With the return to Jim Crow in Georgia after the Republican legislature and Governor legislated a blatant attack on the voting rights of predominantly Dem voters, it's logical that a rabid right-wing Trumpist is the current favorite (read, "Trump's favorite") to be the new election chief: Jody "Heist" Hice. He currently serves as the Republican representative for Georgia's 10th Congressional district, and, if elected, he'll be willing to move mountains to rig future elections for his party and his Dear Leader. CNN's Daniel Dale writes that Hice is a "Stop The Steal" / Big Lie cultist whose campaign "platform" is to deny the legitimate election of President Biden and imply that massive fraud (i.e., large black voter turnout) tainted the 2020 election:
"Since November, Hice has been a vocal and frequent purveyor of inaccurate election claims -- baselessly saying or insinuating that the results were tainted by mass fraud and that Joe Biden did not legitimately beat Trump in Georgia."
Hice has a problem with absentee ballots which drive voter participation up (deadly for Republicans) and drop boxes, and would like to purge 700,000 voters from Georgia's voter registration rolls, impacting infrequent Dem voters overwhelmingly.
There is a small silver lining in that the Republicans' desperate moves are glaring. The Washington Post's Greg Sargent takes it from there:
"Perhaps we should be thankful that Rep. Jody Hice is running to be the new chief of elections in Georgia, with the enthusiastic backing of former president Donald Trump. That’s because the Republican’s candidacy is exposing vile truths about the GOP’s ongoing slide into authoritarianism with dispiriting but useful clarity.
We need to retheorize what’s right in front of our noses. Republicans have launched new voter-suppression efforts everywhere, while Democrats are pushing reforms to thwart those tactics and make voting easier. Yet this is often covered as a 'partisan' struggle, as if each side were trying to manipulate election rules to its advantage in a manner that was vaguely equivalent."
As Sargent notes, the Beltway media has already forgotten the lessons of the January 6 Trumpist seditionist insurrection and wants to play the "politics as a game" false equivalency when it comes to Republican roll back of voting rights. Turning back to the lies about a stolen election in Georgia, Sargent writes:
"These lies aren’t just about re-litigating the past. They also seem designed to lay the groundwork to overturn an election result that Georgia Republicans don’t like in the future.
This is inescapably the real meaning of the core rationale of Hice’s candidacy. He’s running precisely because [GA Secretary of State] Raffensperger did not use those lies as pretexts to overturn the outcome. When Trump says Hice will 'fight' where his rival did not, he’s telling us Hice will do exactly that."
Whether in the courts or at the ballot box, this election tampering has to end, and the Republican onward rush toward cultish authoritarianism needs to be called out for what it is.
BONUS: Of course, it's not just Georgia. There's a Trump seditionist in Arizona who's running to do the same thing.
(photo: Hice cradling his penis compensator, which no doubt he will bring to the polls to scare dark skinned people away)
