Overnight, there was an extraordinary moment; a moment when the whole state of Michigan seemed to be poised on the brink of being stolen, where overt racism made a smug attack on democracy, and the unthinkable seemed momentarily all too close. And then the tide was rolled back, not just through the almost forgotten American tradition of negotiation and compromise, but on the back of a righteous rant for the ages.
In a stunning decision, the two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, the county that includes Detroit, refused to certify the vote, despite no evidence of fraud. That decision could have placed the certification of the entire state on hold, which caused one of Trump’s lawyers to immediately begin the victory dance in anticipation that Michigan’s Republican state legislature would hijack the process and directly name a slate of Trump electors.
And then came … fire. Sweet, sweet fire.
Wednesday, Nov 18, 2020 · 2:43:44 PM +00:00
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Mark Sumner
Someone apparently finally told Trump he lost this one, in addition to his 25 lost cases in court. Because he finally got around to claiming that the vote still isn’t certified, nuh uh, not really.
Spoiler alert: Trump is wrong.
To be absolutely clear: Donald Trump has no hope of overturning the actual vote in Michigan. Joe Biden won the state by more than 146,000 votes, and there is absolutely no sign of any widespread election fraud. Trump’s only chance is that Republicans would not just cheat, but absolutely, openly, and thoroughly spurn democracy by ignoring the will of the state’s voters and simply installing Trump electors, violating multiple state regulations in the process. The Wayne County action on Tuesday evening seemed to be the first step toward exactly that.
Republican canvassers William Hartmann and Monica Palmer saw the same evidence as everyone else—the numbers for Wayne County not only looked good, they looked better than they had in previous elections that both members had certified—then they simply refused to sign on. Hartmann, a former tea party leader whose Facebook page is filled with racist and homophobic memes, was jubilant over his ability to block the results. Palmer, who supported protests against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for attempting to protect the state from COVID-19, made the racist basis of her actions crystal clear by offering to certify every other area of the county … except 80% black Detroit. That included certifying a 95% white community that appeared to have more discrepancies than Detroit.
The canvassers continued to meet and argue for the next two hours, in the middle of which Democratic activist Ned Staebler delivered a must-watch moment of righteousness that genuinely needs to be preserved as both an artifact of the age—a critical political meeting taking place in a public Zoom meeting—and a powerful pushback against a move from Republicans that was nothing less than pure apartheid.
Stabler: I’m not going to try to change your minds. I’m just going to let you know that the Trump stain; the stain of racism that you William Hartmann and Monica Palmer have just covered yourself in, is going to follow you throughout history. Your grandchildren are going to think of you like Bull Conner, or George Wallace. Monica Palmer and William Hartmann will forever be known in southeastern Michigan as two racists who did something so unprecedented that they disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Black voters in the city of Detroit, because they were ordered to.
Amazingly for 2020 … things worked out. Two hours after they first refused to certify the results, the two Republicans agreed to certify all of Wayne County in return for asking the secretary of state to conduct an independent audit. This post-mortem audit won’t affect the results, or prevent the whole state from moving to certify.
And perhaps the most delicious moment of all, four minutes after the board reached the agreement and the vote to certify passed unanimously, Donald Trump put out a tweet saying “Wow! Michigan just refused to certify the election results! Having courage is a beautiful thing. The USA stands proud!”
Hours later, Trump still had not responded to the fact that Michigan had, in fact, moved on even before he could stomp out a message with his abbreviated thumbs. USA really does stand proud. And Staebler made it clear who deserves to bask in that pride.