We still don’t have a court date in the suits filed in Waynesboro Circuit Court over the certification of the Nov. 5 election in Waynesboro, which is, out of nowhere, a key player in the strategy that we’re seeing played out by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.
All indications are that the 2024 presidential election is trending in the direction of the Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, with a growing sense that Harris could win by a similar, or slightly greater, margin than Joe Biden did in 2020, when Biden defeated Donald Trump by a 302-236 margin in the Electoral College, and won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes.
ICYMI
- Northern Virginia poll watcher: Republicans aiming to block state vote certification
- Waynesboro voters seek court order requiring Nov. 5 vote certification
- Waynesboro Republicans file suit to pre-emptively challenge Nov. 5 vote count
- Justice Department assigns U.S. Attorneys to monitor election fraud in Virginia
- Virginia: Elections at risk due to election deniers in official positions
- Waynesboro Republicans who don’t want to certify Nov. 5 election were … recruited?
- Gov. Youngkin, AG Miyares mum on Waynesboro lawsuit challenging Nov. 5 vote count
Where the suit filed in Waynesboro plays in is, the two Republicans on the Waynesboro Electoral Board, Curt Lilly and Scott Mares, are saying that they will not vote to certify the Nov. 5 election results without a court order, asserting that the method for certifying the vote enshrined in state law is unconstitutional.
The suit, led by Front Royal-based attorney Thomas F. Ranieri, isn’t likely to be successful if it were to make it all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court, but you can never rule out a surprise win at the Circuit Court level, which, I think, is all that side is looking for.
A lower-court win would allow Lilly and Mares to try to run out the clock on the Nov. 15 certification deadline for certifying the local election results set by the Virginia Department of Elections.
A surprise lower-court win could also lead to Republicans on electoral boards in other localities in Virginia to join with Lilly and Mares in declaring that they, too, will refuse to certify absent a court order, leading to chaos in the walkup to the Nov. 5 election, and more as election officers begin the vote counts on Election Night.
As this is going on, we now have an insider telling us that it appears the RNC and the Republican Party of Virginia are working to have thousands of poll observers fanned out across the Commonwealth through the early voting and Nov. 5 voting periods, with the goal being to have those observers file reports that could be used to create a basis for Gov. Glenn Youngkin to cite enough uncertainty with the conduct of the election to claim that he can’t, in good conscience, move to certify the state’s election results.
The stakes here are, Harris currently has a 7.1-point lead on Trump in Virginia in the FiveThirtyEight.com polling average, so it’s not going out on a limb to point to Virginia, and its 13 electoral votes, as a safe bet for the Harris column.
Take those votes off the table, and the margin in the Electoral College tightens, obviously.
And then consider, I only know what I know is going on in Waynesboro, and what I’ve been told Republicans are doing at the state level.
It stands to reason that we’re not the only front in this political war; I’m just the only guy, right now, connecting the dots on what appears to be going on, likely, on a much wider scale.
The goal of Republicans here is, by any means necessary, to prevent Kamala Harris from getting 270 electoral votes, because if there is no clear winner in the Electoral College, the election is thrown to the U.S. House of Representatives, with each state delegation getting one vote.
The advantage in state delegations goes right now to Republicans, who control 26 of the 50 state delegations ahead of the 2024 elections, and the GOP seems to be a good bet to maintain control of at least 26 state delegations this cycle.
Bottom line: if the election ends up in the House, it won’t matter that Harris would have uncertified wins in the Electoral College and the popular vote; Donald Trump would be the next President of the United States.
That’s what we’re seeing going on here.
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Chris Graham
