“At stake is something I never expected to worry about in the United States: the integrity of the vote count,” Rick Hasen begins in his offering this morning at the New York Times. The professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine is not just talking about reciminations against Georgia’s secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, or Michigan’s state canvassing board member, Republican Aaron Van Langevelde, both of whom chose following the law over manipulating it for Donald Trump in 2020:
Republican state legislatures have also passed or are considering laws aimed at stripping Democratic counties of the power to run fair elections. The new Georgia law gives the legislature the power to handpick an election official who could vote on the state election board for a temporary takeover of up to four county election boards during the crucial period of administering an election and counting votes. That provision appears to be aimed at Democratic counties like Fulton County that have increased voter access. A new Iowa law threatens criminal penalties against local election officials who enact emergency election rules and bars them from sending voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
A Texas bill would similarly stymie future efforts like the one in Harris County to expand access to the ballot and give challengers at the polls the ability not only to observe but to interfere with polling place procedures meant to ensure election integrity. According to a new report by Protect Democracy, Republican legislators have proposed at least 148 bills in 36 states that could increase the chances of cooking the electoral books.
State legislatures and others also have been taking steps to amplify false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, solidifying the false belief among a majority of Republican voters that the November vote count was unfair. It’s not just the hearings featuring charlatans like Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell spewing the big lie. It’s also steps like the Arizona State Senate demanding the seizure of November ballots from Democratic-leaning Maricopa County, and ordering an audit of the votes to be conducted by a proponent of the bogus “Stop the Steal” movement who falsely contended that the election was rigged against Mr. Trump. Never mind that Arizona’s vote count has been repeatedly subject to examination by courts and election officials with no irregularities found.
Trump himself launched such a commission. Headed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), the voting integrity commission “uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud” when it disbanded in 2018. Kobach’s Interstate Crosscheck program is itself all but disbanded. The thinly veiled effort to substantiate the myth of widespread voter fraud under the guise of voter list maintence is the subject of a class-action lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas.
The vote-counting process is more arcane and harder to explain to the public than prohibiting giving water to voters in line at polling places, Hasen warns. He recommeds every jusistiction use tangible paper ballots rather than electronic records. H.R. 1 contains that requirement for federal elections.
Hasen also suggests several other ways attempts to subvert the process might be thwarted. But we might not know until January 2025 if enough has been done.
“It may begin with lawsuits against new voter-suppression laws and nascent efforts to enshrine the right to vote in the Constitution,” Hasen concludes. “But it is also going to require a cross-partisan alliance of those committed to the rule of law — in and out of government — to ensure that our elections continue to reflect the will of the people.”
Even tougher when one of the country’s major political parties is committed to neither the rule of law nor to rule by a majority of the American people.