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自从时任总统唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）在没有为他的虚假主张提供证据的情况下大喊选举欺诈以来的四年里，他的团队已经吸取了关于如何窃取选举的教训：尽早修复 - 不要等到投票。
在 2020 年计票后，特朗普给佐治亚州共和党国务卿打了著名的电话，向他施压，要求他再“找到”11,780 张选票，但被拒绝了。他的团队提起了数十起诉讼，但被发现毫无根据，未能改变结果。最后，特朗普在白宫外向一群忠诚者发表了演讲，敦促他们游行到国会，并于 2021 年 1 月 6 日在国会大厦发动了一场暴力起义。（联邦法官 Tanya S. Chutkan 本周公布了特别检察官杰克·史密斯 （Jack Smith） 调查的新证据，该调查试图追究特朗普试图推翻 2020 年大选结果的责任。
In the four years since then-President Donald Trump cried election fraud without providing evidence for his false claim, his team has learned a lesson about how to steal an election: Put the fix in early – don’t wait until the votes are cast.
After the votes were counted in 2020, Trump made his famous phone call to Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, pressuring him to “find” another 11,780 votes but was rebuffed. His team filed dozens of lawsuits that were found to be without merit and failed to change the outcome. Finally, Trump delivered a speech to a mob of loyalists outside the White House urging them to march to Congress, where they launched a violent insurrection on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Federal Judge Tanya S. Chutkan this week made public new evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation seeking to hold Trump responsible for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.)
这一次，特朗普的律师在大选前提起诉讼，试图剥夺选民的权利，并为对结果提出异议奠定基础。忠于特朗普的共和党人已经提起了数百起诉讼，质疑民主党选区的选民或投票程序，特别是在关键的战场州。
This time, Trump’s lawyers are suing before the election, seeking to disenfranchise voters and set the predicate for contesting the results. Trump-loyalist Republicans have filed hundreds of lawsuits challenging voters or voting procedures in Democratic constituencies, particularly in key battleground states.
最受关注的是佐治亚州、北卡罗来纳州和宾夕法尼亚州。如果任何一位候选人都输掉了这三个州，他们几乎不可能获得 270 张选举人票来赢得总统宝座。The greatest focus is on Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. If either candidate loses all three of these states, it would be virtually impossible for them to get the 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
佐治亚州：在特朗普在 2020 年以 11,779 票之差输掉佐治亚州，并且未能击败共和党国务卿布拉德·拉芬斯伯格以“找到”更多对他有利的选票后，右翼州立法机构改变了全州的选举规则。
共和党立法者通过剥夺拉芬斯伯格的许多选举权力并将他从该州选举委员会中除名来奖励他的诚信。该机构由三名特朗普党派组成，他们颁布了限制投票时间和限制投递箱的新规则，对城市地区的公民产生了不利影响，他们往往投票给绝大多数民主党人。新规则现在要求每个县选举委员会在认证选举结果之前进行未定义的“合理调查”。
州选举委员会还规定，尽管拉芬斯伯格、该州共和党总检察长克里斯·卡尔（Chris Carr）和一个县选举官员协会反对，但必须对选票进行手工计票。其目的是减缓民主党主导的大都市县的认证速度。延误可能会为共和党立法机构声称选举结果不完整打开大门，即使机器计票显示副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯 （Kamala Harris） 赢得了该州。该计划是将 2024 年的选举交给美国众议院，让他们决定佐治亚州的投票结果是否无法认证。
Georgia: After Trump lost Georgia by 11,779 votes in 2020 and failed to shake down Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” more votes in his favor, the right-wing state legislature changed statewide electoral rules.
GOP lawmakers rewarded Raffensperger's integrity by stripping him of many of his election powers and removing him from the state’s election board. That body is stacked with three Trump partisans who promulgated new rules that curb voting hours and limit drop boxes, adversely affecting citizens in urban areas who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. The new rules now require every county election board to conduct an undefined “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results.
The state election board also mandated that ballots must be hand counted, despite the objections of Raffensperger, the state’s Republican Attorney General Chris Carr and an association of county election officials. The aim is to slow down certification in large, Democratic-dominated metropolitan counties. Delays could open the door for the Republican legislature to claim the electoral results are incomplete, even if machine counts show Vice President Kamala Harris winning the state. The scheme is to throw the 2024 election to the U.S. House of Representatives for them to decide, if the results in Georgia votes can’t be certified.
北卡罗来纳州：特朗普上次以 1.3 个百分点的微弱优势赢得了该州。共和党立法机构不放过任何侥幸心理，颁布了新的限制措施，包括选民身份要求。它还禁止北卡罗来纳大学（University of North Carolina）数以万计的学生和教职员工使用该大学的电子身份证作为身份证明，尽管这些相同的大学身份证可以用来在焦油脚跟州（Tar Heel State）获得国家颁发的驾驶执照。
更糟糕的是，他们试图将 225,000 名北卡罗来纳州选民赶出选民名册，因为他们在登记时没有认证自己的公民身份。这是特朗普白人民族主义谣言的一部分，即成群结队的“非法”移民试图投票。特朗普团队只能提供一个关于这种欺诈行为的罕见例子，让我们严肃地说：一个害怕被捕和驱逐出境的无证移民会冒着表明身份投票的风险吗？
邮寄选票已经发出，由于将合法选民踢出选民名册可能违反联邦法律，特朗普团队的真正意图可能是让北卡罗来纳州最高法院宣布一个有缺陷的结果——如果哈里斯获胜的话。该法院也可能是该州共和党的全资子公司;上个月，它把独立候选人转为特朗普支持者的小罗伯特·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）从选票中剔除（正如特朗普所希望的那样），去年它又允许了一份不公正的选区重划地图，这将保证共和党人在紫色州的14个国会席位中至少获得10个。
North Carolina: Trump won the state narrowly last time, by 1.3 points. The Republican legislature, taking no chances, has enacted new restrictions, including voter identification requirements. It also prohibited tens of thousands of students and employees at the University of North Carolina from using the university's electronic ID as a form of identification, even though those same college IDs can be used to obtain state-issued driver’s licenses in the Tar Heel State.
Even worse is an attempt to throw 225,000 North Carolina voters off the rolls because they hadn't certified their citizenship when they enrolled. This is part of Trump’s white nationalist canard that hordes of “illegal” migrants are trying to vote. Team Trump can’t provide more than a rare example of this kind of fraud, and let’s be serious: Would an undocumented migrant fearful of arrest and deportation risk identifying themselves to cast a vote?
Mail ballots have already gone out, and since kicking legal voters off the rolls may violate federal law, Team Trump’s real intent may be to have the North Carolina Supreme Court declare a flawed outcome – if Harris wins. That court might as well be a wholly owned subsidiary of the state GOP; last month it removed independent-candidate-turned-Trump-backer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the ballot, (as Trump wanted), and last year it allowed a gerrymandered redistricting map that would guarantee Republicans at least 10 of the 14 congressional seats in a purple state.
宾夕法尼亚州：民主党人在这里受到了更多保护，不受特朗普试图操纵结果的影响，因为他们控制着全州的所有办公室和州最高法院的多数席位。但 67 个县中许多县的共和党人对选民资格提出了质疑，并试图阻止“治愈”或纠正任何有缺陷的邮寄选票，例如选民忘记签名的选票。
特朗普势力赢得了一场程序上的胜利，将扔掉任何没有选民签名完整日期的邮寄选票。民主党人正在上诉。
宾夕法尼亚州的最高选举官员是联邦部长阿尔·施密特（Al Schmidt），他是一位直截了当的共和党人，由民主党州长乔什·夏皮罗（Josh Shapiro）任命。如果特朗普的势力在州一级失败，他们可能会将他们的论点提交给联邦法院。
Pennsylvania: Democrats are more protected here from Trump’s efforts to fiddle with the outcome, because they control all statewide offices and a majority on the state Supreme Court. But Republicans in many of the 67 counties have raised questions of voter eligibility and have sought to block “curing” – or correcting – any flawed mail-in ballots, such as those that voters forgot to sign.The Trump forces won a procedural victory that would throw out any mail ballots that don't have a full date with the voter's signature. Democrats are appealing.
Pennsylvania’s top elections official is Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a straight-shooting Republican who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. If Trump forces fail at the state level, they would likely move their argument to federal courts.
自 2020 年特朗普败选以来，MAGA 人群已经为 2024 年建立了所谓的“选举完整性”基础设施，其中包括比上次更好的律师。与此同时，民主党人已经招募了数百名顶级律师来监督和捍卫投票的公正性，并再次由两名前美国总检察长塞斯·韦克斯曼（Seth Waxman）和唐·韦里利（Don Verrilli）领导，他们上次驳斥了数十项特朗普的挑战。
特朗普的前白宫律师之一泰·科布（Ty Cobb）认为，共和党的新法律策略有一个大问题：缺乏证据。“他们没有最后一次，这次也不太可能，”他说。
Since Trump's defeat in 2020, the MAGA crowd has built what it calls an “election integrity” infrastructure for 2024, which includes better lawyers than last time. Democrats, meanwhile, have enlisted hundreds of top lawyers to monitor and defend the integrity of the vote, and are led again by two former U.S. solicitors general, Seth Waxman and Don Verrilli, who batted down dozens of Trump challenges last time.
One of Trump’s former White House attorneys, Ty Cobb, thinks the new GOP legal strategy has one big problem: a lack of evidence. “They didn't have any last time, and they're unlikely to have any this time,” he said.
2020 年乔·拜登总统的顶级律师是沃尔特·德林格，他于 2022 年去世，他是我认识的最精明的最高法院观察员。他曾经说过，当政治有争议时，如今高等法院总是站在共和党一边。这发生在布什诉布什案（Bush v.Gore）的裁决，以及最近的许多决定，包括撤销投票权和授予特朗普作为总统可能犯下的罪行的部分豁免权。A top lawyer for President Joe Biden in 2020 was Walter Dellinger, who passed away in 2022, and who was the most astute Supreme Court watcher I've known. He used to say that when politics are at issue, the high court these days invariably sides with Republicans. That happened in Bush v. Gore in 2000, and in many recent decisions, including rolling back voting rights and granting Trump partial immunity for crimes he may have committed as president.
最高法院，包括特朗普任命的三名大法官，在 2020 年 12 月至 2021 年 3 月期间审查的几起上诉中驳回了他在 2020 年获胜的虚假声明。但那时大多数共和党人认为特朗普已经成为历史。2024 年，他再次成为共和党的明显领袖。The Supreme Court, including the three justices appointed by Trump, rejected his false claims of winning in 2020 in several appeals they reviewed between December 2020 and March 2021. But that was when most Republicans thought Trump was history. In 2024, he’s once again the clear leader of the Republican Party.
选举索赔可能会再次提交给最高法院——也许是 2022 年选举计数改革法案的合宪性，这将阻止其中一些无聊的挑战。如果发生这种情况，我们都应该担心 Dellinger 的警告。An election claim could come before the Supreme Court again – perhaps the constitutionality of the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act, which would stop some of these frivolous challenges. If that happens, we should all be worried about Dellinger's warning.
