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Republican Voter Suppression Efforts

Can anyone give me hope that democracy is not dead in America? It feels like it’s over.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/911-and-16

I have the Cassandra feeling this spring because it is so obvious where all of this is heading. President Trump tells a big lie that elections are rigged. This authorizes him and others to seek power in extra-democratic ways. The lie is institutionalized by state legislation that suppresses voting, and that gives state legislatures themselves the right to decide how to allocate the electoral vote in presidential elections.

The scenario then goes like this. The Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022, in part thanks to voter suppression. The Republican candidate in 2024 loses the popular vote by several million and the electoral vote by the margin of a few states. State legislatures, claiming fraud, alter the electoral count vote. The House and Senate accept that altered count. The losing candidate becomes the president. We no longer have "democratically elected government." And people are angry.

No one is seeking to hide that this is the plan. It is right there out in the open. The prospective Republican candidates for 2024, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley, are all running on a big lie platform. If your platform is that elections do not work, you are saying that you intend to come to power some other way. The big lie is designed not to win an election, but to discredit one. Any candidate who tells it is alienating most Americans, and preparing a minority for a scenario where fraud is claimed. This is just what Trump tried in 2020, and it led to a coup attempt in January 2021. It will be worse in January 2025.
 
A Growing Number Of Critics Raise Alarms About The Electoral College


… "The Electoral College does mean a small number of states have undue weight in the outcome of our elections and that smaller manipulations can have broad national consequences," said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded ballot access.

What she means by manipulations are the efforts by Republicans to change election laws in their favor.

"Vote suppression is one way of doing that — subtracting voters from the electorate who you think won't vote for your preferred candidates," she said. "But this new trend of actually taking over the machinery of elections and giving themselves the power to run things or make decisions or count the votes is another way of doing this."

Republican state lawmakers in places like Georgia and Texas have advanced bills that would give new powers to legislatures to fire election officials and overturn elections.

Democrats don't have the votes in the states or in Congress to stop these laws, so Democrats are trying to build public pressure against them. Republicans say their goal is to fight future election fraud. The 2020 election was declared the most secure ever, but Trump continues to push the lie that the election was stolen from him.

On the other hand, Republicans don't have to convince the public. They have the votes to pass ballot restrictions, and in some cases they have never held public hearings.

"This is the essence of the minority-rule position, right?" Harvard's Mukunda said. "You don't have to convince the public that the system is fair. You just have to convince them that it's not so unfair they should overthrow the system."

And for Republicans, the system, with all its minoritarian features — the Electoral College, the U.S. Senate, the filibuster, partisan gerrymandering — is, at least for now, working in their favor. But maybe it's not good for democracy when one party doesn't have to try to win the most votes in a presidential election.
 
Maybe that will help Republican states "Avoid the Noid" as well.
 
Republican amendment: In order to qualify for payment, you must prove you made an effort to vote in less than 30 minutes at least twice that day.
 
this is a tough one for me

I think taking steps toward ending gerrymandering is a good thing

I also think in a world where realpolitik rules the day, it's hard to live by your principles


I hate it here

if the dems are the only ones acting in good faith, and pubs are actively tearing down the system from within, are the dems still acting in good faith?
 
It makes people like Sinema and Manchin all the more infuriating for their intransigence

Sinema's op-ed about the filibuster was absolutely insane and i won't link it, but given what the Arizona GOP have unilaterally put in place, if she's anti-filibuster, she has no path to re-election either
 
It makes people like Sinema and Manchin all the more infuriating for their intransigence

Sinema's op-ed about the filibuster was absolutely insane and i won't link it, but given what the Arizona GOP have unilaterally put in place, if she's anti-filibuster, she has no path to re-election either

I've said it before - I had high hopes for her when she was elected, but she's been a major disappointment. Avoiding tough votes, defending the filibuster, and so on. I agree on her sinking re-election chances, although not just because of the new AZ voting law, but from what I've read she's really pissed off many Democrats and even some independents who voted for her, and I doubt she'll be able to generate the same enthusiasm when she runs again, and she was only narrowly elected last time. She seems to be trying to be the next maverick McCain-type, but she's only come across as inept and rather eccentric and something of a flake, to be honest.
 
I've said it before - I had high hopes for her when she was elected, but she's been a major disappointment. Avoiding tough votes, defending the filibuster, and so on. I agree on her sinking re-election chances, although not just because of the new AZ voting law, but from what I've read she's really pissed off many Democrats and even some independents who voted for her, and I doubt she'll be able to generate the same enthusiasm when she runs again, and she was only narrowly elected last time. She seems to be trying to be the next maverick McCain-type, but she's only come across as inept and rather eccentric and something of a flake, to be honest.

No pun intended?
 
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