Devious “defenders” of election integrity
JV Last summarized last night’s Iran debacle in a Bulwark livestream: “This entire thing was avoidable and predictable. Donald Trump made America walk into the diner to eat the shit sandwich.”
Republicans are on track for more at the polls this fall. They ate another last night in Wisconsin (Politico):
In Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, the Democratic-backed candidate sailed to a nearly 20-point landslide victory Tuesday in a battleground Trump carried less than two years ago. Meanwhile, a Georgia Democrat slashed Trump’s margin of victory by two thirds in the state’s reddest district despite losing the election — the most significant overperformance the party has seen across all seven House special elections so far this cycle.
Meaning Democrat Shawn Harris will not replace Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene in the U.S. House. But political winds are not blowing in Republicans’ favor. Judge Chris Taylor, a Wisconsin liberal, won a seat on the state Supreme Court by 20 points over her Republican rival. Democrats will hold a 5-to-2 majority on the Wisconsin high court once she’s sworn in.
“It’s a wow moment in Wisconsin politics,” said former Republican strategist Brandon Scholz, who left the party in 2021. “Republicans ought to be sitting down tonight and going, ‘Okay, we just screwed up another race. What are we going to do in November?’”
Lose. And lose badly. Depending on what the lunatic in the Oval Office does between now and then to sabotage fall elections.
Republicans Politico quotes dismissed the losses as not indicative of what happens in November.
“Everyone involved should be doxxed, tarred and feathered and run out of Wisconsin politics,” the strategist said while dismissing the idea that the race result matters ahead of November.“The electorate is so different now. GOP voters don’t show up for spring [elections] like they used to,” they said.
[…]
“Democrats threw everything they had at this race,” said Georgia Republican Party chair Josh McKoon. “They made this the Super Bowl and they lost.”
Anyway, Georgia Republicans have tricks up their sleeves for November. One county chair called last night seeking someone in North Carolina with experience running elections with hand-marked paper ballots. Georgia Republicans are still worked up over Dominion, Venezuela, pillow guy, Sydney Powell, and 11,780 votes, etc. Democracy Docket explained on April 3 what they mean to do about it:
Georgia election officials have less than three months to convert the state’s entire voting system from touchscreen machines to paper ballots, after the state Senate failed to vote Friday on legislation that would have delayed the conversion until 2028.
[…]
Georgia’s current touchscreen system generates QR codes for ballot counting. But in 2024 GOP state lawmakers voted to sunset these machines by July 1 of this year, making it illegal to use them beyond that. Last week, the state Senate passed a bill to change over to a completely hand-marked ballot system.
However, local election officials urged lawmakers to delay that switch until 2028 so that they would have time to put the new system in place, which would include pre-printing millions of ballots and re-training election workers.
Georgia state senators did not listen:
The state House passed a bipartisan bill this morning that would’ve allowed for that two-year grace period. But the Senate – led by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R), who is running for the GOP nomination for governor – declined to bring it forward for a vote Friday, the final day of this year’s legislative session.
Now comes the scramble. And likely court challenges. Georgia’s given boards of elections no time or funds to buy, validate/certify, train staff and implement a replacement hand-market ballot system before the fall. Chaos is legislated in:
Election officials also warn that the law’s new reporting requirements will cause delays in ballot counting and in delivering timely results. Those problems often trigger chaos, controversy and conspiracy theories, as seen in the fallout over Fulton County’s 2020 election ballot count, which is still being probed today.
North Carolina Republicans are not slackers on the chaos (“election integrity”) front, as Asheville Watchdog’s Tom Fiedler explains this morning.
HB 127, “camouflaged under the title ‘Voter Registration Drive Form’, ” means to prohibit voter registration form handling by anyone except county elections officials or the Division of Motor Vehicles. Fiedler explains, “Anybody else who provides voter-registration forms may as well be trafficking in illicit drugs as they face criminal prosecution.”
That would be un-American enterprises such as “the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, and such civil-rights groups as the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the youth-oriented Rock the Vote.” Fielder explains:
Jennifer Rubin, president of the North Carolina League of Voters, told an NCNews reporter that civic organizations like hers “are all for election security and for holding elections with integrity.” But what the Republicans are doing is “throwing up roadblocks to limit voting.
“It’s like a game of whack-a-mole,” Rubin said. “One thing happens and another pops up just to discourage people from voting.”
Conveniently, Republicans are running the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sarah Stevens, for state Supreme Court against incumbent Democrat Anita Earls. With the six-month effort by Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin to steal the 2024 election he lost to Justice Allison Riggs fresh in voters’ minds — Earls called the attempt “a bloodless coup” — we’ll expect Stevens to have her face rubbed in her attempt to quash voter registration every week between now and November.
Watch this space and watch Georgia’s election struggles.
