You don’t need to be an expert in electoral politics to understand Rule One of any campaign: Candidates should pursue as many votes as possible. In a democracy, it’s common sense: The more votes a campaign has, the greater the chance of success.
With this in mind, Donald Trump appears to have a counterintuitive rhetorical habit. The New Republic noted:
On Fox News Thursday morning, Donald Trump had a weird instruction for his supporters: they don’t have to vote. “My instruction: We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” Trump said on Fox & Friends before going on a rant about how much support he has in Florida.
As a clip from the show makes clear, the former president didn’t appear to be kidding: https://x.com/atrupar/status/1816482779581775943
If the phrasing sounded at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. The day after last month’s presidential debate, for example, Trump held a rally in Virginia and told attendees, “We don’t need votes.”
As one of the other posters mentioned (@Jordan117@lemmy.world) , it’s exactly this. Johnson will refuse to certify the results of the election that put Democrats in the House, claiming some kind of bullshit irregularities with no proof, leaving the House controlled by facists. They’ll then claim irregularities in the presidential election and force a contingent election where they have a 100% chance of electing Trump no matter what the public votes.
More people need to be made aware that this is 100% legal for them to do, and more people need to be aware that it is almost certainly what they will try. The only thing that can possibly stop it is significant awareness by the mass population of Americans and significant publicity (similar to how mass awareness of Project 2025 turned it into a poison pill).
EDIT: Oh look, they’ve already started making it super-legal in battleground states: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/06/georgia-local-election-boards-allowed-withhold-vote-certification
This does appear to be their plan.