From WaPo:
As voters cast ballots largely without incident on Tuesday afternoon, former president Donald Trump took to social media to declare that a minor, already rectified problem with absentee balloting in Detroit was “REALLY BAD.”
“Protest, protest, protest,” he wrote just before 2:30 p.m.
Unlike in 2020, when similar cries from the then-president drew thousands of supporters into the streets — including to a tabulating facility in Detroit and later to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — this time, no one showed up.
After two years of promises from Trump and his supporters that they would flood polls and counting stations with partisan watchers to spot alleged fraud, after unprecedented threats lodged against election workers, after calls to ditch machines in favor of hand counting and after postings on internet chat groups called for violent action to stop supposed cheating, a peaceful Election Day drew high turnout and only scattered reports of problems.
Evidence that the American electorate can learn. The grifters are looking bad this time ’round:
Election officials said nationally that fewer partisan challengers showed up than they had thought likely, given pre-election rhetoric from figures like former Trump adviser and popular podcaster Stephen K. Bannon, who boasted of a massive new network of “election integrity” activists. (“We’re going to be there and enforce those rules, and we’ll challenge any vote, any ballot, and you’re going to have to live with it, okay?” he said on a recent episode of his show.)
Bannon’s a spent balloon – he may make a bit of noise if someone steps on him, but it turns out there’s really not much more to him than taking people’s money with little or no return on it.
In North Carolina, [Pandora Paschal, the election director in Chatham County, N.C.] said it was election workers who had kept partisan challengers from breaking the rules.
“We let them know we would not tolerate it,” she said.
The heroes of the election. Despite the threats and extra challenges, they went out and did their jobs, and, so far, by all reports quite well.
