Rigging Elections 101 – Texas Governor Trump & His US Supreme Court Henchmen

  

Texas House minus Democrats 

Greg Abbott with his Master

Rigging Elections 101 – Texas Governor Trump & His US Supreme Court Henchmen

"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators." 

US Constitution, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1

“The people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you've recalculated. All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have... Fellas, I need 11,000 votes, give me a break." 

Donald Trump, in January of 2021 (prior to the certification to the 2020 election), in a recorded telephone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

It’s pretty clear that Donald Trump is the master puppeteer, and a Greg Abbott doll is a willing mouthpiece for the Master Trump’s demand that Texas redraw its election map, prior to the upcoming midterms. Trump’s “request” – mirroring his 2020 election demand of the Georgia (see above) – as part of his demand of other red state governors that they too gerrymander the election maps to eliminate the possibility of a loss of the GOP majority currently in the House of Representatives. As Trump Puppet Abbott ordered a special legislative session to implement that gerrymander request – “because we can” as the Texas House speaker stated – the Democrats left Texas to deprive Abbott of the legislative quorum he needed to disenfranchise them and deliver for Trump.

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott then ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety on August 4th to arrest the 56 Democratic lawmakers who fled to other states (mostly Illinois) to prevent the quorum needed under Texas law to enact a “certain to pass” redistricting plan. His goal: eliminate five Democratic district seats and replace them with a heavily gerrymandered election map that would most certainly shift those seats to Republican dominated constituencies. Despite other pressing issues (e.g., recovery from the massive damage from the July 4 floods in the Hill Country and Central Texas, a failing statewide electrical grid, etc.), Abbott only cared about gerrymandering.

Red states, Indiana and Ohio, hinted that they may be next, as blue states – especially California, New York and Illinois – entertained comparable countermeasure redistricting (“This is war” as NY Governor Kathy Hochul stated) to prevent the election distortion Donald Trump wants to impose to protect the slender GOP House majority. Not the easiest path in states where legislation exists moving redistricting into the hands of non-partisan agencies. Polls and local town halls suggest that in a fair election, the GOP would lose that majority. Let me say that I hate gerrymandering. Both parties have done it. But a failed rightwing Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of state-driven election distortions favoring Republican candidates. Unless the Supreme Court returns to neutrality, it appears to have become a wing of the Republican Party as defined by Donald Trump. If Trump succeeds in this effort, that could be the final nail in the coffin of America’s claim that it is a true representative democracy. If this nation is to have any hope of avoiding a transition to pure autocracy, it is time that the Supreme Court understand its current role in killing voting rights and immediately reverse course.

Recent Supreme Court cases, for example, beginning with Citizens United vs FEC (2010) – which took the dollar cap off SuperPAC campaign support, as long as funding was not directed by a candidate (that limitation may be eliminated) – “equal protection” of voting rights was slowly replaced by “however the states want to control elections within their state.” Despites the plain language of the above-cited “Election Clause,” the Supreme Court felt free to negate Congress’ statutory mandate of a law aimed at protecting efforts to disenfranchise minority voters.

In 2021, the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee Supreme Court all but repealed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The decision interpreted the "totality of circumstances" language of Section 2 to mean that it does not generally prohibit voting rules that have disparate impact on the groups that it sought to protect, including a rule blocked under Section 5 before the Court inactivated that section in Shelby County v. Holder (a 2013 case that released states with traditional patterns of racial voter discrimination from federal oversight). Virtually all of Trump’s emergency appeals to the Supreme Court have been successful, only amplifying his powers. In short, the Court is rewarding states that manipulate elections away from voters.

This appears to be very much the opposite of what our Founding Fathers intended. There are federal rules, however. For example, federal employees under the Hatch Act, although there is an exemption for the President and the Vice President, may may not engage in partisan political activity while on duty, in a federal workplace, with the use of any federal resource (such as computers, cell phones, email, etc.), or while identified as a federal employee (such as while wearing a DOL lapel pin). The law aims to prevent the use of official authority to affect election outcomes and to protect civil servants from pressure to support specific candidates or parties. This framework helps maintain a system where federal employment and advancement are based on merit rather than political affiliation. And while Trump may be exempted from the application of this 1939 statute, other federal operatives, acting to implement the President’s directives, are not so exempt.

But Republicans want to force voting distortions that would change the entire complexion of Congress. “President Donald Trump said the FBI ‘may have to’ help arrest Texas Democratic lawmakers to their home state after more than 50 fled to block a Republican redistricting plan that could flip five U.S. congressional seats… ‘A lot of people are demanding they come back. You can't just sit it out. You have to go back,’ Trump said at an Aug. 5 press event.

“Trump made the remarks when asked by a reporter about Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn's request earlier in the day for the FBI to ‘take any appropriate steps to aid in Texas state law enforcement efforts to locate or arrest’ the Democratic lawmakers.” Aysha Bagchi, writing for August 5th USA TODAY. Dictators hate defiance. Trump hates anyone or any medium that opposes his will, no matter how unlawful or unconstitutional it may appear. Can Trump deploy the FBI or any other federal agency to support obvious election distortion? If he can, this country is toast.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we just may be facing a constitutional crisis that could effectively repeal the final vestiges of a fading vision of America as a representative democracy.