Or playing by the rules?

The managers of the presidential election recount in Dane and Milwaukee counties tell the Werkes they feel good about prevailing. Clerks in those counties mailed out absentee ballots, unbidden by the voter. That violates Wisconsin black-letter law; that being, that the voter must request such a ballot. CORRECTION: A request for absentee ballot appeared in the mail box at Blaska Stately Manor; we did not ask for it one. we did not use it.

At the polling place on November 3, the head groundskeeper was puzzled why the short line did not seem to be moving. Until we saw that one person was dumping off a bag o’ ballots. That was first!

The Trump recount also contends that election workers filled out missing addresses for absentee voters and accepted absentee votes without identification. In a past election, such votes from cloistered nuns confined to their convent in Sauk County were denied for that reason.

Democrats, their theory goes, voted absentee by a greater percentage than anyone else. The two counties are the state’s most populous and most Democrat(ic). Leave it to State Rep.-elect Francesca Hong (D-Madison) to play the race card. Demagogues like Hong provide the political cover for the midnight riders and glass breakers.

Darn near Nicaragua!

In the last thrilling episode of the Werkes, we detailed the pornographic harassment — two weeks after the election! — of two neighbors who dared express their presidential preference in the form of a yard sign. 

Trump will need other dominoes to fall besides Wisconsin. In Michigan, two Republicans on Detroit’s County Board of Canvassers want to rescind their votes to certify their county’s results. They claim they were coerced by threats against them and their families by Democratic voters. 

Harassment? Progressives? The indispensable Jonathan Turley notes that Democrats are calling for blacklists. The Lincoln Project has led a national effort to harass any lawyers who represent Republicans or the Trump campaign. Mr. Turley reports:

The two canvassers signed affidavits that they were hit with a torrent of threats against them and their families after they demanded that the board address irregularities in what they said were 71% of Detroit’s 134 absent voter counting boards.  They were hit with personal attacks calling them racists and cult members. In a familiar campaign of post-election intimidation, they were doxxed and attacked. 

Over at Ann’s Althouse, a commenter reports opening his newspaper to find this lede sentence of the front-page story from the Associated Press (the print version of MSNBC): 

Getting nowhere in the courts, President Donald Trump’s scattershot effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory is shifting toward obscure election boards that certify the vote as Trump and his allies seek to upend the electoral process, sow chaos and perpetuate unsubstantiated doubts about the count.

“Obscure” as in Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit, Michigan. Anne’s reader asks: “How many loaded opinion words can you count in the lead of this “news” story?”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: If Trump manages to overturn the reported results of November 3, what is left of American cities will burn.