(单词翻译:单击)
Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup.
严格来讲，下一次推翻全国选举的企图可能算不上政变。
It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place.
政变将更多地依赖颠覆活动而非暴力活动，尽管每一种都有自己的位置。
If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024.
如果阴谋成功，美国选民的投票将不会决定2024年的总统选举。
Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect.
为了产生所需的效果，成千上万的选票或数百万的选票将被抛弃。
The winner will be declared the loser.
获胜者将被宣布为失败者。
The loser will be certified president-elect.
输家将被认证为总统当选人。
The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote.
这种民主崩溃的前景并不遥远。
People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means.
有动机实现这一目标的人正在制造手段。
Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.
只要有机会，他们就会采取行动。他们已经开始行动了。
Who or what will safeguard our constitutional order is not apparent today.
谁或什么将维护我们的宪法秩序在今天还不清楚。
It is not even apparent who will try.
甚至还不清楚谁会尝试。
Democrats, big and small, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real.
民主党，无论大小，都表现得好像他们不相信威胁是真的一样。
Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders.
其中一些人，包括美国总统乔·拜登，只是留意口头上瞬间的修辞，但他们的注意力并不集中在此。
They are making a grievous mistake.
他们正在犯一个严重的错误。
“The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me in late October.
“民主的紧急状态已经到来，”加州大学欧文分校法律和政治学教授理查德·l·哈森在10月底告诉我。
Hasen prides himself on a judicious temperament.
哈森为自己的谨慎明智感到自豪。
Only a year ago he was cautioning me against hyperbole.
就在一年前，他还提醒我不要夸大其词。
Now he speaks matter-of-factly about the death of our body politic.
现在他实事求是地谈到我们政体的死亡。
“We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said, “but urgent action is not happening.”
“我们面临着一个严重的风险，那就是我们所知道的美国民主将在2024年终结，”他说，“不过我们没有采取紧急行动。”
For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft.
一年多来，在该党国家领导人的默许和明确支持下，州共和党特工一直在建立一个窃取选举的机制。
Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election.
亚利桑那州、德克萨斯州、乔治亚州、宾夕法尼亚州、威斯康星州、密歇根州和其他州的当选官员研究了唐纳德·特朗普推翻2020年选举的运动。
They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time.
他们已经注意到了失败的地方，并采取了具体的步骤以避免下次失败。
Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject.
他们中的一些人已经重写了法规，以夺取党派对哪些选票应该计数，哪些选票应该丢弃，哪些结果应该认证，哪些选票应该拒绝的决定的控制权。
They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie.
他们正在驱逐或剥夺去年11月拒绝参与阴谋的选举官员的权力，目的是用大谎言的拥护者取代他们。
They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.
他们正在对一项法律论点进行微调，该论点声称允许州议员推翻选民的选择。
By way of foundation for all the rest, Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans
作为其他一切的基础, 特朗普和他的政党已经让数量惊人的美国人相信，
that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true,
民主的基本运作是腐败的，编造的舞弊说法是真的，
that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response.
只有舞弊才能阻止他们在选举中的胜利，暴政已经篡夺了他们的政府，暴力是合法的回应。
