Step 1: When you learn that lots of Democrats will vote absentee, declare mail-in ballots invalid. Don’t worry that that’s a lie. Just keep saying it. 

Step 2: Get Republican legislators, governors, and federal court judges to make it hard to cast mail-in votes. 

Step 3: On Election Day, when most Republicans will have voted and many Democrats will not, declare victory. 

Step 4: After Election Day, as mail-in ballots are counted and Democratic numbers rise, initiate a bunch of lawsuits. The resulting chaos will cause the Supreme Court to step in, as it did in 2000.

Step 6: Get another Republican-friendly justice on the Supreme Court by Election Day so that the Court will hand Trump the election.

Step 7: If these steps fail, call on the militia groups that Trump has been encouraging. Get them to shoot anyone who challenges your attempt to steal the election.

That’s how they do it in so-called Third World countries, and that’s how Republicans are doing it in 2020. Sound paranoid? Just watch.

Emily Wright

Highlands