This text incorporates spoilers for Episode 8 of the fourth and closing season of HBO’s “Succession,” “America Decides.”
After his dynastic right-wing tv community declares victory for a fascistic presidential candidate, regardless of the likely-arson-related destruction of 100,000 Democratic-leaning ballots in Milwaukee, “Succession” character Roman Roy performs it cool.
“We’ve simply made an evening of excellent TV,” he says. “That’s what we’ve performed. Nothing occurs.”
“Issues do occur, Rome,” his sister Siobhan scolds him in return.
Effectively, Milwaukee County’s prime elections administrator agrees with Shiv. The election-related violence that came about in Sunday’s episode ― and the violence that the Roy youngsters could have unleashed by naming fictional candidate Jeryd Mencken the winner amidst extreme uncertainty ― hit dwelling for some officers watching the collection.
“I obtained loss of life threats through the [2020] presidential recount,” Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson advised CBS 58 on Monday, including that he was getting calls through the present. “You recognize, that is severe enterprise, so I believe it’s nice for TV however not so nice for us.”
And Christenson’s not alone in his concern: “Succession’s” writers went to nice lengths to create a terrifyingly lifelike election disaster. Briefly: The presidential election between Mencken and the generic-seeming Democratic candidate, Daniel Jiménez, comes all the way down to Wisconsin’s electoral votes, however the hearth in Milwaukee has destroyed a doubtlessly decisive variety of ballots.
“It was probably the most uncomfortable hour of scripted tv I’ve ever watched,” election regulation scholar Rick Hasen wrote in Slate.
Numerous characters at ATN, the fictional community run by the Roys that rushes to dub Mencken the reputable winner, debate what occurs subsequent: How can the nation choose a president amidst this chaos? Within the “Succession” universe, the reply could come subsequent week, however right here in the actual world, there’s no clear reply on what would really occur after the present’s imagined poll firebombing.
“Sucession” very cleverly chosen Milwaukee for the fireplace. Absentee ballots within the metropolis are centrally counted at a facility referred to as “Central Rely.” What’s extra, beneath Wisconsin regulation ― and in contrast to many different states ― absentee ballots can’t be processed or counted earlier than Election Day.
Because of this, a big hearth on the Central facility might certainly be devastating.
Nonetheless, there’s one silver lining, and it’s a element the present obtained flawed: An ATN journalist claimed that there’s no option to know who solid an absentee poll, however that’s not true in Wisconsin. Election officers do monitor absentee ballots, together with scanning poll envelopes as they’re obtained at counting facilities. It’s the rationale Wisconsin voters can monitor their mail-in ballots as they churn by way of the system.
Because of this, election officers would have a reasonably clear image of the voters who’d been affected by the assault. However a giant drawback nonetheless stays: They wouldn’t essentially know which of these votes had been tallied, slightly than merely being obtained and processed.
“Now you’re stepping into the ‘no one is aware of’ territory,” Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee to the Wisconsin Elections Fee, the state’s election authority, advised HuffPost in a cellphone name Tuesday.
And Wisconsin, like many different states, doesn’t have legal guidelines on the books detailing what to do in such situations.
“There are not any statutes that govern burned up absentee ballots so the courts must work out a treatment,” Jacobs tweeted Monday.
If the episode came about sooner or later, it’s potential a brand new regulation might create readability. Within the wake of Donald Trump’s marketing campaign to steal the 2020 presidential election, Congress labored to clear up a serious weak hyperlink in U.S. election regulation referred to as the Electoral Rely Act. President Joe Biden signed the Electoral Rely Reform Act into regulation on Dec. 29.
The regulation updates america’ “failed election” procedures, or what states are instructed to do when states fail to correctly select presidential electors ― for instance, because of a pure catastrophe, because the Bipartisan Coverage Middle’s Michael Thorning identified.
The brand new language says, “Within the case of a State that appoints electors by common vote, if the State modifies the interval of voting, as necessitated by pressure majeure occasions which might be extraordinary and catastrophic, as supplied beneath legal guidelines of the State enacted previous to such day, ‘election day’ shall embody the modified interval of voting.”
In different phrases, if state lawmakers need to keep away from changing into a real-life “Succession” plotline, they’d be clever to determine a contingency plan in case some actual life toughs try to subvert the need of the folks. However that’s not but the case, and within the fictional “Succession” universe, we will in all probability assume this regulation doesn’t exist.
In that situation, the scenario would definitely find yourself in court docket. And the potential responses to an arson assault are quite a few, together with a possible revote for folks with affected ballots. Even then, questions abound, CBS 58 reported: How lengthy would voters need to revote? What about voters who say they had been wrongfully excluded from the pool of individuals eligible to revote? What about candidates who attempt to shrink that pool additional?
The arson portrayed on the present occurred throughout a normal presidential election, which means that each native and nationwide races had been on the poll, and, finally, that the struggle would doubtless attain the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
“It could be a litigation circus and nightmare in a number of courts with a number of theories,” Hasen wrote.
Voter anxiousness over such a fraught query reaching the Supreme Court docket is comprehensible, Jacobs stated on the cellphone Tuesday. She pointed to current reporting on justices’ failure to reveal key monetary info to the general public. If the excessive court docket can’t be trusted to try this, she puzzled, can we make certain they’d look past partisan politics to guard the democratic course of?
“The discomfort in all probability goes to the U.S. Supreme Court docket,” Jacobs stated. “Is there belief that the Court docket would act in a nonpartisan option to effectuate folks’s rights to vote? Or would it not be as mercenary because the characters [in “Succession”] see it?”
“I’m involved in regards to the legitimacy of our court docket,” Jacobs stated, sounding totally unconvinced that America’s prime judges can be misplaced in a Waystar Royco convention room.
