The most dangerous part of all the new Republican voting laws isn't the hodgepodge of rules about closing times and ballot boxes and so forth. It's the rules that allow Republican legislatures to replace election officials if they're unhappy about how the count is going. But the AP reports that these rules might not even be necessary:
After facing threats and intimidation during the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath, and now the potential of new punishments in certain states, county officials who run elections are quitting or retiring early. The once quiet job of elections administration has become a political minefield thanks to the baseless claims of widespread fraud that continue to be pushed by many in the Republican Party.
....About a third of Pennsylvania’s county election officials have left in the last year and a half....The executive director of a clerks association in Wisconsin said more than two dozen clerks had retired since the presidential election and another 30 clerks or their deputies quit by the end of 2020.
....The exodus comes as Republicans in a number of states pursue legislation that imposes new fines or criminal penalties on local elections officials or makes it easier to remove them, as part of the GOP campaign to rewrite rules for voting and administering elections. A new law in Iowa imposes a $10,000 fine on elections administrators for a technical infraction of election rules. A similar law in Florida could lead to $25,000 fines for elections supervisors if a ballot drop box is accessible outside early voting hours or is left unsupervised.
The new Republican rules are apparently just a backup. The real plan is simply to terrorize local election officials into quitting so they can be replaced with true believers who can make sure that next time Donald Trump has all the votes he needs to win. Welcome to the latest installment of Banana Republicanism, my friends.
It's a one-two Republican punch. Discourage voting among Democrats by making it difficult for them to vote. Then take away power from impartial election officials and give it to partisan politicians to make sure that the job is done.
This is the worst thing happening in America right now.
But, if you drive away the diligent folks and replace them with dumbasses, said dumbasses will be caught and the self-fulfilling prophesy of election-related criming will be the most satisfying display of political irony since, well, Trump. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, they will only be caught if somebody investigates. If the scheme is sufficiently successful at electing Republicans, there will be no investigation.
The last 12 months have been instructive for me. I used to think that you needed organized vigilantes, or troops, following explicit commands from a corrupt leader to seize, or maintain, power. But now I realize that someone - like Trump - can benefit from stochastic, small-scale intimidation to break election procedures. All it takes is a wink and a nod. It's also easy to deny responsibility, much like the January 6 mob attack on the capitol.
This. I used to think that people like Hitler were on some level evil geniuses. But after four years of Trump as president and 6 months of Trumpism afterwards, I'm beginning to think that evil and *stupid* is how these things happen.
_Mass_ stupidity. Doesn't have to e coordinated. They all just have to be on the same page.
Brooks Brothers rioters -- organized by Roger Stone, paid in cash ferried by Marco Rubio -- did it first.
And on to Dubya, arguably 9/11 and the still smoldering wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fulcrum point in history.
70-Year-Old Trump Supporter Arrested For Pooping On Democrat Neighbor's Lawn Multiple Times,
https://www.comicsands.com/trump-supporter-poop-neighbor-lawn-2653254126.html
for ten years. Former high school teacher.
Who wants to bet he taught civics?
So the dude was pooping on the other dude's lawn long long before Trump became a political figure.
Birtherism is ten years old, dawg.
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Ahh yes. But we must have empathy for their vaccine hesitancy!!!1!
Beat me to it. Apparently conservatives have valid reasons to distrust medical professionals, equal in validity to or surpassing that of black people, and the rest of us are supposed to show everyone some empathy, whether or not their reasons are genuine.
But, conservatives don’t have valid reasons to distrust elections officials and so the Kevins of the world don’t show them any empathy for their concerns that elections are being stolen.
Must be nice to be the arbiter of what constitutes valid reasons.
Kevin has more in common with his pedantic blowhard House Rep (Katie Porter) than we knew.
conservatives carry the mark of satan, instantly recognizable by most medical professionals
You need to allow for the reaction and the partisan skew. In red states, the rules changes are shadow boxing. In blue states there won't be rules changes which aid Republicans. In the contested states, Democrats will mobilize with poll watchers and lawyers, so elections will be decided by court decisions.
The main action is in the purple states, because, regardless of what happens in solidly red or blue states, outcomes won't be changed.
We can certainly hope courts protect the integrity of our democracy in the contestable, purple states, but do you want to count on that? Wouldn't it be better simply to have honest, even-handed officials in office in the first place, as is generally the case with liberal democracies? Also -- and this is a key point I'm not sure you understand -- the MAGA lawyers and political operatives were taking careful note last November: in many (I fear most) cases there won't be any justiciable issues flowing from their process-rigging, because, come next time, they'll be scrupulously following their own laws.
No more fun and games with elections? No more making my own rules as I go along...I'm quitting!
Your mom must be so proud....
Courtesy of Micah Sifry's The Connector:
"Earlier this week, the California Voter Foundation released a new report, “Documenting and Addressing Harassment of Election Officials,” (https://www.calvoter.org/sites/default/files/cvf_addressing_harassment_of_election_officials_report.pdf) written by Grace Gordon. The cover of the report comes with a trigger warning, noting that “the content described in this report is violent and may be disturbing.” Wednesday, CVF put on a webinar about the report with Gordon joined by Matt Masterson of Stanford, Tiana Epps-Johnson of The Center for Tech and Civic Life, and Amber McReynolds of the National Vote at Home Institute discussing its import. Here are a few topline conclusions:
"For all the attention given to election security leading up to the 2020 election, the actual security of election officials was not a priority. Even when local officials reported serious death threats from people believing disinformation spread from The Former Guy on down, the response of local law enforcement was lackluster. Only now, as hundreds of January 6th insurrectionists are getting indicted, are we discovering that many of these people were also involved in harassing local election officials before they went to Washington to try to stop the election.
"More than 75% of local election officials are women, and a great deal of the threats against them are gendered...."
Still shocked the Oregon legislature evicted Mike Nearman* from the State House.
*A Marquette University alumnus, I fully expect the douchebags at the School of Government -- Charles Franklin, Mike Gousha, & Julia Azzari; et. al. -- to give Nearman a soft landing as a visiting MU scholar & rehabilitate him.
I don't know about the rest of the country, but where I am the election officials have been doing it for 25-30+ years. Driving these people out is nothing but bad.
You have to hand it to the GOP: when sabotaging America's most important institutions is your agenda, many of these bills are win/win.