Speaker 1: Y'all, the states are not OK. We all know that because of our absolutely fucked electoral college system, check my very old episode about it after this, if you dare, that only a handful of states are actually, as they say, at play in any given presidential election. Most states, barring some major unforeseen upset, are pretty set in their ways about elections or so small that it doesn't matter. But a handful of states every election year get outsized influence over the outcomes. And so all eyes turn to those states during an election year. This year, those seven key swing states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. We'll get into where the candidates stand in each state and how much you should be biting your nails about it. Spoiler, a lot of nail biting should be happening. But I wanted to dive into two states that have been getting the biggest headlines over the last week or so, because while chaos is reigning over the Republican presidential ticket, see our episode last week for a roundup of how they're digging their own graves over there, the Republicans down the ticket in the states are doing their own work to make an absolute mockery of the Republican Party. And by God, am I here for it? So today we're discussing the election tomfoolery happening in Georgia. And then, of course, Mark Robinson in North Carolina, who's frankly one of a large swath of hypocritical, self-loathing Republicans all up and down state ballots everywhere who spew hatred aimed often at the people with whom they secretly identify. All of these scandals have the potential to decide the election this November, so I'm keeping my eyes on all of them. Let's get into it. Hey, have you ever tried doing a Google search of your name? 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Did you see this recent headline that said hackers may have stolen the social security numbers of every single American? You hate to see it. To protect your data in case of a breach, it's recommended to use strong passwords, monitor account activity and consider credit freezes or fraud alerts from credit bureaus. And Aura does all of this for me. And best of all, I don't have to download several different apps just because a company couldn't keep my data secure. Aura is always on, always doing the hard work of keeping me safe. If protecting yourself from data breaches is something that you're interested in, you can go to Aura.com slash Lija to start your two week free trial. Also linked below in the description. Thanks, Aura. Hey, did you know that these episodes are available in audio podcast form? Just search Why America with Lija Miller wherever you get your podcasts. Starting with Georgia, we've already discussed the three bad elections officials in Georgia. So to get caught up, check out my episode from a couple of weeks ago on rogue election officials generally. Basically, the Republicans and their allies have had time to get organized since 2020. And their new favorite tactic is placing election officials in every County they can. So those officials can decide not to certify the election results because what's better than questioning the election results after the ballots have been counted, questioning them before the ballots have been counted. Much more room for sowing of doubt and placement of questionable evidence. In that effort, Georgia elections officials passed resolutions last month that allow for election officials to question the results if they have reasonable suspicion. The language is incredibly vague and opens up the door for any official to question anything and call it reasonable. It's the same thing that the Supreme court's been doing with its own ethics code must be reasonable suspicion of misconduct and who determines what's reasonable. Oh, the very same body with the power. So they're policing themselves. Great. Can't see any reason why this would go wrong anyway. Okay. So the Georgia elections officials were like, we decree, we get to throw wrenches in wherever we want. And now this last week they decided, Oh, and also all the ballots in Georgia have to be hand counted. The rule mandates that the poll manager and two poll officers in each precinct must each independently count the number of paper ballots in every single ballot box in their precinct to compare with the total number generated by the ballot scanner. And if their individual totals don't match each others, which they won't because human error is inevitable in this scenario, they have to report the discrepancy to the County election board, which will then provide evidence to election deniers that something fishy as a foot. If you have a couple of brain cells handy to rub together, you've probably already figured out that letting poll workers, the very positions that Trumpy Republicans have been trying to fill with election deniers hand count, the ballots leaves a lot of room for creative interpretations of how to count good. The board's nonpartisan chair voted against the measure. Even the Republican secretary of state state attorney general and dozens of local election officials opposed the measure saying the last minute change just weeks before the election will cause delays and confusion on election night. And the days that follow human error, whether actual error or pretend error could easily result in discrepancies. Experts agree that hand counts are far slower and less reliable than machine tabulation. Like, okay, don't rely on jet UBT to write your doctoral thesis. But one thing we can confidently say that computers generally are pretty good at is counting at chat. UBT chat. UBT is actually also kind of out of County, but like non AI chat bot computers generally have been pretty good at computations since their inception, like computers, computations, computers, comp, you know, I feel okay about trusting them with that. Certainly more than I do the poll workers who are the product of the Georgia education system. You know what I mean? But truly any human educated or not, is going to make errors while hand counting thousands of ballots, especially because the rule requires the ballots be hand counted the night of the election or the next day, which is literally physically impossible in all but the smallest counties and will require poll workers to stay up all night long counting. Like it is just set up to fail. According to the Washington post, research and practice have shown again and again, that hand counting of ballots is less accurate than machine tallies and that it can take days, weeks, or months, depending on the size of the jurisdiction. And poll worker training has already started in many counties in Georgia. And some early voting ballots have already been issued. So the confusion caused by this last minute rule change will only increase the chaos on election night. According to one election supervisor, over 200 pages of election code and rules have been implemented in Georgia since 2020 alone. So this rule is just the latest in what's clearly an attempt to sow chaos and mask it with concern over election integrity. And I'll remind you that Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in Georgia in 2020 leading to the infamous call in which Trump asked Georgia's secretary of state to find 11,000 some votes that he needed to win. So yeah, Trump and his allies clearly have their eye on the state and 12,000 votes out of over 5 million cast in Georgia is probably within the margin of error that would occur. If sleep deprived election workers start hand counting the ballots, not only that, but this new rule might not even be legal. The senior associate attorney general wrote a letter to the board advising them. And I quote these proposed rules are not tethered to any statute and are therefore likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do. Meaning they're not authorized by law to pass this rule, which is wild. Given the popular Republican MAGA project 2025 talking point that there are too many regulations and that the administrative state is passing rules that give them outsized power. They were never meant to have, unless of course, they're passing rules that serve the far right cause. Then they're impatriots, man. They get called up by name at Trump rallies.

Speaker 2: Janice Johnson, Rick Jeffries and Janelle King, three people are all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory. They're fighting.

Speaker 1: Got it. Cool. And on the same day that they passed the hand counting measure, they also passed a rule that would allow poll watchers to access more places during the tabulation of the votes. Meaning these partisan people there specifically to watch and ensure the legitimacy of the votes who have in the past actively tampered with machines and added to voting errors will now be given greater access to the very areas that should be secured from nut jobs like them. Like they are fully saying the quiet part out loud. They are blatantly like here's the plan. People were letting the patients run the asylum from now on. Democrats have already sued over the rule earlier this summer that allowed election officials to question the ballot results. And a hearing is scheduled for that case on October 1st with more litigation expected to follow with this new set of rules. And a reminder that it's not like before 2020, we just had zero means of making sure the machines tabulating the results were doing so correctly. According to the Washington post, most jurisdictions in the United States already audit election results by hand counting a sample of ballots and comparing the results with machine tallies. They do so after unofficial results have been reported, encouraging confidence in the results without gumming up counting on election night. Now, of course, there are scenarios where Harris wins the requisite electoral college votes without needing Georgia. So any confusion in the state will still play out, but won't hold up the entire national vote. That's about the best case scenario at this point, unless Democrats are successful in their lawsuits and get these rules thrown out or at least temporarily stayed until after this election. But Lord knows there's not much to stop Republicans from continuing to try to gum up the elections process in future elections. If it hopefully doesn't work this year. My hope is that Republicans make such a laughingstock of themselves this year that they'll eventually go the way of the wigs or something and just leave us alone. A girl can dream. Anyway, to help add to the mockery. And because I like bullying bigots, I tried to find dirt on the three Trumpy election officials in Georgia. And I mean like funny dirt, not like, Oh no, scary dirt, you know, and nothing major reared its head. But just to be petty, here's a picture of Georgia state election board official, Rick Jeffers who allegedly asked to be put in a cabinet position in the next Trump term in a clear conflict of interest with his wife and his home kitchen and early two thousands Tuscan monstrosity that I would bet money has one of those weird jars of oil filled with other random sitting out somewhere. Embarrassing. Janelle King in her spare time prides herself as a political commentator on her podcast, the Janelle King show, which has a channel on YouTube and the most recent video has 10 views. Also embarrassing. Janice Johnston is a retired obstetrician with nothing better to do than buy into election conspiracies. She was literally one of those people you see showing up at random County board meetings and screaming about the conspiracies she's read about online.

Speaker 3: I would now like to share some ideas I have for JJ Abrams, seventh chapter in the star Wars saga pan down from the twin sons of Tatooine. We are now close on the mouth.

Speaker 1: Only in Georgia they were like, by God, give this woman a seat on the state election board. And now from her newfound platform, she gets to just take over the mic and repeat her conspiracy theories and everyone has to listen. Woof. I think it's pretty safe to say that these three election denying election officials are a bunch of weirdos. And speaking of weirdos, let's move on to Mark Robinson of North Carolina. In case you missed it. Mark Robinson is the current Republican Lieutenant governor of North Carolina, who is running to be governor of North Carolina. This November, a CNN report unearthed dozens of comments. Robinson left on a message board of some random adult website that were incredibly, let's just say inflammatory, I guess. And wildly he used the same screen name on that website as he has across multiple public websites, listed his entire name and his known public email address on the adult website as well. This happened a decade ago. And like people are allowed to do with their free time what they will, as long as it's legal. But it was the content of his posts on the website that were particularly shocking. He called himself a black Nazi, a perv, and stated that he liked watching adult content featuring transgender actors. Sorry, I'm trying not to get fully demonetized. So I'm talking around the details here. Robinson has denied that he made these posts, but it's particularly alarming given his staunch anti-LGBTQ stances saying at a rally in February, if you're a man on Friday night and all of a sudden Saturday, you feel like a woman and you want to go in the woman's bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested or whatever we got to do to you. We're going to protect our women and listen, not to get too deep, but his fear of trans women is palpable in that comment. And I think it makes sense from a psychological perspective, not a logical standpoint that humans vilify the very things about themselves that they fear the most. I grew up a closeted bisexual girl in the suburbs of Minnesota in the early two thousands that didn't make me hate lesbians because I'm not a monster, but I was terrified of that part of myself for years because society taught me that you're either one or the other, and that my sexuality and desire was perverted and wrong. So you bury that inside of yourself. And then if you are maladjusted a bad person and have never sought therapy, you can see how that would come out sideways as bigotry and hate, especially if you've been socialized as a man in this country. If this man is trans attracted, he has been taught his entire life by society that that's perverted and wrong. He's been taught to fear that side of himself. And so that fear comes out sideways in inappropriate comments on internet chat boards and at hatred directed towards the very community he may or may not have an affinity for. And that's not the only way that this has come out for this man specifically. He has advocated for a complete abortion ban without exceptions, despite paying for his wife to have an abortion in the 1980s. His comments on the chat room also showed a deep hatred for Martin Luther King Jr. He also called himself a black Nazi and said that if the KKK allowed blacks to join, he would. He also allegedly posted saying slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it back. I would certainly buy a few unclear why he thinks in that version of history, he would be on the buying end of that equation, but I probably don't need to explain to you how growing up a black man in America would have taught him to hate himself for that attribute as well. Over and over. This man has shown the power that shame and self-loathing can have over a person. It can rot your soul if you don't address it. And I think we're seeing that soul rot on a party wide level within the Republican establishment. Matt Gates is being seriously investigated for sexual misconduct and has been investigated in the past for federal sex trafficking. He spends every waking minute accusing the LGBTQ community of being criminals and perverts. And it's a very common talking point for people in the Republican party to accuse people in the LGBTQ community of being perverts. Meanwhile, sheltering and trying to hide the very types of crimes that they are so concerned with. And despite making these claims that people in the LGBTQ community are pervs, the gay dating app grinder literally crashed during the RNC in Milwaukee this year, according to outage reporting website down detector with users commenting on an uptick in anonymous accounts, appearing on grinder in Milwaukee during the RNC, even ex-congressman and former straight identifying George Santos commented, calling the RNC the grinder Superbowl.

Speaker 3: Just come out the closet boys. Come on. It's fun. You can be gay and conservative.

Speaker 1: And this isn't the first time this has happened. Cleveland saw a 66% increase in grinder traffic during the RNC convention in 2016. And there's a clear pattern of people in the Republican party or affiliated with it, throwing accusations of sexual misconduct at the LGBTQ community. Meanwhile, engaging in misconduct themselves. There's Matt Schlapp head of the anti-LGBTQ group, American conservative union. Who's a major ally of Trump who was sued by a man who accused him of sexual assault. Christian Ziegler chairman of the Florida Republican party and his wife, Bridget co-founder of anti-LGBTQ group moms for Liberty, allegedly had a consensual three-way with another woman, despite their strong stance in favor of monogamous hetero relationships. And this has been happening for decades. Larry Craig, former Republican U S Senator from Idaho allegedly tried to solicit sex from an undercover cop in a restroom at the Minneapolis international airport. In the early two thousands, he supported the federal marriage amendment, which would have federally barred gay marriage. And let's not even get into the church whose sex scandals of all varieties are far too numerous to even begin to unpack. And whose members tend to lean Republican and to promote anti-LGBTQ stances while claiming deep concern for the wellbeing of children and rooting out of predators. They desperately want to protect kids from drag Queens while sending them to Sunday schools with priests. You know, there is something deeply wrong going on when you have a party that cannot contend with its own shame and self loathing. So they make it everyone else's problem. And so that fear in their constituents in order to try to legislate away the freedoms of everyone around them while protecting some of the most heinous predators in our midst. And this isn't to put the blame solely on the backs of people in the Republican party who may secretly identify as LGBTQ, whether they admit it or not. There are also many straight people who are just wholeheartedly full chested bigots. That also comes from a place of fear. Most anti-trans people, for example, have never met a trans person before, but fear is not an excuse to treat other humans like garbage or worse fear is. However, the motivating factor behind most Republican initiatives, fear of immigrants, fear of various types of sexuality, fear of sex, generally that's pounded into our puritanical heads from day one fear of themselves and riling up that fear in their base has historically worked. But as I said, after the debate a few weeks ago, I think that that fear mongering might finally be faltering in the face of a democratic party that feels hopeful and energized. And here's why these scandals, the self-loathing and this fear will impact this election specifically. I don't think there's going to be some big come to Jesus moment where Republicans writ large, realize the error of their ways, decide to shed the weight of their self-loathing and either start actually prosecuting the people in their midst that are doing the bad crimes or come out of the closet and be happy trans attracted members of the LGBTQ community. And right off into the sunset, that's not happening. There have been closeted Republicans for as long as there have been Republicans and the cognitive dissonance that they're able to exist under means that they will never address the reality that hating the people that represent the parts you hate about yourself is a really horrible way to live. But it does mean that while Trump and Vance are at the top of the ticket, gallivanting around being complete weirdos, pushing clearly false and racist narratives that even have their ardent supporters questioning them and canoodling with people so far, right. That they make the far right blush all the way down the ticket. Republicans are so in chaos and making a mockery of this country in a way that I think, and I hope we'll give many normal middle of the road people pause, because ultimately our elections are not decided by people like me, or I would guess most of the audience of this podcast, people who are solidly left-leaning who vote for progressive policies and candidates. Our elections are decided by people in the middle who generally don't want to think about politics if they don't have to, and typically don't hold ardently black and white views about the world. Those are the types of people who can be swayed by seeing a group of people who have gone so far off their rockers that it makes you question the entire party. When it was just Trump at the top being at least theoretically kept within a set of guardrails by the people around him, there was some room for people in the middle to say, well, I don't love his personality, but I think he'll be good for the economy or for taxes or whatever reason someone in the middle would decide to vote for Trump. Now the people around him from the top of the ticket, JD Vance, project 2025 insanity, all the way on down to the Republican candidate for the governor of North Carolina, declaring himself a trans attracted black Nazi and the state election board in Georgia being helmed by a conspiracy theorist with a megaphone and a party that claims LGBTQ folks are perverted villains while crashing the largest gay dating app in the world and supporting a church whose sex crimes go back for decades. The cracks are showing and they run deep. And this has what few somewhat balanced Republican strategists are left quaking in their boots. If any one of these key swing States goes down, it could pull Trump down with it. If Trump takes Pennsylvania and Georgia, but not North Carolina, where Mark Robinson is, his likelihood of taking the white house is slim. And with Mark Robinson on the North Carolina ticket, officials are genuinely worried about him taking the entire thing. Trump handpicked Robinson for governor in that state. Trump has repeatedly compared Mark Robinson to Martin Luther King jr. But at his rally this week in North Carolina, Trump did not invite Robinson and sidestepped the issue entirely. JD Vance has scheduled two appearances in the state just this week, and Trump will also increase his travel there. Harris launched a new TV ad tying Robinson to Trump. Trump has spent $40 million on advertising in North Carolina alone, and Harris has spent 57 million. Both sides, no how consequential this circus is on the outcome of this election and are pouncing on North Carolina to try to either make it go away or capitalize on it. And Democrats are pouncing on Georgia to try to rein in their cuckoo bananas election officials, because the reality is that our elections are decided by swing States. And right now there are seven on the line and the polls show the candidates neck and neck in most there's Arizona with 11 electoral college votes and polls are mixed as to who's winning Georgia with 16 electoral college votes. Polls are also mixed, but most show Trump leading by three to four points. Michigan has 15 electoral college votes and Harris is up anywhere from two to five points in polls. There now Nevada has six electoral college votes and polls are showing a dead heat. North Carolina has 16 electoral college votes and Harris is leading by one to two points. Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes. She's the big boy to win and polls are mixed as to who's leading. And then there's Wisconsin with 10 electoral college votes where polls are also mixed as to who's leading. As of this morning, based on current polling, Harris is slated to win by six electoral votes, six. That means winning or losing Nevada alone could decide this election to 70 to win has an interactive map that you can play with to see what combinations could make the difference. If you're a big giant nerd, I'll link it in the description. So things are still on edge here and polling is largely all within the margin of error. National polling is showing Harris upwards of five to six percentage points ahead of Trump, which is outside the margin of error. But like I said, it really comes down to these swing States. So it's cute if Harris wins the popular vote. But as we've seen in recent years, that doesn't ultimately matter. And the closer the vote count, the more likely it is that individual election officials who fully gone off the deep end will have the power to throw the entire national election into question. It'll be like the 2000 election, which came down to a few poorly designed ballots in Florida and had to be decided by the Supreme court. Except this time there will be made up reasons to doubt the ballot counts and it'll go to a Supreme court hell bent on making Trump into a tiny little King. So the stakes really can't be overstated not to freak you out. And I'd love to hear from the voters in those swing States. What's the vibe on the ground? How are you feeling? Are you registered to vote? Please double check because some States have been purging their voter rolls of inactive voters and what counts as inactive varies a lot by state. So just double check. Okay. Special thanks to members on Patrion who support this podcast, go to patrion.com slash Alija to join and get these episodes ad free extra special shout out to my multi platinum patrons, T Latranger, Lucas, Joshua, Coles, Thomas Johnson, Anthony Giles, Tay and Brett Piontek. Your generosity makes this channel what it is. So thank you. If you liked this episode, I highly recommend you check out my episode last week, discussing the downfall of the Trump vans ticket. Thanks so much for being here. Have a good day. Bye-bye.