hugo Chavez.