Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) made it clear this week that he doesn’t believe President Donald Trump has a chance in hell of winning the 2020 election if all of the ballots cast are counted, introducing a bill that would nullify all mail-in ballots that haven’t been tallied within a 48-hour window, according to Common Dreams:

“The Orwellian-named ‘Help America Vote Act of 2020,’ which Scott proposed Thursday, would help to codify President Donald Trump’s desire, stated last week, to ensure that the preliminary tally of votes on Election Day will count as the final vote count in the election.

“The preliminary count would leave out absentee ballots and a record number of mail-in ballots, which nearly half of voters plan to either send to election officials or place in a drop box before Election Day, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll conducted earlier this month.”

Specifically, the legislation wound mandate that all mail ballots be placed on a timer, as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl explained:

“Scott’s proposed legislation would also prevent mail-in ballots received prior to Election Day from being processed and counted until the morning of Nov. 3, contradicting state election statutes across the country including one that he signed when he was governor of Florida. Basically, the bill would move back the date by which votes can start to be counted and move up the date by which the count must end. This would limit the count to a single less-than-48-hour window, shortening the count in some cases by weeks.”

In such a scenario, if your local board of elections failed to open and count your ballot within the 2-day time limit, your vote would be destroyed and you would be disenfranchised by an arbitrary number set by a senator from a state Trump desperately needs to win if he’s going to have any chance of a second term. And if your Constitutional right happens to be shredded in the process, that’s just too damn bad. It’s like something out of a third-world country or elections in Russia, where the government can kick anyone off the ballot or invalidate your vote when they’re not busy poisoning their political opponents with nerve gas.

Fortunately, Scott’s legislation has no chance of becoming law, but the very idea that any elected official in this country would even propose such a think reeks of authoritarianism and is a direct assault on the democratic process.

As we’ve seen ever since the 2000 election, if Republicans can’t win an election fair and square, they’ll lie, cheat, or steal to get their way. It’s one of many reasons they need to be voted into obscurity.

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