The 'unsettling scenario' that 'could preclude a state from having a clear' election result: Maddow

Speaking with MSNBC's Joy Reid on Wednesday, fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow broke down "the unsettling scenario" that could unfold after the election at the hand of Republican-led election board's like Georgia's.

The Rachel Maddow Show host pointed out that since Trump allies have taken over the Georgia GOP election board, they've passed rules to prevent election officials from certifying the vote.

"Republicans have been trying to refuse certification since 2020 in all of the swing states," Maddow told Reid, "in a bunch of states that aren't swing states, in more than three dozen instances — they just refused to say here was the vote total in our most recent election. They're doing this leading up to the 2024 presidential election when it seems very clear that no matter what the results are, they're going to say there's no knowable result. And so this letter today is from the secretary of state's office, Brad Raffensperger office in Georgia, telling the Georgia election board, you need so stop passing these new rules. We're way too close to the election."

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"On Friday of this week, they're planning to pass 11 new rules for the administration of the election," the MSNBC host continued. This is Raffensperger's office warning that it's way too close to the election for any of these new rules to go into effect. And telling them not to do it. he actually calls what they're trying to do absurd. But there's no reason to think they're going to follow this advice. They are really intent on sort of technocratically scuttling the process of tallying the votes."

Reid replied, "And advanced voting starts October 15. So we're talking about in a matter of weeks. Not November. We're talking about October voting. They're still trying to pass rules that will make it difficult to certify. It's not a 50 state problem. It's a Georgia problem, because of Republican control. But all they would need is one or two states with enough electoral votes to bring it short of 270. That's the nightmare scenario. Because one state doesn't certify at all, we go into the electoral college and no one has 270, or we wind up in court cases — Brad Raffensperger suing this election board — and taking it to the Supreme Court. Either way, that's two out of three ways Trump loses the election and still could be president."

"Potentially," Maddow said. "It's a very unsettling scenario when you get into those nitty-gritty hypotheticals about how this might work. What would happen — the electoral count reformat, which was passed after what happened on January 6th — it says the states have to have certified election results by December 11th. It doesn't say, though, what happens if they don't. And if part of the reason they don't is because it's tied up in courts and the courts can't be encouraged to meet those deadlines, the prospect arises in which a state, like Georgia or some other state that tries this, essentially doesn't forward its electoral votes to washington. What would happen then, theoretically is that the number of electoral votes you need to win the presidency would be reduced. It wouldn't be 270, it would be some smaller number, and theoretically you could get there even if you had not been able to get there had all the states votes been counted."

"So, the worry that you have about the courts is the worry that I share, Joy," the MSNBC host continued. "That this could be something where just delay, just confusion, just muddying the waters could preclude a state from having a clear result by the time the country needs them to have a clear result. And they feel very confident in their chances once it gets into the courts, and I think that's ultimately the goal of what they're doing."

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