Donald Trump led the Republican convention in an oath on Thursday 10 September that asked the arena to say "I'm gonna try and cheat like hell like they do." Eighteen minutes into his closing speech, he said he wanted "honesty in our elections," then asked the crowd to raise their right hands and repeat after him.
The oath, as Roll Call's reporter in the room transcribed it: "I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can't even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends. I'll do it anyway. I don't care if I'm registered or not. I'm gonna try and cheat like hell like they do. There's never been bigger cheaters. They don't care. I am gonna go out, and I'm gonna get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on Nov. 3 or we are going to vote before that."
"They" are the Democrats. Then: "You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell. You know that."
He played it for laughs. He gave his voters an instruction either way.
Trump had named the enemy the day before, in his Patriot Day proclamation of Wednesday 9 September: "We must protect our treasured way of life against all those who seek our destruction — whether they threaten us from foreign lands or from among us within our borders."
Below: what one voice in the arena shouted three times during Ted Cruz's speech, and what his government did to the ballot this week.
The crowd had already said what it came to say. Earlier in the night Ted Cruz named three Democrats from the podium, and after each name a voice in the arena shouted "He should be shot!" Cruz named Zohran Mamdani, New York's mayor. "He should be shot!" He named Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan's Senate nominee. "He should be shot!" He named James Talarico, Texas's Senate nominee. "He should be shot!" CNN heard the shouts on the broadcast; Cruz went on each time with "he means it."
Justice Department lawyers sent letters to the 30 states the department is already suing, ordering them to preserve their 2024 election records and warning that failure "may subject you to civil and criminal sanctions," Democracy Docket and the AP reported Thursday. Denver, LULAC and Common Cause sued Blanche and Homeland Security in Washington on Thursday to bar armed federal agents from polling places, citing the federal law that makes it a crime to send "any troops or armed men" to a polling place, CBS reported. An armed immigration agent at the door of a polling place tells every voter who is not white to think hard about showing up. That is the point of him.
The mail. The Postal Service rejected Leon County, Florida's mail-ballot envelope because one line of text sat a fraction of an inch too close to the return address, then accepted it on appeal, Democracy Docket reported. Republican election chiefs, Georgia's Brad Raffensperger among them, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place the court order blocking Trump's mail-ballot rule: "the election is already underway."
The maps. The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Missouri's Trump-backed congressional map for now; Missouri votes on its 2022 map while the appeal runs.
Fifty-two days to Tuesday 3 November. He has told his voters to cheat, told them who the enemy is, and put his lawyers, his agents and his post office between the enemy and the ballot box. He did not whisper any of it. He put it in an oath and led an arena through it.