Sabotuers of Democracy unite
A friend with roots in the theater once told a Netroots audience about his journey from the closet to being authentically himself. When finally he came out to actress Bea Arthur, she replied, “Joel, are you the last to know?” Joel died of pancreatic cancer several years ago.
“Are you the last to know?” comes to mind because spread across the internet today is a quote from retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney that may wind up on his tombstone: “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”
Commenting on Romney’s remarks to The Atlantic‘s McKay Coppins, Jamelle Bouie writes, “Faced with a conflict between partisan loyalty and ideological ambition on one hand and basic principles of self-government and political equality on the other, much of the Republican Party has jettisoned any commitment to America’s democratic values in favor of narrow self-interest.”
Republican commitment to the Constitution is highly situational. They are at times “fixated” on it, reading in meanings when attempting to subvert the very democratic processes it established, and ignoring the will of voters that the Constitution secures when that will turns against them.
Here’s what that looks like when people do it with the Bible.
Talked to an anti-abortion protester about how God was not very pro-life in the Bible. pic.twitter.com/SICaida09x
— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) September 14, 2023
“Republicans,” Bouie observes, “do seem to believe in the Constitution, but only insofar as it can be wielded as a weapon against American democracy — that is, the larger set of ideas, intuitions, expectations and values that shape and define political life in the United States as much as particular rules and institutions.”
Examples are plentiful not just inside the Beltway but out in state legislatures former Ohio Democratic chair, David Pepper, calls “laboratories of autocracy.”
For those of you – especially Democrats in the Senate – who think the threat to our democracy is over and who just moved on from this issue after the midterms, a reminder: https://t.co/teWKxECbQ9
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 14, 2023
Wisconsin Republicans mean not only to undo the results of the recent state Supreme Court election that Judge Janet Protasiewicz won by a whopping 11 points. They also mean to (illegally) replace Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) administrator Meagan Wolfe for being insufficiently Trumpy after the state narrowly awarded its electoral votes to Joe Biden in 2020. In a party-line vote Thursday, the Republican-majority state Senate voted to remove Wolfe (Democracy Docket):
The move is the final legislative step in a long and winding process that was fueled by Republican conspiracies surrounding the 2020 presidential election. As a nonpartisan elections official, Wolfe was nominated to lead WEC by the commission itself in 2019 and confirmed with unanimous support by the Wisconsin Senate. WEC is a bipartisan commission that was formed in 2016 to serve as the state’s election regulatory agency and carries out a wide range of election administration-related functions for the state.
Yet following the 2020 election, Republicans in the state Senate turned on Wolfe, first calling for her resignation in 2021.
In June, WEC deadlocked on a vote to nominate Wolfe for a second term as three Democratic commissioners abstained from the vote. In accordance with state law, this stalemate meant that Wolfe would remain in the position as a holdover. Republicans in the state Senate then declared that WEC had nominated Wolfe for reappointment, and began the process that ultimately led to today’s removal.
Some GOP activists want more, Ari Berman reports: “I don’t call for Meagan Wolfe’s ouster,” one election denialist said at a legislative hearing last week. “I call for her arrest.”
The senate has no authority to remove Wolfe, claims Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D). There will be a lawsuit. But the lawsuit could wind up before the Democratic majority state Supreme Court that Republicans are working to sabotage.
Attorney Marc Elias of Democracy Docket warns that in advance of the 2024 elections Republicans are working to aid election vigilantes in mounting massive voting challenges:
Tucked into Georgia’s massive anti-voting law was a provision to make it easier for partisan vigilantes to engage in mass voter challenges. As I wrote when the law passed in 2021, the portion allowing mass voter challenges was the worst provision of a very bad law. Last year, nearly 100,000 Georgia voters had their registrations, and thereby their right to vote, challenged by election vigilantes.
But limited by federal statutes, GOP operatives now mean to circumvent limits “by outsourcing voter purges to third-party groups,” Elias writes. “Election officials will be deluged by voter challenges as voters navigate a maze of disinformation about how to ensure they can vote and have their vote counted.”
One new company, Eagle AI, claims to have developed a product that uses public data sets to flag voter registrations it deems potentially fraudulent. As expected, one of the Republican attorneys leading the anti-voting movement, Cleta Mitchell, has enthusiastically endorsed it, while wealthy conservatives have reportedly provided at least some of its funding.
[…]
Another project, the Voter Reference Foundation (VoteRef), has been hard at work since 2021 collecting, compiling and making public state voter files, which contain a list of a state’s registered voters, their vote history and identifying information. Since state voter files often include full names, addresses, dates of birth and other personal information, they can easily be misused to harass and intimidate voters as well as file mass challenges of voters.
Where there is one, there are more, and conservative donors and activists to employ them against political adversaries.
Elias adds:
States need to act urgently to enact clear laws that forbid private voter challenges. There is no reason for any citizen to have their right to vote challenged or taken away based on a spreadsheet submitted by someone they don’t know and have never met. States should similarly prohibit in person challenges at the polls and ensure partisan observers do not disrupt the voting process.
It’s like fighting the Hydra.