The] Constitution contains no explicit right to vote. Rather, the Supreme Court has recognized an implicit right to vote via the 14th Amendment, enacted in 1868 after the Civil War, which aimed to protect the civil rights of people who had been enslaved and guarantees “the equal protection of the laws.”
NY Times, 10/26/22
Former President Donald Trump knows that “lies about the 2020 election are instrumentally useful in motivating GOP base voters… Trump raised this in a call with Blake Masters, the Republican nominee in the Arizona Senate race, that was captured in a new Fox News documentary. Trump faulted Masters for saying at a debate that he didn’t see evidence of a rigged 2020 election, and urged Masters to be ‘stronger’ on that point.
“‘You’re going to lose that base,’ Trump told Masters, citing Kari Lake, the GOP candidate who might win the state’s governor’s race: ‘Kari’s winning with very little money. And if they say, ‘How is your family?’ she says the election was rigged and stolen.’…
“In Trump’s own telling, GOP base voters must be told that when they lose, they’ve been robbed — the outcome is illegitimate by definition. Scores of other GOP candidates are running for positions of control over elections — while essentially vowing to treat future elections as subject to nullification — which makes Trump’s point harder to deny.
“Similarly, we recently learned that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) believed the mob assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, might kill him. Yet even though McCarthy blamed Trump for inciting the riot, McCarthy publicly patched things up with Trump, then spent the next year helping cover up his insurrection.
“Why? Trump has supplied a plausible answer: Planting yourself squarely on the wrong side of Trump’s lies about 2020 might risk demobilizing or alienating the base, which could have imperiled McCarthy’s hopes of winning the House. What’s required instead is treating Jan. 6’s underlying cause as in some sense just.” Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, October 26th.
But a lie can only take you so far if you aren’t able to use the legal system to overturn elections and keep opposition voters away. So, part two of this strategy is tailored voter restrictions and never accepting an election result that goes against you. Even if that requires tying up the courts for years to reverse such results. As Kari Lake stated twice in mid-October, when CNN’s Dana Bash asked her: “Will you accept the results of your election in November?” Replied Lake: “I'm going to win the election, and I will accept that result.” Lawyers are on standby!
With red and swing state election deniers in responsible election positions pledging not to allow a repetition of the 2020 “stolen election” and as the US Supreme Court addresses whether the Constitution has so empowered state legislatures with control over elections that they can overrule popular votes, we may no longer be living in a democracy where voting results are determinative. The Post’s Patrick Marley notes: “In the United States, election season has turned into lawsuit season.
“One legal challenge in Michigan seeks to remove thousands from the voter rolls. Two lawsuits in Wisconsin seek to have more absentee ballots counted, even if they are missing some information. In Arizona, a judge is reviewing a new law requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. And in Pennsylvania, lawsuits challenge the state’s no-excuse absentee voting law, as well as the policy to count undated mail-in ballots… Disputes over redistricting, voter IDs, voting hours, recounts and other election-related policies have long run parallel to political campaigns, but the numbers are rising.
“The increase began after the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election, and the trend reached a high in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic prompted a host of new voting rules. The pace quickened after that election, when Donald Trump and his allies brought a slew of lawsuits that unsuccessfully sought to deliver him a second term as president.” Even as Trump lost virtually every judicial challenge he mounted against the 2020 election, over 60 such suits even before his own appointees, his persistence has paid off.
As Republican legislators were forced to accept the underlying notion of a stolen election or lose their elective offices, a tsunami of voter restrictive state laws redefined elections and promised decades in the courts. Trump effectively eliminated a significant number of probable anti-GOP voters from casting ballots. All in the name of a dramatically unnecessary move to protect “election integrity.” In some jurisdictions, he even enabled intimidating Republican “poll watchers” and “election counting observers” to filter out GOP opponents even more. See above photographs.
False issues, culture wars and even blaming a hardworking medical doctor trying to stem COVID as a criminal worthy of a special congressional investigation, reinforce that America is not nation built on facts and what’s best for most of us. Conspiracy theories and an unwillingness to challenge them seem to be our new “truth.” When medical facts become polarizing political statements, we are all in trouble.
Yes, Americans know that the MAGA GOP is misusing skewed judicial appointments to sustain its radical views and the recent spate of legislative voter restrictions. “A Gallup Poll released in late September found the level of trust and confidence in the judicial branch was at 47%, the lowest since the organization began surveying the public on the topic in the 1970s. It was 67% in 2020.” Associated Press, October 26th. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative and widely unpopular June 24th reversal of Roe v Wade began a severe drop in public trust.
American voters are justifiably nervous. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has also found that two in five US voters are worried about threats of violence or voter intimidation at polling stations during the Nov. 8 midterm elections, with 51% of Democrat voters and 38% of Republicans sharing these concerns. The poll also indicates that around two-thirds of voters fear extremists will carry out acts of violence after the election and that 17% believe that their ballot won't be counted accurately, including roughly one-in-ten Democrats and one-in-four Republicans. But evidence suggests that GOP operatives are the mostly likely to disrupt those midterms and the results.
Do we expect the midterms to roil our judicial system? Even before the election, “More than 100 lawsuits have been filed this year around the Nov. 8 elections. The legal challenges, largely by Republicans, target rules for mail-in voting, early voting, voter access, voting machines, voting registration, the counting of mismarked absentee ballots and access for partisan poll watchers.” Colleen Long writing for the October 27th Associated Press. So YES!
That there are scores of Americans, increasingly aware of these election and judicial manipulations, who simply do not care enough to do anything about it, is staggering. The ends justify the means, even if that means the end of American representative democracy. They will do anything to make sure that White Christian nationalism prevails and that “they” will “not replace us.” If this pressure cannot be halted, the American “experiment with democracy” is over. Autocracy is waiting in the wings… with a great big smile.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I am ashamed of the political legacy that we are leaving for our rising generations.
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