With a vigor otherwise reserved for passing tax cuts for patrons, Republicans have spent decades attempting to suppress the vote of Democrat-leaning groups: blacks, Latinos, the old, the young, city dwellers, etc. They’ve deployed gerrymandering, disinformation (printed and digital), voter roll purges, photo ID laws, election-hours changes, voter-fraud propaganda, voter “caging,” and limiting voting machines and posting off-duty cops in armbands in minority neighborhoods. (That list is not comprehensive.) Jim Crow never really disappeared. He’s just had a series of makeovers.
If only eligible voters took voting as seriously as the opponents of democracy we might not be suffering the maladministration of Donald John Trump.
Election Law Blog‘s Rick Hasen warns that should the fall election not go Trump’s way, he’s already setting up a ready response: other people cheated. Yes, other people. He signaled in 2016 he might not accept the results if he lost. He’s laying the groundwork for that again. And he has a lot more to lose this round than marketing opportunities.
Hasen cites a familiar string of “high-tech and old-fashioned dirty tricks” that appear with “uncomfortable frequency,” including a couple by left-leaning groups. Even so, he also cautions that mistakes are sometimes just mistakes, the result of stupidity and not malice. (See Hanlon’s razor.) Not that anyone will believe that in this tense political climate rife with allegations of cheating both real and imagined.
Still, in the face of the brazenness now shown by foreign players, Hasen warns U.S. elections officials might not be prepared for Trump’s foreign allies to cheat on his behalf:
What if Russians hack into Detroit’s power grid and knock out electricity on Election Day, seriously depressing turnout — and Trump wins the electoral college because he carries Michigan? Most states do not have a Plan B to deal with a terrorist attack or natural disaster affecting part of a presidential election.
Hasen notes, “Republican voter suppression, pockets of incompetence, dirty tricks and increasingly outrageous language about stolen elections” are a volatile mix on top of the risk of needing a Plan B and not having one.
“External and internal forces that seek to foment discord are not resting. We can’t, either,” Hasen finishes.
Vigilance is in order. Sound preparation is good practice. But turnout is better.
We imagine dark conspiracies to hack voting machines or registration records or other efforts to prevent fellow citizens from having their voices heard and to pervert popular democracy. We rightly condemn those efforts and demand justice for malefactors. We should invest in making sure any such efforts fail. But the most potent defense against them all is not cyber-security. It is turnout.
Only in close elections can malicious efforts to hack our democracy carry the day. We are not the Soviet Union or Russia. Not yet. The most effective way to defend our democracy is for citizens to practice it.
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