The continuing assault by Trump cult Republicans on our democracy is manifesting itself in various ways: Republican-controlled state legislatures corruptly manipulating 2020 Census data to redraw Congressional districts to grow their power, and putting discriminatory voting laws in place that suppress the Democratic vote are just two examples. As we're seeing on a more granular level, local boards of elections and commissions are being targeted by Trumpist radicals who not only want to make it harder for their opponents to vote, but want to count the votes to ensure Republicans win. From the New York Times:
"[The belief that the 2020 election was stolen] has informed a wave of mobilization at both grass-roots and elite levels in the party with an eye to future elections. In races for state and county-level offices with direct oversight of elections, Republican candidates coming out of the Stop the Steal movement are running competitive campaigns, in which they enjoy a first-mover advantage in electoral contests that few partisans from either party thought much about before last November.
And legislation that state lawmakers have passed or tried to pass this year in a number of states would assert more control over election systems and results by partisan offices that Republicans already decisively control.
'This is a five-alarm fire,' said Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, who presided over her state’s Trump-contested election in 2020 and may face a Trump-backed challenger next year. 'If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in ’24.'” (our emphasis)
If you paid attention to the thuggish attacks on school boards leading up to various 2021 state and local elections using book banning and "critical race theory" as bogus issues, you have a sense of the plan of attack on state and local election boards by the authoritarian Trumpist right.
Due to the monolithic obstruction of Senate Republicans and the mindless objection so far of conservaDems Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to modifying the arcane filibuster rule, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For The People Act of 2021 are languishing in the Senate as the 2022 mid-terms are less than a year away. President Biden and Dems need to make the passage of these two bills their top priority, even over the Build Back Better Act, because the failure to protect voting rights is fundamental to getting anything done in the face of an authoritarian, right-wing threat to democracy.
(photo: Sorting absentee ballots in South Carolina. The State)
