Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s11e26 Episode Script

Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver,
thank you so much for joining us!
It has been a busy week!
Kamala Harris released
her health records,
we learned Trump sent Covid tests
to Putin early in the pandemic,
and Florida spent the first part of the
week bracing for Hurricane Milton,
which, among other things, threw
an awkward wrench
into Tuesday's
"Dancing with the Stars".
For the final dance of the night,
our bachelor star will tango
to the hair metal classic
"Rock You Like a Hurricane".
Now, we want you to know that these
songs were chosen weeks in advance
of the devastating weather events.
Yeah, that's not great!
While I'm sure the song was decided
weeks in advance, it's also the middle
of hurricane season right now!
This wasn't some freak,
unforeseeable thing
like if you'd had to come out and say,
"Before our contestants cha-cha to the
Thong Song, we want you to know,
it was chosen weeks before this
morning's tragic mass thong-strangling.
Please stay strong.
Strong, sta-strong, strong, strong."
Milton's damage was extensive,
and awful.
Though, thankfully, it wasn't quite
as dire as many had predicted.
And interestingly, the run-up
to the storm provided a reminder
of a weirdly widely-used metric
for storm severity.
Waffle House is still monitoring
the storm's impacts.
FEMA officials use
the Waffle House Index
as an unofficial
metric during disasters.
We call it the Waffle House Index,
and it's very reliable.
The index works as an unofficial
indicator to locals of the severity
of an impending storm, based on if their
nearest Waffle House is closed or not.
It's true, there is something called
a Waffle House Index.
And it's jarring to have something
so important conveyed
in terms of Waffle House.
It's like finding out NORAD relies
on the OshKosh B'Gosh
Nuclear Threat Level.
"We're at red overalls, everyone!
Get underground!"
The Waffle House Index actually
originated with the government,
around 20 years ago, this FEMA
administrator realized that,
when going into a disaster zone,
"If you get there and
the Waffle House is closed?
That's really bad.
That's where you go to work."
And that's partly because the
company's had a fanatical devotion
to staying open.
Over the years, it's seen business
skyrocket at restaurants
that opened quickly after hurricanes,
so they've "embraced a business
strategy centered around
keeping their restaurants operable
during and after a disaster."
And they know
people take this seriously,
because Waffle House's Twitter feed
features sober posts like this one,
with maps of which restaurants
are closed,
just above normal
waffle-pushing ads like this, reading,
"I have a lot on my plate
right now."
That's the most jarring juxtaposition
of content
since SunnyD once seemed
to threaten to commit suicide.
By the way, the Twitter account
for Satan replied to that,
"I feel you, SunnyD, my friend,"
to which, and this true,
SunnyD replied,
"Thank you, Satan."
Twitter used to be really good.
And look, I could talk about
the grim subtext here,
from the idea that Americans place
more trust in restaurant chains
than their own government,
to the fact that same chain
has somehow made
"we make our employees
work during natural disasters"
into a branding opportunity.
But I'm going to choose to focus
on the fact
Waffle Houses have somehow
become a light in the storm,
11 Scrabble tiles of backlit hope.
Which is wild coming from a place
that otherwise embodies total chaos,
from the frequent brawls,
to the staggering variations
of hash brown bowls,
described by Waffle House as
"the jazz music of the breakfast scene".
Which I guess makes sense,
because, like jazz,
the idea of a hash brown bowl
sounds fun,
but when you actually experience it,
you think to yourself,
"There is too much going on here, and
I'm not sure I'm enjoying any of it."
There is also their chaotic decision
to stock their jukeboxes with
food-related knockoff songs, like this.
Raisin! Raisin toast!
Raisin! Raisin toast!
There are raisins in my toast!
Raisin toast!
Yeah, that makes sense.
"Sherry, Baby" is a song about
Frankie Valli being horny for a girl,
and this is basically that,
but raisins.
Horny for raisins.
Which, not for nothing,
sounds like it could be a believable
title of a Joe Biden memoir.
The point is, Waffle House
combines chaos with order,
and nothing exemplifies that more
than the bonkers method
they've devised for line cooks
to keep track of orders.
Because they don't use simple
methods like servers writing it down,
or putting it in a computer system.
They do something far more complex,
as this employee showed on TikTok.
All of our orders start on a plate.
We use jelly packets to mark
most of everything.
So, this is a quick rundown.
Over light? All the way to the left.
Over medium? In the middle.
Over well? All the way
on this way over here.
Scrambled on this bottom, down
to the south. Order up, on top.
If the jelly packet is flipped up
like this, this is white toast.
Wheat toast. Use an apple butter
for raisin toast.
If you throw a butter just on the
grill line that's a waffle.
Flip it over? That's a pecan waffle.
Sometimes people put a blue jelly
packet on top.
That's a blueberry waffle.
Oh, fuck off. Not you,
man in this video.
You seem like a great hang, it would
be an honor to vape with you.
But that system is ludicrous.
When he opened with,
"All our orders start on a plate,"
I thought, "Makes sense.
Food goes on plate,
take me on your journey."
But as soon as he said, "We use jelly
packets to mark most of everything",
I'm out. I don't have space
in my life for jelly choreography.
I can't learn that code,
I have a family.
Jelly packet, down to the south,
scrambled? What?!
And then if you flip the jelly up,
it's white, no flip, it's wheat?
Are you fucking kidding me?!
Are you fucking me?
I consider myself a smart man,
the glasses,
but the only thing he said that kind
of made sense there
is that blue jelly equals blueberry.
Now, would I have known
that to order a blueberry waffle,
you have to put butter on the grill line
right side up, blue jelly on top?
Not in a million years.
Not after several hints!
I feel like I'm having a 15-year-old
explain emojis to me.
"Lipstick means Thursday,
blonde haircut means ibuprofen,
brunette haircut means
physics homework,
and shrimp means haircut.
Why are you not getting this?"
And it gets even more complicated,
because here is an official training
video explaining
how to convey a sandwich order.
Here you can see I put two pickle
slices in the number three position,
which tells me this is
a bacon sandwich.
If I add a slice of cheese to the plate,
I know this is
a bacon cheese sandwich.
To make this a bacon egg
and cheese sandwich,
I'll add this right-side-up mayo packet
to the right side of the plate.
Don't let this mayo pack confuse you.
As long as you see two pickles on the
plate, you know this is a sandwich.
Sorry, but if it's cool with you,
I am going to let that mayo packet
confuse me,
because I feel insane right now!
I was confused when you said,
"Two pickle slices in the number three
position means bacon sandwich."
You could have said, "Vince Vaughn
at a christening on Fourth of July
means cheese omelet,"
and it would've had
the exact same effect on me.
Because what the actual fuck
am I looking at there!?
That is a plate
with two loose pickle slices,
a Kraft single,
and an unopened mayo packet.
That is not a form of communication,
it looks like dinner
at the Fyre Festival.
If you work at Waffle House,
you might be a genius.
Because I think a YouTube commenter
below that video said it best.
"I'm a 911 dispatcher. I deal
with genuine life-or-death situations.
I would rather take a shots fired call
than attempt to understand
whatever the fuck is happening here."
The point is, in a world that seems
to be spiraling out of control,
it seems there are at least a few
things that we can still count on:
Waffle House will stay open
to a genuinely irresponsible extent.
Jelly means eggs.
If you put a butter container down
right-side up, you're getting a waffle.
And this song is never, ever going
to leave your fucking head now.
And now, this.
And Now: Local News Tries
to Make Sense
of Vanderbilt Fans Throwing
Their Goal Post Into a River.
These football fans were
actually happy
as they threw their own football
stadium's goalpost
into the Cumberland River.
They were celebrating Vanderbilt
University's win over Alabama.
The students marched several miles
and then tossed the goalpost
into the Cumberland River.
I don't know why they did that,
but okay.
Goalpost being paraded down
Broadway.
You're so dumb when you're kids,
when you're like 20.
"You know what we should do?
Let's just destroy the place."
I don't get the throwing it in
the river, but okay, good for them.
- That is crazy.
- Good times for them.
Can't you lock it into place?
I mean, this is theft,
this is destruction of property, right?
You're definitely right.
And you get to just parade it around
the street
and then just go throw it
in the waterway?
I mean, how many laws
are we breaking here?
Have you been to Broadway before?
Because if you go down there and
people are excited about something,
it's never been like that before.
When I'm on Broadway,
I can just take things. Yes?
People throw stuff in the Cumberland
all the time,
cheeseburgers, furniture.
I can't.
Moving on. Our main story tonight
is about voting.
The only adult endeavor
that gives out stickers.
Which is a shame.
There really should be more of them.
"I voted" is nice, but I'd also like,
"I went to the dentist,"
or "I did my taxes,"
or "I jogged," or "Full disclosure
I didn't go to the dentist,
I made an appointment for the dentist,
but that isn't nothing."
That said, getting a sticker for voting
is certainly welcome,
and as we've mentioned before
if you live in Michigan, you might get
a really good one this year.
12-year-old Jane Hynous
is the artist behind this creation.
It's actually one of nine stickers
that Michigan voters will receive
after casting their ballots.
I want it to be a symbol
of powerfulness.
I want people to be proud of it
when they're voting.
When they actually get the sticker,
it's like, "Hey, I just voted."
And, you know,
it's pretty encouraging, I think.
Yeah, it is! And the founding fathers
should frankly be ashamed
that they didn't ensure voting came
with complimentary werewolf swag.
I cannot believe it took nearly 250
years for a young Michigan genius
to solve that obvious flaw
in our democracy.
This election is inexplicably close.
The average of polls in the seven
key battleground states all show
the candidates within
one or two points.
And if you heard that and didn't
shit yourself, congratulations,
you just earned a sticker for that.
Clearly, we don't know what's ahead
on election night,
though I can confidently predict
a few things.
First, a little khaki nerd armed
with a touchscreen
will inspire some of the most depraved
thirst tweets the internet's ever seen.
Second, regardless of the results,
Nate Silver will tweet,
"Actually, this is exactly
what I said could happen"
in a heated argument with a
14-year-old with a SpongeBob avatar
who only tweets
"Nate Silver pees upside down."
And finally, if Trump loses,
he will not concede gracefully.
He's already said he will only accept
the results
"if it's a fair and legal
and good election."
And he's been laying the groundwork
to cry foul if he loses.
The only thing they do well, they
cheat. Their policies are no good.
Their government is no good.
Their management is no good,
but they cheat like nobody can cheat.
They cheat. They cheated
in the last election,
and they're gonna cheat
in this election.
Look, if we can keep the cheating
down to a minimum,
because these people cheat.
They cheat like hell. If we can keep
it down to a minimum, we win easily.
We have to vote, and we have
to make sure that we stop them
from cheating, because
they cheat like dogs.
Look, I get that he's just trying
to rile up his base there,
but I will not sit idly by
while he slanders dogs.
Hey, dogs, look at me.
You are beautiful, you are special,
and you matter. As for cats?
You don't need my validation
and you know it.
Trump and his campaign have co-opted
the phrase "election interference"
to refer to pretty much anything
from the multiple indictments
against him,
to the Fed's recent decision
to cut interest rates,
with Trump at one point even posting,
"Election interference,
never surrender!"
with his own mugshot.
And for the record, that is a terrible
mugshot. Johnny Cash?
That's how you do it, laid-back, cool.
Frank Sinatra?
My, my, my, that guy fucks.
Am I right, Ronan?
Trump's, on the other hand, looks like
the photographer asked him
if he could shit from standing.
The point is, we need be ready
for the possibility
that the mess that happened
last time could happen again.
Especially because Trump hasn't faced
any real consequences for it.
He's even bragged that
he's become more popular
in the wake of his indictment.
It's so crazy
that my poll numbers go up.
Whoever heard, you get indicted for
interfering with a presidential election
where you have every right to do it,
you get indicted,
and your poll numbers go up.
Yeah, it is fucking crazy! When
the Watergate tapes came out,
Nixon had to resign in disgrace.
If it happened today, he'd probably be
able to release them all as an audiobook
and win a fucking Grammy.
But it's more than just talk.
Trump and his supporters have taken
active steps to undermine
the upcoming election.
And given it's now just
over three weeks away,
let's talk about some of the attempts
they've made to subvert this election.
And we're going to focus
on a few areas,
the lies they've told to undermine
confidence in the process,
the steps they've taken to sow chaos
in the voter rolls,
and the groundwork they've laid
to turn the post-election period
into a nightmare.
And let's start by briefly revisiting
what happened last time.
Because you probably remember
the biggest headlines,
Trump refusing to concede, which
ultimately led to January 6th,
but so much other weird shit happened
that you may've blocked out.
Like when Giuliani insisted
Will Smith's late father had voted,
or when the theory spread that an
Italian defense contractor worked
with U.S. intelligence
to rig the election,
or when a group called Cyber Ninjas
audited the ballots in Arizona,
and as this outside observer noted,
they were looking for the weirdest
possible smoking gun.
There's accusations that
40,000 ballots were flown in.
- To Arizona?
- To Arizona.
And it was stuffed into the box.
And it came from the southeast
part of the world, Asia. Okay?
And what they're doing is to find out
if there's bamboo in the paper.
Yeah. Cyber Ninjas tried to prove
foreign interference
by looking for bamboo
in the ballot paper,
which feels like the plot of a racist
straight-to-streaming political thriller
where Steven Seagal saves President
James Woods from wokeness.
The last election was incredibly
dumb, but let's not forget,
it was also incredibly stupid.
And all this happened despite
a joint statement
from federal election infrastructure
officials, calling it
the most secure election
in American history.
Now, the good news is,
there've been some positive
developments since then.
Congress passed this act which,
among other things,
explicitly prevents a vice president
from just throwing out votes
they don't like, as Trump
famously urged Pence to do.
Also, Trump's not an incumbent
this time,
so he can't do things like pressure
the DOJ to legitimize claims of fraud.
And finally, the election deniers
who ran to be
the chief election officers
in swing states in 2022 all lost.
And that is great! Unfortunately,
it is also basically the end
of the good news here.
Because the false claims
of election fraud have stuck.
A poll in January found more than
a third of Americans still do not accept
Biden's victory as legitimate.
And Trump and his allies
have been ramping up their lies
as Election Day approaches.
I want to focus on one in particular.
The claim that a lot of noncitizens
are going to be voting.
That claim is nothing new for Trump,
or indeed for Republicans,
but he's now pushing it
like never before
Right now, you have illegal aliens
coming into our country,
many from prisons
and many from mental institutions,
and they want to give them votes.
A lot of these illegal immigrants coming
in, they're trying to get them to vote.
They can't even speak English,
they don't even know what country
they're in, practically,
and these people are trying
to get them to vote.
They are working full time
to sign these people,
many of them murderers, to vote
so they can cheat on the election.
Okay, skipping the fact that this theory
is caked in racism
how does it even make sense?
You really think people
would flee their homes,
travel under dangerous conditions
to enter this country, just to vote?
It's like assuming someone
would break into a bank
just so they could free the pens
from their chains.
Why would they do that?
It's just not worth the risk!
But Trump's not alone
in pushing this claim.
He has support from conservative think
tanks like the Heritage Foundation,
the same group that brought you
Project 2025,
which started something called
the Oversight Project.
This summer, they released this video,
which got a lot of play
in right-wing circles.
The apartment complex Eliot Norcross
in Norcross, Georgia
is occupied primarily by noncitizens.
We visited the complex
to ask residents two questions:
are you a citizen?
And are you registered to vote?
Shockingly, 14% of respondents
admitted to being noncitizens
registered to vote.
We come from a company dedicated
c to registering Hispanic people
so they can vote in upcoming elections.
Are you already registered?
- We already voted.
- You already voted?
- Yes.
- Are you a citizen?
No.
- Have you already been registered?
- Yeah.
- Are you a citizen?
- No.
Now, that video got boosted
by Elon Musk,
who called it "extremely disturbing",
and it went viral,
despite the fact the Oversight Project
itself admitted
it was unable to find the people they
talked to on the state voter rolls.
And state investigators found
no evidence
that any of the seven people on that
tape had ever registered to vote.
Meanwhile, one of the women
featured confirmed
she wasn't registered to vote,
and only said she was because
she just wanted them to go away.
And no shit. I don't care
who's at the door,
don't want to talk to you.
It could be me coming from the future
with a dire necessary warning,
I'm not listening, I'm just nodding,
and I'm slowly closing the door
as we're talking.
And yet they claimed that, if the
14% hit rate they'd found held true
statewide, it'd equate to over
47,000 noncitizens
registered to vote in Georgia.
And look, obviously the idea that there
are thousands of noncitizens voting
is ridiculous.
For one thing, when Georgia looked
back over 25 years of its elections,
it found that of the 1,600 people
who'd tried to register to vote,
and whose citizenship
could not be verified,
"none of them had cast ballots".
Plus, an analysis of the Heritage
Foundation's own nationwide database
of 1,500 "proven instances
of voter fraud",
found just 68 documented cases
of noncitizens voting,
going all the way back to the 1980s,
with just 10 involving people living
in the country illegally.
10 people in the last four decades.
That is statistically nothing.
More people die from hippo attacks
every year.
Just something fun to think about next
time you're fawning over pictures
of Moo Deng. She could kill you.
And she would kill you. And happily.
And that video isn't even the weirdest
lie about noncitizens
that's been passed around. Maria
Bartiromo also spread this doozy.
What about all these immigrants
at these DMV offices,
where people are going to try
to go get a license?
They can't get an appointment
at the DMV because it's jam-packed
with illegals.
The person that spoke to me
about this, this weekend,
identified several places in Texas
where he couldn't get in.
The first one was in Weatherford,
a massive line of immigrants
getting licenses.
They had a tent and a table outside
the front door of the DMV
registering them to vote.
The signs were in Spanish.
It was an obvious Democrat
operation on this voting, he said.
Okay, we'll get into why
that is nonsense in a second,
but I'm genuinely curious about the
person who saw a massive line
at the DMV and their instinct was "this
must be illegals registering to vote"
and not "the DMV functioning
like it has since the dawn of time."
Do they blame all common
inconveniences on immigration?
"Shit!
I burned my mouth on this coffee.
The illegals must be brewing it extra
hot to burn our tongues into silence!"
And while you might instinctively
know that claim is bullshit,
it's even dumber than you think.
As Bartiromo explained,
her source was
"a friend of a friend's wife,"
something that didn't stop her happily
regurgitating it on the news.
And if you like that, you can find
well-sourced stories like it
on "Forward, Forward, Forward,
Forward with Your Drunkest Aunt,"
Sundays at 10:00 on Fox Business.
Unsurprisingly, those claims
were quickly debunked.
For one thing, Weatherford,
Texas, doesn't have a DMV.
And in the place that you can get
a drivers' license there,
the Department of Public Safety,
no such tents or tables were set up
outside the office all that week.
And even if this had happened,
which it didn't,
as the local GOP chair explained,
all voter registrations are uploaded
to the Texas secretary of state's
database to verify
applicants' eligibility to vote,
including citizenship,
and not only had there been
no recent instances
of ineligible individuals attempting
to register in that county,
there had only been two
in the last 15 years.
And yet, just two days after Bartiromo
spewed that on national TV,
Texas AG Ken Paxton announced
an investigation
into reports that organizations
may be illegally registering noncitizens
to vote. And that is actually a bit
of a pattern for Paxton.
He'll loudly start voter fraud
investigations,
and even when they amount to nothing,
he'll have created the impression
something is there.
In fact, the same day he announced
he was looking into Bartiromo's claims,
his office announced
a separate investigation
into "allegations of election fraud
and vote harvesting"
targeting members of LULAC,
the nation's oldest and largest
Latino civil rights organization.
And some of its members,
like this woman,
were even subjects
of an early-morning raid.
They scared the hell out of me.
87-year-old Lidia Martinez,
who says she is LULAC's
longest-serving volunteer,
had her home raided as part
of a voter fraud investigation
by the Texas attorney general.
Martinez says up to eight officers
showed up at her home
last Tuesday morning.
They took her phone, her laptop,
questioned her for hours,
and made her wait outside.
I said, "Let me get dressed,"
and he says, "No. Go outside."
- What were you wearing?
- My nightgown.
And I had all these policemen
around me. It was embarrassing,
humiliating. I was so angry.
It was horrible.
It's true, they hauled an 87-year-old
great-grandmother out of her home
in her nightgown,
which is appalling.
Paxton should know, as we all do,
a nightgown is one of the worst things
to haul a grandma out in,
right after, well, obviously, a coffin,
but then there's a U-Haul,
an anaconda,
and finally, a novelty T-shirt reading
"I shaved my balls for this?"
I think that's the worst one.
And while, thankfully, a federal judge
recently shut down that investigation,
saying it was unconstitutional,
the fact is,
lies and bullshit investigations
have real consequences.
51% of adults are apparently
concerned about noncitizens voting
in the upcoming election,
including 83% of Republicans.
And some aren't waiting for the Ken
Paxtons of the world to take action.
Which brings us to the fact there
are now well-funded groups
actively trying to, in their words,
"clean up" the voter rolls.
Here's the head of one of them,
the Election Integrity Network,
explaining the general idea.
I realized that we needed to focus
on this threat of illegals voting
in November
because I absolutely believe
that that is how they are planning
to try to steal the election this year.
The only way we're going to be able
to stop this
is by having citizen action,
looking at the DMVs,
looking at the voter rolls
in your county,
watching and basically creating
a national neighborhood watch
to try to find these pockets
of noncitizens
that are getting added to the rolls.
Okay. Well, first, let's agree,
every Rumble show looks like
a high school A/V club member
interviewing the assistant principal
after a school-wide Heelies ban.
But also, "a national neighborhood
watch"?
It's not great the model they want
to emulate is basically,
"What if racial profiling
was someone's hobby?"
That woman is a conservative activist
named Cleta Mitchell,
and for the past three years, members
of her group have, among other things,
been scrutinizing voter rolls,
looking for anyone
they think shouldn't be on there.
And they haven't always been shy
about what they're looking for.
In one Zoom session, an activist from
the Detroit area suggested
searching rolls for certain types
of surnames, saying that,
"I think it's unfortunate,
but sometimes the only way you can
find out is to look for ethnic names."
And thank goodness they prefaced
that with "I think it's unfortunate."
For a minute there,
I thought that instruction to do racism
was coming from a bad person.
But it doesn't stop there
Groups like Mitchell's are now working
with computer programs like these,
that automate the process
of finding voters to challenge.
For instance, this one trawls
through everything,
from public voter registration data
to business records
to change of address databases
to obituaries to find people
to challenge,
because they may've died, moved,
or be otherwise ineligible.
Users can then make potentially
thousands of challenges
to voter eligibility
with just a few clicks
and send them
to local election officials.
And while they often claim that they're
"helping" election boards do their jobs,
officials will tell you:
being on the receiving end
of an avalanche of challenges
is exhausting,
especially as they're usually just
replicating work that's happening.
There have been days where I've
received a couple thousand names.
I've had to look each of those
voters up one by one.
Roughly 75, 80% of the names they
give me we have already dealt with.
And the rest of the names?
Well, you would catch them anyway.
There's safeguards built into the whole
system for any issue you can dream of.
Exactly. They're basically just
creating busywork for that man,
who frankly does not need that.
He works in a giant warehouse
full of suitcases
that gets so little natural light,
the only place he can go on vacation
is on his shirt.
That man needs a beach, a Mai Tai,
and for all the vigilante vote police
to leave him the fuck alone.
Most of these citizen-led challenges
are either redundant,
like he just said, or flawed,
because they're completely reliant
on public databases
that may contain errors,
without having access to the
protected personal information
available to election officials.
That is why programs like these can
often generate false positives
like, for instance, "flagging voters
who shared the same name
and birthdate,
but are actually different people."
And getting flagged
can be intensely frustrating.
Just listen to this man who lives
in the same county
where our exhausted official works.
I have been voting here
for two decades.
As we can see, I am real.
I am here. I am talking to you.
If you're wondering why Daniel Moss
is defending his existence,
it's because of this list.
That's my first name.
That's my last name.
Of thousands of voter registrations
in Denton County
being challenged as ineligible.
Finding out that I'm on some sort of hit
list of people who shouldn't be voting,
I was pretty pissed off.
Daniel Moss's challenge came from
someone he doesn't even know.
I want to say it was Nancy.
Nancy lives in the same county,
and single-handedly sent in
thousands of challenges this year.
Nancy sends me something every day.
I bet she does.
You can hear the exhaustion
in his voice there.
"Nancy sends me something
every day.
And she'll keep sending me things
until I'm a husk of the husk I am now,
and a gentle breeze carries me away
to some beautiful place
where there are no more Nancies."
The point is, just a handful of people
can cause a huge amount of problems.
Last year, in Waterford, Michigan,
a county clerk improperly cut more
than 1,000 voters from their rolls
in response to challenges from one
79-year-old resident
who believed the last election
was stolen.
And challenges have been particularly
intense in the swing state of Georgia,
where, because
of a new state law there,
anyone can now bring an unlimited
number of challenges
against anyone in their county,
which then have to be heard
within 10 business days.
Since that bill was passed, more
than 180,000 citizen challenges
have been filed, with the vast majority
by just six people.
Which is ridiculous!
A group sowing that much chaos
should not be able to fit
inside the Titan submersible.
Although, since they can, I'd actually
be happy to pay for their trip.
I hear it's beautiful down there, guys!
Georgia voters have been challenged
for stupid reasons,
like tiny mismatches between
their mailing address
and where they're registered.
This man showed up at a meeting
last spring after he was challenged
because his address was mistakenly
recorded as "North Pine Drive Drive"
instead of just "North Pine Drive."
And this woman had
an even more infuriating story.
My rights was challenged.
I've been staying at this same
address since 2011.
Voters like Lakendra Graham.
She said she lived
on Confederate Avenue in Atlanta,
the name of which the city changed
with great fanfare
to United Avenue in 2019.
Not her fault,
she told the board in March.
It's a waste of my time,
because I'm here when I have
other things to do. I have a job.
Yeah, that's a total waste of her time,
which could frankly be better spent
on working,
or shopping, or figuring out why the
fuck that street name wasn't changed
any earlier than 2019.
And while the vast majority
of these challenges fail,
they can have a chilling effect.
In the words of one attorney,
they're more likely to disenfranchise
or intimidate or confuse voters
than they are to actually turn up
people ineligible to vote.
Which is both infuriating and, one
might suspect, kind of the point here.
And while so far, we've been looking
at preemptive strikes
ahead of the election,
there's one final strand of fuckery
I want to mention,
whose main effects will only be seen
in the days following November 5th,
and that is some of the changes made
to boards that certify elections.
Because while I mentioned earlier
that deniers who ran for chief election
officer in swing states lost,
there are still significant numbers
of them on the state and local level.
One analysis found that in these
six key swing states,
there are nearly
70 pro-Trump election conspiracists,
who are currently working
as county election officials.
And maybe the most striking shift
has been in Georgia,
where, uniquely among swing states,
Republicans are in charge
of the governorship, the House,
and the Senate.
And they have used that power
decisively to, among other things,
reshape the five-member
state elections board.
These three Trump-friendly members
have now been installed,
all of whom have "questioned
the results of the 2020 election,"
and Trump loves them so much,
he called them out by name at a rally.
Three members, Janice Johnston,
Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King.
Three people are all pit bulls fighting
for honesty, transparency,
and victory.
They're fighting. Are they here?
Where are they?
Where are they?
Thank you. What a job.
Thank you.
The fact that Trump is shouting them
out like they're each the birthday boy
or girl at Chuck E. Cheese
is not a great sign.
Nor is it great that one of them,
Rick Jeffares, even told
a Trump campaign adviser that,
if they win in November,
he wants to join their administration,
saying, "If y'all can't figure out who
you want to be the EPA director
for the south-east,
I'd like to have it."
Which might be the first time
I've heard of political corruption
having a vibe that screams
"no worries if not".
Now, I have to tell you, all three have
pushed back on the insinuation
that they're working for Trump,
with one saying she's faced "character
assassination, media murder,
and lawfare lynching"
and, to get ahead of your question,
yes, it was the old white lady
who said that.
But in August and September,
incredibly late in this election cycle,
the board passed a bunch of new rules
that'll make it much easier
to sow doubt
in the certification process.
One of them requires a full hand count
of ballots in each precinct
to take place either the night
of the election or the next day,
and which must be done by just
three individuals per precinct.
Which might sound reasonable to you,
but as experts have explained, that
has the potential to cause chaos.
I brought with me
1,872 pages of paper
representing what a stack of ballots
could look like on a busy counting day.
And busier, larger precincts may
have even more than this number.
If I were to hand this stack of paper
to three random people in this room,
especially at the end
of a long voting day,
and ask them to arrive at the same
total number,
do we think that's feasible?
Counting large numbers of anything one
by one is an incredibly tedious process,
and not one humans
are well equipped for.
People doing a hand count
are gonna make mistakes,
which can then be exploited
to spread lies and sow further distrust
in our elections
and our election officials.
Yeah, of course. If you handed
three exhausted people
that stack of paper and told them
to have the exact same number
by morning, you're not guaranteed
the same answer.
At best, you get a scenario that'd
give most people a panic attack
and The Count an instant orgasm.
Dozens of election officials have said
a hand count of all the ballots
"would be physically impossible
in all but the smallest counties."
But the thing is, that rule might
trigger another new one
that "bars counties from certifying
the election until officials can review
an investigation of every precinct
with inconsistent totals."
And it "gives county boards the power
to exclude entire precincts
from the vote totals"
if they think they're fraudulent.
Which is absolutely wild.
And that might be a real problem,
given some local election officials
are fucking nuts.
For instance, this election chair in
Georgia's Spalding County tweeted,
just three days after January 6th,
this mess of offensive conspiracy
theories including the hashtag
"Biden will never be president"
and "Biden is a pedo".
That is not somebody you want
empowered to throw out votes.
And on top of that, yet another
new rule there empowers
county election board members
to conduct "reasonable inquiry"
into allegations
of voting irregularities,
without setting deadlines
for how long they might last,
or, crucially, define what
a "reasonable inquiry" even means.
And that is something one of those
new Trump-friendly appointees
seemed weirdly unconcerned about.
Why didn't you guys define
"reasonable inquiry?"
How best should
we define "reasonable"?
I'm not on the state elections board.
It's more a rhetorical question.
I didn't think we would have to write
the definition of "reasonable"
within the rule.
But if that's the case, we'll post what
the definition of reasonable means.
But they still haven't done that yet,
even though early in-person voting
in Georgia starts this week.
And that is a problem, because you do
need to define the word reasonable.
It's a subjective term, like "funny"
or "interesting".
Those words mean something
different to everyone.
I personally prove that every
Sunday night. I'm doing it right now!
Experts say that reasonable inquiry rule
could allow rogue election officials
to drag inquiries past certification
deadlines.
And while courts are currently
hearing challenges to these rules,
if they allow them, one potential
end result is local officials
in just a handful of rural counties
could exclude enough votes
in Georgia to affect the outcome
of the presidential race.
And when you take all of this together,
the lies about immigrants voting,
the mass voter challenges,
and the introduction of new processes
to slow down and question vote counts,
it seems depressingly likely we're
about to see a storm of bullshit
just like last time.
And there are a few things that
we should probably be ready for.
First, unless there is
an absolute landslide,
we're unlikely to know the outcome
of the election on November 5th.
And when it comes to Georgia,
if Harris wins narrowly there,
we'll almost certainly see legal battles
stretching into December or beyond,
and which could eventually end up
in front of these guys,
which is obviously completely
reassuring to everybody.
And all the while, Trump will try
and exploit any delay or uncertainty.
Unless, that is, he wins outright,
in which case, he'll suddenly insist
he triumphed over a rigged system.
So, that is what we can expect.
What can we do?
Well, you can, and I hate saying this as
much as you probably hate hearing it,
make a plan to vote
and help others do the same,
since the closer the race is, the easier
it'll be for Trump to sow bullshit.
You should check to make sure that
your voter registration is current,
you can use this website to find links
to your state's voter registration
verification tools.
Vote early if you can,
to ensure that if there's any issue
with your registration,
you can clear it up
before Election Day.
And if you vote by mail,
you can find a tracking tool for
your ballot at this website below.
But beyond that, it is going
to be vital to be resilient
against the storm of toxic nonsense
that Trump and his allies
will try and stir up.
It could go on for months,
and be stupider than
you can even imagine right now.
So stupid that someone you know,
love, or are related to,
and those are three
very different things,
might even think
that there is something to it.
But the key thing to remember
here is that,
as chaotic as the last election was,
in the end, our guardrails did hold.
And we're gonna need to make sure
that they hold up again.
And if we can do that, then,
and only then,
we will all deserve the single
greatest sticker ever designed.
That is our show,
thank you so much for watching.
We're off next week, back October
27th, see you then, good night!
Thank you.
- Eat it.
- Eat it now?
- You want me to eat it in front of you?
- You want me to feed it to you? Good.
This is a bacon sandwich.