198 search results for ""election integrity""

Following up on the post below, I came across this from 15 years ago:

I have believed that Republicans might claim vote fraud in this election for some time. I wrote back in June [2006]:

The Republicans have figured out something that the Democrats refuse to understand. All political messages can be useful, no matter which side has created it. You use them all situationally. The Republicans have been adopting our slogans and memes for years. They get that the way people hear this stuff often is not in a particularly partisan sense. They just hear it, in a sort of disembodied way. Over time they become comfortable with it and it can be exploited for all sorts of different reasons.

In this instance, there has been a steady underground rumbling about stolen elections since 2000. Now, we know that it’s the Republicans who have been doing the stealing —- and the complaining has been coming from our side. But all most people hear is “stolen election” and they are just as likely to paste that charge onto us as they are onto them. It’s like an ear worm. You don’t necessarily even like the song, but you can’t get it out of your head.

We have created an ear worm that the Republicans are going to appropriate — and they will use it much more aggressively and effectively than our side did. They are already gearing up for it. As I mentioned a month or so ago, Karl Rove was at the Republican Lawyers Association talking about how the Democrats are stealing elections:

QUESTION: The question I have: The Democrats seem to want to make this year an election about integrity, and we know that their party rests on the base of election fraud. And we know that, in some states, some of our folks are pushing for election measures like voter ID.

But have you thought about using the bully pulpit of the White House to talk about election reform and an election integrity agenda that would put the Democrats back on the defensive?

ROVE: Yes, it’s an interesting idea. We’ve got a few more things to do before the political silly season gets going, really hot and heavy. But yes, this is a real problem. What is it — five wards in the city of Milwaukee have more voters than adults?

With all due respect to the City of Brotherly Love, Norcross Roanblank’s (ph) home turf, I do not believe that 100 percent of the living adults in this city of Philadelphia are registered, which is what election statistics would lead you to believe.

I mean, there are parts of Texas where we haven’t been able to pull that thing off.

(LAUGHTER)

And we’ve been after it for a great many years.

So I mean, this is a growing problem.

The spectacle in Washington state; the attempts, in the aftermath of the 2000 election to disqualify military voters in Florida, or to, in one instance, disqualify every absentee voter in Seminole county — I mean, these are pretty extraordinary measures that should give us all pause.

The efforts in St. Louis to keep the polls opened — open in selected precincts — I mean, I would love to have that happen as long, as I could pick the precincts.

This is a real problem. And it is not going away.

I mean, Bernalillo County, New Mexico will have a problem after the next election, just like it has had after the last two elections.

I mean, I remember election night, 2000, when they said, oops, we just made a little mistake; we failed to count 55,000 ballots in Bernalillo; we’ll be back to you tomorrow.

(LAUGHTER)

That is a problem. And I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, a vegetarian or a beef-eater, this is an issue that ought to concern you because, at the heart of it, our democracy depends upon the integrity of the ballot place. And if you cannot…

(APPLAUSE)

I have to admit, too — look, I’m not a lawyer. So all I’ve got to rely on is common sense. But what is the matter? I go to the grocery store and I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I’ve got to show a little bit of ID.

Why should it not be reasonable and responsible to say that when people show up at the voting place, they ought to be able to prove who they are by showing some form of ID?

We can make arrangements for those who don’t have driver’s licenses. We can have provisional ballots, so that if there is a question that arises, we have a way to check that ballot. But it is fundamentally fair and appropriate to say, if you’re going to show up and claim to be somebody, you better be able to prove it, when it comes to the most sacred thing we have been a democracy, which is our right of expression at the ballot.

And if not, let’s just not kid ourselves, that elections will not be about the true expression of the people in electing their government, it will be a question of who can stuff it the best and most. And that is not healthy.

QUESTION: I’ve been reading some articles about different states, notably in the west, going to mail-in ballots and maybe even toying with the idea of online ballots. Are you concerned about this, in the sense of a mass potential, obviously, for voter fraud that this might have in the West?

ROVE: Yes. And I’m really worried about online voting, because we do not know all the ways that one can jimmy the system. All we know is that there are many ways to jimmy the system.

I’m also concerned about the increasing problems with mail-in ballots. Having last night cast my mail-in ballot for the April 11 run-off in Texas, in which there was one race left in Kerr County to settle — but I am worried about it because the mail-in ballots, particularly in the Northwest, strike me as problematic.

I remember in 2000, that we had reports of people — you know, the practice in Oregon is everybody gets their ballot mailed to them and then you fill it out.

And one of the practices is that people will go to political rallies and turn in their ballots. And we received reports in the 2000 election — which, remember we lost Oregon by 5000 votes — we got reports of people showing up at Republican rallies and passing around the holder to get your ballot, and then people not being able to recognize who those people were and not certain that all those ballots got turned in.

On Election Day, I remember, in the city of Portland, Multnomah County — I’m going to mispronounce the name — but there were four of voting places in the city, for those of you who don’t get the ballots, well, we had to put out 100 lawyers that day in Portland, because we had people showing up with library cards, voting at multiple places.

I mean, why was it that those young people showed up at all four places, showing their library card from one library in the Portland area? I mean, there’s a problem with this.

And I know we need to make arrangements for those people who don’t live in the community in which they are registered to vote or for people who are going to be away for Election Day or who are ill or for whom it’s a real difficulty to get to the polls. But we need to have procedures in place that allow us to monitor it.

And in the city of Portland, we could not monitor. If somebody showed up at one of those four voting locations, we couldn’t monitor whether they had already cast their mail-in ballot or not. And we lost the state by 5,000 votes.

I mean, come on. What kind of confidence can you have in that system? So yes, we’ve got to do more about it.

Nobody can ever accuse these Republicans of not having balls. It’s really breathtaking sometimes. This is not an isolated remark. Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s Chris Matthews show:

MATTHEWS: … What did you make—we just showed the tape, David Shuster just showed that tape of a woman candidate in the United States openly advising people in this country illegally to vote illegally.

MEHLMAN: It sounds like she may have been an adviser to that Washington state candidate for governor or some other places around the country where this has happened in other cases with Democrats.

But the fact is, one thing we know, the American people believe that legal voters should vote and they believe that their right to vote ought to be protected from people that don‘t have the right to vote.

Rove was talking to the Republican lawyers association, many members of which specialize in “voter fraud,” and may very well be preparing to challenge every close race and file spurious complaints to Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department.

And even if they didn’t, be prepared to hear all of our complaints about election stealing yelled back at us if they lose. They are not afraid to take somebody else’s talking point and use it to their advantage. It’s one of the things they do best and because a lot of people don’t pay close attention it will sound perfectly reasonable to them that the Democrats stole the election.

Just something to think about as we look to the morning after election day.

One other thing Rove said during that talk before the GOP lawyers:

Well, I learned all I needed to know about election integrity from the college Republicans.

I don’t doubt it for a moment.

That was 2006. I don’t think we can blame Trump for this one.

Because Democrats suck so badly at messaging, I joke that every other new activist who wanders into our local headquarters thinks they can do it better. They want to write the white paper that will remake Democratic politics nationwide, issue it somehow from our little redoubt in Western North Carolina, and expect people at the national level to listen. Hell, those at the top won’t even listen to real experts.

Ask my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio (“Don’t Buy It“). She gets more attention abroad than here, it seems. ASO appeared again with Dan Pfeiffer the other day on Pod Save America and had some advice worth repeating here.

Message discipline begins with the discipline part, so Democrats are at a disadvantage from the get-go. “Low-propensity voters” is negative and out. “High-potential voters” is in. Now repeat. Really. (It’s the little things.)

Repetition is really important
And so is repetition

— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) May 25, 2021

The small group that attempted the violent overthrow of our country’s government on Jan. 6 are, as James Madison warned, a faction “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” They have been with us since the beginning of the country and remain committed the proposition that all persons are not created equal. This faction is “fundamentally at odds with America” and American ideals, ASO insists.

Labeling that faction authoritarians, says ASO, is unhelpful (as is repeating right-wing frames such as “stolen election”). It grants them power we do not need to hand them. And among those high-potential voters Democrats need to turn out in the next election, research shows that fosters cynicism.

“It’s not that people don’t think our ideas are right,” ASO explains. “It’s that people don’t think our ideas are possible, so why bother?”

In any election, ASO argues, there are actually three candidates. “There’s ours, there’s theirs, and there’s stay-at-home.” And if you want people to turn out and flex their political power, voters have to feel powerful, that the election is a fight that’s winnable and not a lost cause. Authoritarians risks framing our opponents as too imposing to defeat (edited for clarity):

And so, that is why we want to position them, yes, as powerful, yes, as damaging, yes, as destructive, yes, as nefarious, but not as authoritarians. And that also is the reasoning behind this sort of “faction” idea and language, that they are a potent, lying, horrible group of people that have a hold on many, many things — not least of which is the media, especially their own media channels — but this is something that we have vanquished before and it’s something that we can vanquish again.

One of the things … that was most heartening to me personally after the 2020 election was my friends in Australia where I have lived and work and my friends in the UK where I’ve done some work saying to me, “Whoa! Holy shit! Y’all dealt a blow … to fascism at the ballot box.” That has never happened. The only check that we have had in history on fascist forces has been through military action. And my friends’ views from abroad of our election was like a shot in the arm, at least for me. Yeah, we did do that, we did do that, and we can do it again.

How do we talk about voter ID laws, voter suppression and election certification rigging, etc., without convincing people that their votes do not count? 

So my answer to that is, we’ve been looking at this for a very long time doing, in some cases, daily research, weekly research, feeling all sorts of different instruments — beginning in October and continuing on now through the insurrection, post-election, up until today. And, basically, what I would say is that the encapsulating value or phrase that keeps popping and rising to the top is freedom. And what I mean by that is that we need to talk about this as an attempt to take away your freedom to vote, an attempt to take the freedoms that Americans of every race, place, wallet-sized walk of life, hold dear and cherish. 

And so a message that threads that needle … is that in America we value our freedom. Right now, a handful of lawmakers want to take away our freedom to vote so that they can rule only for the wealthiest few. And then, whatever the ask is … to make the ask framed as a protection of, a preservation of, a continuation of our freedoms. Because what we find is that when we try to talk to people in terms of “democracy”, and “saving our democracy,” or “having a democracy,” or “protecting our democracy”, or whatever, first of all, we run into the challenge of the fact that we’ve never had a democracy. And secondarily, what we find is that democracy is an abstraction. Democracy never bought you dinner. People do not have a tangible feeling about it.

So, what we’ve seen is that we need to make arguments around these anti-voter laws, arguments around these anti-election integrity laws that Republican state legislatures are passing. We need to frame them as them trying to take away your freedom, them trying to silence certain voices, them trying to rule for the already rich. But we can’t let the voting conversation and issue … wander away from what those folks deliver.

This is once again the brownie analogy mentioned in December (repetition):

“When we are walking through the grocery aisle and want to buy brownies,” she begins, “what is the image on the brownie box? The brownie! What’s not staring you in the face? The recipe! … We need to stop messaging our policy and talk about what our policy achieves.”

Don’t argue your policies in public, ASO insists. Talk about outcomes.

So, what I mean by that is (and here she launches into a pre-tested message), in America we value our freedom, the freedom to raise our voices and to cast our votes so that we can elect leaders who deliver on our priorities — from creating jobs to expanding healthcare, to ensuring rights for all. But today, a handful of lawmakers want to take away those freedoms so they can rule only for the already wealthy and powerful few. By coming together to pass the For The People Act, or by coming together to vote in record numbers (or whatever the ask is), we can ensure that this is a place of freedom where the leaders we elect govern in our name and act in our interests.

We have to [retain the message] about good governance. That this is about the delivery of things that we want, whether that be stimulus checks, whether that be the ability to vote freely and fairly, affordable healthcare etc.

Voters won’t stand in line for policy prescriptions. They will for outcomes. From December again:

Universal health care? Talk about how much more money families will have in their pockets at the end of each month. Talk about not worrying the next health care crisis will bankrupt you. Your kids will get well and stay well. You’ll be able to go to the doctor without risking your home. We’ll save 68,000 lives per year. One of them might be yours.

Right now, my truck is sitting in the driveway with a bad water pump. When it goes into the shop, all I want to know is how much it costs and when it will be ready to drive again. I don’t care about the details. That’s why I hire a mechanic. That’s why (less ideological) voters hire politicians. For the results.

New polling from Bendixen & Amandi International (usually polls for Democrats) shows half of Arizona voters oppose the partisan “fraudit” circus still dragging on. Plus, President Joe Biden leads narrowly in prospective match-ups with Donald Trump. Even so, a majority polled think Biden should not run for a second term (Politico):

By 49-46 percent, Arizona voters are opposed to the audit, which puts the result within the poll’s margin of error. But the survey of 600 likely voters found that the intensity of opposition to the audit exceeded the intensity of support, with those strongly opposed to it outnumbering those strongly in favor by 5 percentage points. And while Democrats and Republicans broke along familiar partisan lines, independent voters upon whom the state pivots in close elections opposed the audit by 18 percentage points.

“As bloody red meat for the MAGA Republican base, the audit is manna from heaven, but the problem is that Arizona is not a red state any more. It’s a swing state,” said Fernand Amandi, who conducted the survey. “The audit may be serving two interests: firing up the MAGA base but giving Democrats the opportunity to make the case to Arizona voters to stick with them.”

If a candidate supports the audit, the poll shows, Arizona voters would be less likely to support that politician by a margin of 9 percentage points.

When pollsters told respondents the effort by Cyber Ninjas was partisan — “it’s being conducted by a firm with no experience in the field, and election experts, Democratic officials and Republican members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors oppose the recount” — opposition grew to 51 to 44.

In a separate story, election officials in Maricopa County announced on Monday they would replace the voting machines handled by Cyber Ninjas. They cited concerns that the machines’ security has been compromised (Washington Post):

“The voters of Maricopa County can rest assured, the County will never use equipment that could pose a risk to free and fair elections,” the county said in a statement. “As a result, the County will not use the subpoenaed equipment in any future elections.”

The announcement probably reflects an added cost to taxpayers for a controversial review that has been embraced by supporters of former president Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed that the 2020 election was rigged in Arizona and other battlegrounds that he lost.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) had warned she might decertify the machines if they were not decommissioned after being in Cyber Nijnas’ custody.

Among the most vocal critics has been the Republican-led leadership of Maricopa County. In May, all seven of the county’s elected officials — including five Republicans — joined in a scathing letter to the state Senate denouncing the audit as a sham.

“Our state has become a laughingstock,” they wrote. “Worse, this ‘audit’ is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic.”

Noting the tactics used by organizers of the review, such as hunting for bamboo in ballot paper, they added, “Your ‘audit,’ which you once said was intended to increase voters’ confidence in our electoral process, has devolved into a circus.”

Cyber Ninjas announced Friday it had “finished photographing and recounting the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots.” Yikes.

Arizona prohibits photography within 75 feet of any polling place. Imaging ballots is illegal in most places, isn’t it? But Republicans are all about election integrity, right?

Washington Post Editorial Board:

A report from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice this week shows that one-third of election officials feel unsafe, with most saying that social media has made their professions more dangerous. Election workers up and down the ranks have endured death threats, racial slurs and menacing protests outside their homes. One website displayed a state election director’s home address and a photo with crosshairs over it along with a warning: “Your days are numbered.”

These threats continue long after the height of the 2020 vote dispute: In May, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs tweeted, “Earlier today a man called my office saying I deserve to die and wanting to know ‘what she is wearing so she’ll be easy to get.’ It was one of at least three such threats today. Then a man who I’ve never seen before chased me and my staffer outside of our office.” It is only a matter of time before election officials end up hurt — or worse. Even if the point is merely to intimidate, it is toxic for democracy if voting administrators have to fear what one side may do to them if it loses.

That Brennan Center report includes audio clips of threats being directed at election officials.

https://youtu.be/WOCBIiVUBMc

The Editorial Board calls on state lawmakers to halt their verbal assaults on election administrators. Voters, too, should reject candidates frothing about bogus “election integrity” issues, the Board insists. Lawmakers might also supply security details for election officials and state-furnished attorneys if they face politically motivated lawsuits. But mostly Republicans should cease their jihad against truth.

This is all nuts, of course. Conservative neighbors who loathe social safety net programs (a.k.a. entitlements) that help Americans they feel are less deserving may deliver “bootstraps” lectures about how life is not fair. Until they feel life has been unfair to them. The sort of people issuing threats against election officials feel pretty damned entitled to certain election outcomes. Their 2020 presidential candidate encourages them whining about how unfair it all was.

But it is not only personal threats eating at election administrators, but new legislation aimed at increasing the mass of the thumb Republicans want to put on the scale.

New York Times:

Lonnie Hollis has been a member of the Troup County election board in West Georgia since 2013. A Democrat and one of two Black women on the board, she has advocated Sunday voting, helped voters on Election Days and pushed for a new precinct location at a Black church in a nearby town.

But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local election law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. Previously, election board members were selected by both political parties, county commissioners and the three biggest municipalities in Troup County. Now, the G.O.P.-controlled county commission has the sole authority to restructure the board and appoint all the new members.

Hollis is one of at least 10 county elections board members removed this way. Five (at least) are non-white. Most are Democrats. The few Republicans removed will be replaced by other Republicans.

These are some of the less-noticed casualties of GOP-led legislatures in the wake of the 2020 elections. More-prominent are changes at the state level:

G.O.P. lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, asserted more control over state election boards, made it easier to overturn election results, and pursued several partisan audits and inspections of 2020 results.

Republican state lawmakers have introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials, according to the States United Democracy Center, a new bipartisan organization that aims to protect democratic norms. Of those, 24 have been enacted into law across 14 states.

Maintenance or purge?

Here it gets confusing. Voter list maintenance is standard practice in election administration. Kris Kobach’s all but disbanded and error-ridden Interstate Crosscheck program gave list maintenance a bad reputation. For good reason. Red states, particularly in the South, relied on it to engage in voter purges mere months ahead of elections. Those delistings tended to flag more “African American, Asian American and Latino voters for removal than Caucasian voters.”

There is a difference, however, between off-year voter list maintenance and voter purges, especially ahead of general elections. States must under federal law maintain the accuracy of registration lists by removing people identifed as having moved within the state, left the state, or died. But with all the GOP efforts to suppress turnout or to pass legislation allowing legislatures to overturn them, even normal list maintenance now draws suspicion.

Georgia’s secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, issued a statement Friday that 100,000 names deemed “obsolete and outdated” will be removed in the latest update there:

The effort to remove 101,789 names from Georgia’s voter files marks the first time the state has conducted a “major cleaning” since 2019, but Georgia regularly removes the voter files of convicted felons and the dead on a monthly basis, according to the statement.”

The 101,789 obsolete voter files that will be removed include 67,286 voter files associated with a National Change of Address form submitted to the U.S. Postal Service; 34,227 voter files that had election mail returned to sender; and 276 that had no-contact with elections officials for at least five years,” the statement says. “In each of these cases, the individual had no contact with Georgia’s elections officials in any way – either directly or through the Department of Driver Services – for two general elections.”

The full list of “obsolete and outdated” names that are being removed was published publicly with the statement.

In addition to the “obsolete and outdated” files, Georgia also removed “18,486 voter files of dead individuals based on information received from Georgia’s Office of Vital Records and the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an interstate partnership of 30 states and the District of Columbia focused on maintaining accurate voter rolls,” the statement says.

This non-election-year effort strikes me as normal list maintenance. Unfortunately, the headlines reporting on Raffensperger’s operation oscillate between “remove” and “purge” with little distinction between the two. In fact, purge seems to be the dominant term of journalistic art.

But it doesn’t help that Raffensperger went after voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams in his statement:

“Making sure Georgia’s voter rolls are up to date is key to ensuring the integrity of our elections,” said Raffensperger. “That is why I fought and beat Stacey Abrams in court in 2019 to remove nearly 300,000 obsolete voter files before the November election, and will do so again this year. Bottom line, there is no legitimate reason to keep ineligible voters on the rolls.”

That last sentence is true, but in this environment also inflammatory.

BTW: ERIC is was launched in 2012 with help from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

… even than the old generation. Marjorie Taylor Green is the new paradigm. Rejecting Democratic legitimacy is a given:

A Republican House candidate from Wisconsin says he is appalled by the violence he witnessed at the Jan. 6 rally that turned into the siege at the Capitol. But he did not disagree with G.O.P. lawmakers’ effort to overturn the presidential election results that night.

In Michigan, a woman known as the “MAGA bride” after photos of her Donald J. Trump-themed wedding dress went viral is running for Congress while falsely claiming that it is “highly probable” the former president carried her state and won re-election.

And in Washington State, the Republican nominee for governor last year is making a bid for Congress months after finally dropping a lawsuit challenging his 2020 defeat — a contest he lost by 545,000 votes.

Across the country, a rising class of Republican challengers has embraced the fiction that the 2020 election was illegitimate, marred by fraud and inconsistencies. Aggressively pushing Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that he was robbed of re-election, these candidates represent the next generation of aspiring G.O.P. leaders, who would bring to Congress the real possibility that the party’s assault on the legitimacy of elections, a bedrock principle of American democracy, could continue through the 2024 contests.

Dozens of Republican candidates have sown doubts about the election as they seek to join the ranks of the 147 Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory. There are degrees of denial: Some bluntly declare they must repair a rigged system that produced a flawed result, while others speak in the language of “election integrity,” promoting Republican re-examinations of the vote counts in Arizona and Georgia and backing new voting restrictions introduced by Republicans in battleground states.

They are united by a near-universal reluctance to state outright that Mr. Biden is the legitimately elected leader of the country.

If 2022 is one of those proverbial “shellackings” as everyone expects, it appears we’re going to have a large Marjorie Taylor Green faction in the House. In fact, don’t be surprised if they end up deposing McCarthy and putting one of their own in charge.

I hear that Democrats don’t want their candidates to talk too much about Trump or run to hard against GOP extremism because they think the best way to win is to talk up the economy and whatever other positive things they can conjure. (At this point, I’m not sure what those things will be, other than “the GOP is out of power” which perhaps falls under the “speak no evil” edict.) So, I guess the campaigns against these people will be all about health care?

I don’t know. But in America 2021, it sure seems to me that hate trumps love in American politics. But I guess we can hope that if Trump isn’t on the ballot his cult will tune out, even if Trump clones are running all over the country. It looks like that may be our best hope.

Prof. George Lakoff once described the conservative philosophy in ten words: strong defense, free markets, lower taxes, smaller government, family values. Democracy is not among them. Granted, the word appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. It underlies words that do appear frequently: elect, vote, majority, and their variants. And in votes required to pass laws: two thirds, three fourths, etc.

“Strong defense” in this scheme is outward looking. Defense of democracy itself is not among the defining characteristics of American conservatism no matter how often its spokespersons repeat phrases such as election integrity. Hence today’s editorial from the New York Times Editorial Board.

“Congress Needs to Defend Vote Counting, Not Just Vote Casting” is a headline-tight summary of what those committed to democracy see needs defending right now from enemies domestic. Republican legislatures are in a rush to secure the Blessings of Power for themselves and their Posterity.

It would be overreach to assign blame for this antidemocratic movement solely to the immediate past president, perhaps the most corrupt, emotionally damaged, and antidemocratic leader in the nation’s history. Republicans are not working furiously to rig upcoming elections because they are afraid of Trump, Eric Boehlert wrote this week. “Republicans are doing this because they want to.” They do not want to govern. They want to rule. Democracy is a cosmetic convenience for them, not principle. They’ve proven that with actions.

The Times Editorial Board, however, believes the Democrats’ H.R. 1 is too broad, and inadequate to defend the republic against the systematic assault on democracy from within. Rather than wage a losing symbolic fight, Democrats should craft a more focused bill perhaps more palatable to more senators (Senate Republicans) “that aims squarely at ensuring that Americans can cast votes and that those votes are counted.”

That advice may be sound on its face, but ignores the fact that such legislation is needed because one major party in this country has rejected democracy as a foundational principle. Democracy itself has become unpalatable for Republicans, however well-seasoned.

The Board nonetheless presses on:

The vote-counting process necessarily relies on the judgment and integrity of local officials. No rules can perfectly prevent malfeasance. But Congress can take steps to protect the integrity of the election process.

One important measure included in H.R. 1 is to require a paper record of every vote, so that outcomes can be verified independently.

But the bill needs to go further. Congress also should establish uniform rules for vote counting, certification and challenges. It should also clarify its own role in certifying the results of presidential elections to prevent the possibility that a future Congress would overturn a state’s popular vote.

Some of the areas that are addressed by H.R. 1, including protections for voting and provisions to limit gerrymandering, are also urgent, because the threats to electoral democracy are interlocking. Restricting participation in elections, and playing with district boundaries, both conduce to the election of more extreme politicians, who in turn are more likely to regard elections as purely partisan competitions waged without regard to the public interest.

In addition to setting minimum standards for voting access, there is also a need to constrain states from moving backward, even if existing standards exceed those minimums.

Democrats are separately pursuing the revival of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required certain states and counties, mostly in the South, to obtain approval for any changes from the Justice Department. A 2013 Supreme Court ruling effectively ended this system, helping to clear the way for the restrictions that states are now imposing.

The problem with H.R. 1, the Board argues, is that it is too “sprawling.” And it may be. But that is not the source of Republican opposition. Republicans bent on undermining democracy itself are. Narrowing the bill’s scope will not change that.

“If Democrats can find 50 votes for reform, they should not postpone necessary interventions in the illusory hope of a bipartisan breakthrough, nor allow Republicans to filibuster,” the Board concludes.

On this, at least, we agree.

Watch carefully for the last pieces to fall into place. When do Republicans go full authoritarian, move to abolish elections altogether, and declare Donald J. Trump president for life and Republicans the forever victors? It’s what Trump wants. It’s what Trump expects.

Texas Republicans are working hard to meet Dear Leader’s expectations (Washington Post; emphasis mine):

The Texas legislature on Saturday moved closer to enacting dozens of new restrictions on the voting process, as Republican lawmakers reached a deal that imposes a raft of hurdles on casting ballots by mail and enhances civil and criminal penalties for election administrators, voters and those seeking to assist them.

The measure would make it illegal for election officials to send out unsolicited mail ballot applications, empower partisan poll watchers and ban practices such as drop boxes and drive-through voting that were popularized in heavily Democratic Harris County last year, according to a final draft distributed by legislative staff to voting right advocates Saturday morning.

In a last-minute addition, language was inserted in the bill making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome of a race — but rather only that enough ballots were illegally cast that could have made a difference.

It’s all about ensuring that “fraud does not undermine the public confidence in the electoral process” that the GOP and its agents have spent decades undermining expressly to justify them fixing it.

Naturally, “the reforms to the election laws of this state made by this Act are not intended to impair the right of free suffrage guaranteed to the people of Texas by the United States and Texas Constitutions, but are enacted solely to prevent fraud in the electoral process and ensure that all legally cast ballots are counted.” It is in the eye of the Republican-controlled legislature which ballots are legally cast. All votes cast in wrong-leaning districts are presumptively illegal until proven otherwise. Especially if the vote is close. Extra-especially if the Republican loses.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) will sign this with a flourish when it lands on his desk. Voting rights groups will see him in court.

The bill would broadly prohibit local election officials from altering election procedures without express legislative permission — a direct hit against Harris County, home of Houston, where election officials implemented various expansions last year to help voters cast ballots during the pandemic. It also specifically targets some of those expansions, explicitly banning drive-through voting locations, temporary polling places in tents and 24-hour or late-night voting marathons.

The proposed new voting hurdles come after the state logged record turnout in the 2020 election, including huge surges in early voting in cities including Austin and Houston.

A couple of these provisions are new, at least to me:

● Allow signatures on mail ballot applications to be compared to any signature on record, eliminating protections that the signature on file must be recent and that the application signature must be compared to at least two others on file to prevent the arbitrary rejection of ballots;

● And require individuals to fill out a form if they plan to transport more than two non-relatives to the polls, and expand the requirement that those assisting voters who need help must sign an oath attesting under penalty of perjury that the person they’re helping is eligible for assistance because of a disability and that they will not suggest whom to vote for.

Recognizing that signatures change over time, my state scans signatures every time a voter signs an affidavit or voting-related form so there is a historical record. Signatures are matched against the most recent version(s).

Republicans have for years harassed activists who ferry Black voters to the polls. They’ll get in their faces, claim what they’re doing is wrong somehow, and take photos of their license tags. There would be one pissed-off Black woman if North Carolina Republicans tried that “fill out a form” shit here to discourage driving voters to the polls. Boys and girls, you do not want to piss off Ms. Elinor.

The other day, some idiot in Nashville mocked Covid vaccines and the Holocaust by selling yellow stars of David with “NOT VACCINATED” on them. (No, I’m not providing a link.) A name that lives in infamy attaches to the political party that first created those patches.

The Collins English Dictionary already incudes “Trumpism” among its entries, but only as British English. “Policies advocated by Donald Trump” elides specifying the authoritarian, antidemocratic nature of the movement Trump leads even in exile. It is just a matter of time before that term sees broader use. Trumpism and Trumpist will attach to his political party and cult that under the guise of election integrity laid waste to the American republic and dispensed with democracy altogether. Because if it is not stopped, it is just a matter of time before creeping Trumpism does just that.

Daniel Dale points out nine ways the Big Lie is influencing politics. It’s not pretty:

Fuel for restrictive voting laws

Perhaps the most consequential result of Trump’s lies about what happened in 2020 is the slew of 2021 efforts by Republican state legislators to make it more difficult to vote.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.“close dialog”

Among other things, Republican proposals would reduce the availability of ballot drop boxes, shorten early voting periods and absentee voting periods, make it harder for voters to obtain mail-in ballots, increase voter identification requirements, prohibit 24-hour voting and drive-through voting, eliminate Election Day voter registration, limit who is allowed to return someone else’s absentee ballot and more aggressively purge voter rolls.

In many cases, it’s not clear whether Republican legislators actually believe the 2020 election was fraudulent or whether they are cynically using voters’ own misapprehensions about the election as political cover. The distinction is irrelevant in practice, since the lies are turning into suppressive bills no matter what the real reason is.

A career problem for Republicans who stood for truth

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who stood firm against election lies, now faces a primary challenger who has Trump’s powerful endorsement: Congressman Jody Hice, who began his campaign by uttering election lies (and last week made a misleading claim about the Capitol riot on January 6). And Raffensperger has already had some of his power stripped by the Republican governor and state legislature.

Another Georgia Republican who stood up for facts about what happened in 2020, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, announced this week that he would not seek reelection. Like Raffensperger, Duncan has made Republican enemies by declining to humor Trump’s nonsense.

It isn’t just Georgia officials on the hot seat for speaking truth. Nevada’s Republican Party Central Committee voted in April to censure Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske for refusing to investigate (baseless allegations of) election fraud and being too “dismissive” of (baseless) concerns about “election integrity.”

A rationale for a crackdown on elections officials

Republicans have not only targeted particular state elections chiefs. Lies about how particular counties conducted the 2020 election have provided a rationale for a broad Republican effort to restrict local elections officials.A new Georgia law gives a state board the power to appoint someone to temporarily take over local elections boards. A new Florida law says a county elections chief can be penalized up to $25,000 if any drop box is made available in a way that violates the law’s requirements. An Iowa law signed in March allows local elections officials to be fined up to $10,000 for a “technical infraction” and charged with a felony for failing to implement guidance from the Iowa secretary of state.

And Republicans around the country have or are trying to forbid local officials, among others, from sending out absentee ballot applications to voters who have not specifically requested them.

An impetus for a change in House Republican leadership

Last week, Republicans removed Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney from the third-ranking spot in the party’s House leadership because of her vocal criticism of election lies — and replaced her with New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has repeatedlypromoted those lies and who tried to get the election overturned.

A factor in open primary races

Josh Mandel, the former Ohio treasurer who is now running in the Republican primary for the US Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Rob Portman, has turned the Big Lie into an applause line in his speeches — proclaiming that he, unlike his “establishment” rivals, is willing to flatly declare that the election was stolen from Trump.

In Virginia, the just-concluded Republican gubernatorial primary featured a candidate, state Sen. Amanda Chase, who also emphasized her baseless position that the election was stolen.Chase finished third in a seven-candidate field. But she wasn’t really alone: the winner, businessman Glenn Youngkin, made “election integrity” one of his campaign issues and declined for weeks to say that Biden had been legitimately elected, changing his tune only after he secured the Republican nomination last week.

The basis for an Arizona “audit” — and pushes for other audits

The Big Lie underpinned the decision of Arizona’s Republican-controlled state Senate to commission a so-called “audit” of the 2020 election in the state’s most populous county, Maricopa, after the county had already conducted an audit that found no problems.The state Senate hired an obscure, inexperienced firm that is run by someone who has promoted election lies; the firm’s Maricopa processes have been widely criticized by actual elections experts. But Republicans in other states, from Georgia to Michigan and California, are now pushing for similar “audits.”

Another fight in Congress

The Big Lie led to the storming of the Capitol on January 6. Now, instead of working together on any number of other issues, Congress is spending time fighting over whether to create an independent commission to investigate what happened.

Of course, the two sides aren’t equivalent here: It is Republicans in particular who have turned what could be a moment of quick and easy bipartisan unity into yet another partisan scrap.

Ammunition for conspiracy theorists

As CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan has reported, the Arizona “audit” that is based on the Big Lie has become a fixation in QAnon conspiracy circles — a basis, albeit a ludicrous basis, to continue to believe that a series of states will somehow overturn President Joe Biden’s already-certified victories and that Trump will soon be returned to office.Granted, QAnon adherents always manage to find some nonsensical reason or another to justify their nonsensical beliefs. But there’s no doubt that the continued prevalence of election lies has given the movement some ammunition.

An (unknown) effect on the public

Polling evidence suggests that there is a widespread perception among Republican voters that Biden was not legitimately elected. For example, a CNN poll in late April found that 70% of Republican respondents said they did not think Biden legitimately won enough votes to be president.It’s impossible to say with certainty how this false belief is affecting these voters’ broader perceptions of Biden’s presidency. But it seems highly likely that it contributes to the polarization of the public, limiting the President’s capacity for earning the support of people who voted for Trump — and even limiting average Americans’ ability to have productive political conversations with each other.

I was watching something on cable news about this the other night and suddenly realized that this is never going to right itself. Most Republicans — tens of millions of people —- are not going to wake up one days and realize they have been dupes for an orange conman. They are simply not the kind of people to ever admit they were wrong. This lie is going to be with us forever which is probably why the establishment hacks in Washington are just jumping on the bandwagon. They see the benefits and they are going for it, damn the consequences.

Not that this is surprising in any way, but it appears that Fox News is not only pushing The Big Lie, it’s pushing the bogus “remedy” in the states. This is important because it’s validating not only Dear Leader, it’s serving s validation for what the Republican Party is doing to abuse the democratic system for their political gain.

A Media Matters analysis shows that in the month and a half after Georgia’s voter suppression law was signed into effect on March 25, Fox News proceeded to defend or advocate for the newly codified restrictions on the right to vote in 270 segments. In fact, while a wide coalition of business leaders, democracy advocates, and local officials condemned the provisions of the Georgia law that were blatantly aimed at restricting the franchise in the wake of Republicans’ narrow 2020 losses in the state, Fox News aggressively took the opposite approach — framing 78% of all its segments on the law with the aforementioned support.

Fox News’ overwhelming push to justify the Georgia law stands in stark contrast to the analyses of independent experts and fact-checkers, who confirmed that crucial parts of the legislation were partisan power grabs and voter suppression, plain and simple. Dozens of companies have also come out publicly against voter suppression bills and restrictions on the right to vote across the country, including in Georgia. But some of these companies — such as General Motors and Dell Technologies — are heavy advertisers on Fox News. They should note that Fox is already well underway in its support of voter suppression efforts in Texas, Florida, and other states, just as it did with Georgia.

Previously known as Senate Bill 202, the Georgia law makes receiving and casting absentee votes more difficult, targets early voting in populous counties that tend to vote Democratic, increases the likelihood that legal provisional ballots will be discarded, bars additional funding for voter access from third parties, and shamelessly manipulates the composition of the state election board, as it empowers the Republican legislature to suspend local — and Democratic — election officials.

Despite the continued lies of former President Donald Trump and right-wing media, none of these changes can be justified on the grounds of preventing voter fraud, a problem that does not exist in significant numbers either nationally or in Georgia.

Nevertheless, Fox News went all in on defending Georgia’s voter suppression law, a programming strategy that was not confined to the network’s “opinion” shows. From March 25 to May 9, Fox News had 344 segments about Georgia’s law and 270 of those segments, 78%, advocated for or defended the legislation. Fox & Friends, which aired 38 segments that defended the voter suppression law, led the charge, and America’s Newsroom (24 segments), Hannity (22 segments), and America Reports (19 segments), followed closely behind.

The network also hosted Republican Gov. Brian Kemp at least 11 times during that period, and he at times used the platform to attack companies that had spoken out against the law. In one interview with prime-time host Tucker Carlson, Kemp called corporations that had penned a letter against the law “hypocritical,” while Carlson asked of Delta Air Lines and The Coca-Cola Company, “Why doesn’t someone say, make your little diabetes-causing soft drinks, fly your little airplanes, why don’t you stay out of democracy?”

In the course of defending the law, Fox figures lied that it would actually make voting easier, lied that Georgia’s voting laws are similar to Colorado’s (where Major League Baseball moved the All-Star game), aired misleading graphics, and misled viewers about the Republican power grab over the process of overseeing the election. 

Fox News has also not been shy about pushing Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election results were supposedly fraudulent in Georgia and nationwide, a falsehood that has now been incorporated into the network’s defense of voter suppression on the spurious grounds of “election integrity.”

And it’s not just in Georgia that Fox News is defending restrictions on the right to vote. The network has started to defend the new voter suppression laws coming from other Republican-led states as well. On May 6, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis even signed Florida’s law live on Fox & Friends. As of May 9, 5 out of 8 Fox News segments (63%) on Florida’s new voter restrictions have advocated for them, while 10 out of 12 segments (83%) on Texas’ proposed voter suppression legislation — expected to be signed into law shortly — have also been supportive. Republican leaders from these states have also made multiple appearances on the network to defend various voter suppression laws, including the ones in Florida and Texas. DeSantis has made 3 appearances on the subject while Texas’ Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have both made two appearances each.

It’s vitally important to always keep in mind that there is no systematic voter fraud of any kind. There was no cheating in the last election. These actions are all about preventing Democrats from voting in future elections. Fox News is onboard that nefarious anti-democratic project 100%. And they know very well it’s bullshit.

I didn’t think I would ever positively share a Mona Charon column but never say never. This one is a keeper — it lays out another unspoken important aspect of the GOP’s “stop the steal” strategy: the fact that someone did try to steal the election — Donald Trump.

The great cause that Republicans are uniting around is “election integrity.” That’s rich. The reality is that somebody did attempt to steal the 2020 election—Donald Trump. During the days and weeks following his loss, he brayed endlessly that the outcome was fraudulent, laying the groundwork for an attempt to overturn the voters’ will.

From the White House, he made multiple calls to local election officials demanding that they find votes for him. He dialed up members of local canvassing boards, encouraging them to decertify results.

At a time when Trump’s toadies were calling for legislatures to ignore the popular vote and submit alternate slates of electoral college votes, he engaged in flagrant election interference by inviting seven Michigan state legislators, including the leaders of the house and senate, to the White House on November 20. What did they discuss? You can surmise from their statement issued after the meeting: “We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and, as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors . . .”

Trump phoned a Georgia elections investigator who was conducting a signature audit in Cobb County, and asked her to find the “dishonesty.” If she did, he promised, “you’ll be praised. . . You have the most important job in the country right now.”

The then-president phoned Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger 18 times. When he finally got through, he wove a tangled theory of voting irregularities that crescendoed to a naked plea to falsify Georgia’s vote: “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes.”

Trump entertained ideas such as declaring martial law, seizing the nation’s voting machines, and letting the military “rerun” the election. He turned loose his Kraken-conspiracy nuts and his pillow man to spread lies about Dominion Voting Systems, Black-run cities like Philadelphia, and Chinese bamboo ballots.

The Trump campaign and its allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging election procedures and lost all but one. Pennsylvania was found to have erred in extending the period to fix errors on mail-in ballots. The case was a matter of three days and a small number of votes that would not have changed Pennsylvania’s outcome.

And then came the ultimate attack on election integrity—the violent attack on the Capitol and on members of Congress and the vice president as they were fulfilling their constitutional duties.

Leaving no doubt about his intentions for the riot, Trump told a crowd in February that the only thing that prevented the violent mob from successfully hijacking the official tally of the Electoral College votes was the “cowardice” of Mike Pence.

Today, we stand on the precipice of the House Republican conference ratifying this attempt to subvert American democracy. They are poised to punish Liz Cheney for saying this simple truth: “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.” In her place, they will elevate Iago in heels, Elise Stefanik, whose claim to leadership consists entirely of her operatic Trump followership.

Let’s be clear: The substitution of Stefanik for Cheney is a tocsin, signaling that the Republican party will no longer be bound by law or custom. In 2020, many Republican office holders, including the otherwise invertebrate Pence, held the line. They did not submit false slates of electors. They did not decertify votes. They did not “find” phantom fraud. But the party has been schooled since then. It has learned that the base—which is deluded by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levin—believes the lies and demands that Republicans fight. As my colleague Amanda Carpenter put it, the 2024 mantra is going to be “Steal It Back.”

If Cheney must be axed because she will not lie, then what will happen if Republicans take control of Congress in 2022 and are called upon to certify the Electoral College in 2024? How many Raffenspergers will there be? How many will insist, as Pence did, that they must do what the Constitution demands? How many will preserve any semblance of the rule of law and the primacy of truth?

I’m going to guess none. Any who would will have been purged by that time, on both the state and the national level.

I am more am more convinced that this is going to happen and that we are going to have to rely on the courts to defend democracy. I have no idea if they will. When it came down to it in 2000, the Supreme Court went with the party.