The Republican National Committee is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in an Arizona election dispute this week and block up to 40,000 of the state’s registered voters from casting ballots in the presidential race.
Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from from voting in person or by mail.
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Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney for the Campaign Legal Center who worked on the case, said she found that argument to be surprising.
“They are trying to upend the law as it has been in Arizona at least since 2018,” she said. “The voters who registered using the federal form were not asked to provide proof of citizenship.”
She said the Republican lawmakers and their attorneys who brought the case “didn’t cite a single example of a noncitizen who was enrolled. Not one. Why would someone who is not a citizen try to register? It’s a felony and would get you deported, just to cast one ballot.”
Reminder: if conservatives can’t win via democracy they will always resort to autocracy.
This strategy of challenging and removing voters in communities that are largely oppositional isn’t unique to the Republican Party, but it is a favorite of theirs. And the argument always boils down to claims of “illegal voting” to swing the election, which they then leverage into claims that any Democrat advantage on voting day was won fraudulently.
This is why i register as Republican. Never voted R once, but strangely and unlike several family members, I’ve never been purged from voter rolls, either.
WEIRD.
That’s more likely a function of your age and voting district than your registration. This kind of disenfranchisement is just a numbers game, so if you’re living in Houston’s Third Ward or you are trying to vote from the UT 40 Acres in Austin as a registered Republican you still run the risk of being purged or having your registration “lost”, because you’re in a community that’s overwhelmingly liberal-leaning.
By contrast, if you’re out in The Woodlands or Beaumont or Midland, you’ll have local Republicans actively encouraging you to register. One of the savvier moves Abbott did after the nail-biter Senate race in 2018 was to get a bunch of organizers and registrars out to South and West Texas gun shows, signing up anyone with a passing interest in firearms. 2020 and 2022 have been much more favorable to Republicans, as a result.
As bad as this is, it’s only one small part of the MAGA cult’s strategy to steal the election. They’re not “just” trying to invalidate voter registrations or discourage people from casting ballots; they’re also trying to stop the votes that do manage to be cast from being counted and validated.
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There are no less than 70 election deniers working as county election officials in key swing states.
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Georgia’s MAGA-controlled elections board is about to approve a rule requiring that any discrepancy between the number of people who voted and a hand count of the number of ballots cast be “investigated” indefinitely – which means a MAGA poll worker could singlehandedly sabotage the entire precinct’s result reporting simply by “accidentally” miscounting.
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They’re recruiting 100,000 poll “observers” to be in a position to disrupt and sabotage the vote counting nationwide.
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Preventing states from certifying their votes opens up all sorts of avenues for Trump to steal the Presidency, ranging from being declared the winner by SCOTUS a la Bush v. Gore in 2000, to prevent Congress from certifying the results a la Jan 6, to – and this is the one I think they’re going for this time – keeping both candidates below 270 EC votes, which throws the decision to a House vote with one vote per state, which would obviously result in low-population MAGA states thwarting the will of the vast majority of the population.
There’s a reason why Trump keeps telling his supporters that they won’t have to vote anymore and the Project 2025 ghouls are saying that “we are in the process of a second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”: because they are 100% all-in on destroying free and fair elections in this country.
Voting is more essential than ever, but it also will not be enough. Even a landslide for Kamala isn’t enough if the states refuse to acknowledge the reality of it! We (and by “we” I mean every American who isn’t an outright democracy-hating traitor, regardless of how you feel about Kamala’s policy platform) need to figure out some direct countermeasures to the MAGA fascists’ schemes and mobilize to implement them – fast. Otherwise, we’re gonna win the popular vote and the Electoral College vote – at least in factual reality, as confirmed long after the fact – but Trump is gonna be coronated as a dictator anyway.
I really hope that there are at least some official or public figures who are tasked with the job of doing something about it
That’s exactly the problem: the MAGA fascists have been spending 4+ years going all-in on inserting their people into exactly those positions, up to and including SCOTUS. (And I don’t just mean SCOTUS’ conservative majority in general; I mean three of them literally helped perpetrate Bush v. Gore.) Are there enough non-traitorous officials left to effectively oppose them? I don’t know! It sure doesn’t seem like it here in Georgia, even despite Raffensperger and Kemp not bending the knee to the cult leader.
I’m also extremely worried that (a) we need to be a bunch of normal people to form an organized resistance that goes well beyond just voting (e.g. to become poll watchers as a counter-balance to the MAGA ones), but also (b) any such tactics (at least ones I can think of) to counter the MAGAs’ election disruptions would themselves also be disruptive and thus play into the MAGAs’ hands anyway.
In summary:
- If MAGA election officials refuse to certify enough votes, they win.
- If MAGA election observers successfully sabotage the count, they win.
- If MAGA election observers fail to sabotage the count but cause enough disruption to cast it into doubt/get courts involved (either slow-walking it with MAGA judges like Aileen Cannon, or appealing it up to SCOTUS), they win.
- If non-fascist election observers try to intervene to stop MAGA ones, it also causes enough disruption to cast it into doubt/get courts involved and the MAGAs win.
- If non-fascists try to remove MAGAs from being in positions to do these things in the first place, they cry fraud, kick it to the courts, and win.
There apparently are some new rules non-fascist politicians have passed to try to shore up the certification process, but I fear they’ll be “too little, too late.” (In fact, they’re so few that I can’t even find a news article to cite about them right now…) As for us regular citizens, there’s fuck-all we can do (at least that I can think of) to actively oppose the blatant attempted theft of the election, and instead we can only vote as if nothing is wrong and just sort of hope the MAGAs don’t have enough manpower (despite election denialism continuing to spread!) to pull it off even without any interference.
I don’t know of any fascist movement in history that has successfully been resisted by acting like it’s business as usual in a normal functioning democracy and hoping for the best. But as far as I can tell, that’s what we’re doing.
The MAGAs only win if the big blue states play along. I know that’s tantamount to civil war, but in the event of blatant election interference they should just refuse to accept the “new” federal government. Peaceful transition of power is a lie if the process is illegitimate.
Start organizing now!
the problem with this is anyone who goes along with these plans risks jail etc and any republican pols joining in will deligitimize their own elections. Theres also no guarantee trump will protect these people (rw news called the j6 folks “antifa” at first)
Way too many of the people who tried it last time not only remain at large, but weren’t even removed from their positions of trust. It has only emboldened them to try again, harder.
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Republicans have always objected to any kind of federal ID. Its wild to me they then use the lack of federal ID to justify their theoretical fears. The second moderates realize republicans have been gaslighting america for like 60 years the party is done:
They create humanitarian crises in venezuela then complain about immigrants.
They drive up the national debt with tax cuts for the worlds wealthiests morons and then complain about the debt.
Must be hard to be the party that is only competitive when as few as possible vote.
In Europe I get a voting pass sent in the mail for every election. To vote I have to show both this pass and a valid ID. The pass is kept by the polling station. Easy and quick.
How come it is so difficult in the USA to exert your democratic right? Why does one of the parties fight against people voting?
How come it is so difficult in the USA to exert your democratic right?
Because half of the population of the country (republicans) don’t want the other half to have any rights at all. They no longer care about freedom or this country. They only care about screwing over those who don’t agree with them. Yes, they’re that stupid.
Its difficult to vote to keep people from voting. When people are allowed to vote Republicans lose elections.
In Europe I get a voting pass sent in the mail for every election. To vote I have to show both this pass and a valid ID.
In the Netherlands it doesn’t even have to be a valid ID. If it hasn’t been expired for more than 5 years it’s fine for voting purposes.
At this point Republicans just need to move to Venezuela so they can feel at home.
Fuck all the idiots who voted in these unamerican people into positions of American leadership.
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