On Michigan’s Mackinac Island over the weekend, state Republicans met to discuss strategy for 2022 elections. Here’s a little of what concerns them:
The problem with the GOP’s 2020 poll-watching efforts was they were too little, too late. Going to court on Election Day won’t cut it in 2022, explained Josh Findlay, election integrity director for the RNC, told the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference (The Detroit Free Press, emphasis mine):
Findlay acknowledged another problem — one that both nonpartisan judges and Democrats said in response to allegations of voter fraud and irregularities put forward by Republican poll watchers in Detroit. There, large numbers of volunteers were recruited by the GOP, in many cases at the last minute, to go to the TCF Center in Detroit while absentee ballots were being counted after the Nov. 3 vote.
Many were barred from entering or required to leave, in some cases because of social distancing rules, resulting in a chaotic scene in which crowds of people were banging on the windows of the counting room and shouting as election workers tried to complete the count. More significantly, many scenes the poll watchers witnessed and described as evidence of possible fraud were discounted by judges after election experts testified that the witnesses lacked knowledge and training and simply did not understand what they were seeing, interpreting normal election processes, such as the presence of blank ballots needed to duplicate military ballots and damaged absentee ballots, as signs of malfeasance.
Many volunteers around the country did not know “their rights,” as well as “what exactly the process was,” Findlay said.
Next time, “when we go into Election Day, we’ll know exactly what to look for,” he said.
Earlier and better training is certainly helpful. But I’m not sure how that will keep GOP poll watchers from finding just what they go expecting to find.
One Twitter commenter likened proposed poll-watching efforts more to Jim Crow vote-suppression efforts.
The Detroit Free Press had more from the conference. Expect critical race theory to feature in GOP campaigns next year:
Speakers at a Saturday GOP panel sought to link critical race theory with efforts by universities and K-12 school districts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, and Republicans at the conference say a fight over the concept is shaping up as a major Michigan political issue in 2022 and beyond.
The GOP considers diversity, equity and inclusion un-American, all that “created equal,” “liberty and justice for all,” and e pluribus unum notwithstanding.* What a less-threatened group of conservatives once considered basic American ideals, the Heritage Foundation now considers “watered down Marxism” contrary to them:
But neither Jonathan Butcher, an education fellow at the foundation, nor Jay Greene, a foundation senior research fellow, cited any examples of critical race theory being part of the curriculum in any Michigan school district, despite moves by lawmakers to ban it in this state.
Instead, Greene said the theory has taken root in public universities, including the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, through their hiring of chief diversity officers and related staff, and it is expanding into school districts, particularly large ones, through their hiring of officials with similar titles and responsibilities.
Education Week magazine defines critical race theory, which is a way of analyzing U.S. history, as the concept that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
But Butcher and Greene said it is more radical and disruptive than that. Butcher called it “a map to activism,” and a world view that sees everything in public and private life through the prism of race.
Now if the theory viewed everything in public and private life through the prism of money, Mr. Potters everywhere in these United States would be fine with that.
* In the home state of the U.S. auto industry, Mackinac Island excludes most all motor vehicles.