GOP voter suppression equals SMOKESCREEN...GOP voter negation equals REAL DANGER!
Don’t misunderstand me…..the voter suppression effort is a horrible thing, and can have lasting negative consequences, but ultimately, the Democrats can defeat that. Much worse is the reality that the GOP is in the process of giving itself the ability in multiple states to totally negate the will of the voters, and to turn that goal into a reality, they are using voter suppression as a smokescreen.
Republicans know that ultimately, if Democrats work very hard and stay on their toes, turnout can defeat voter suppression, even though the suppressive efforts will make it much more difficult to do so. But they also know that if the GOP actually had the power to negate the will of the voters, that power would be the REAL key to setting up a Trump/”Republican” dictatorship. And don’t kid yourself. That is their actual goal. They already tried it. Now they are in the process of setting up the mechanisms to overturn the will of the voters, so they can SUCCESSFULLY accomplish in 2022 and 2024 what they failed to accomplish in 2020.
Therefore, they have cued up the voter suppression efforts, hoping that the focus of the press and the Democrats will be on the forest of suppressive efforts, and NOT the tree, i.e., voter negation. For example, the suppressive effort that garnered the most publicity by far in the period of time while the Georgia voter suppression bill was debated and passed was the prohibition on giving out water to those waiting in line to vote. “Oh, my gosh! Can you believe that? They are SO hateful and barbaric that you could get arrested just for giving water to a shaky senior citizen waiting out in the hot sun to vote!” Well, even if those who pushed that provision ARE hateful and barbaric, a lack of water for waiting voters will NOT win or lose an election.
Other suppressive efforts also got a lot of attention. Rarely highlighted was the ability the GOP was giving itself to simple declare that a Republican candidate who fairly lost an election was in fact the winner, irrespective of the will of the voters. The thing is….voter negation is only one of several elements of the Georgia legislation, but it’s really the only one that matters! Even if it had gotten its fair share of attention (and it didn’t), as one of many provisions, its democracy ending mechanism had been homogenized, emulsified, and smokescreened with all the other parts into generalized “voter suppression”.
Here’s something else: They know that the voters will have limited power to punish them if their fascist putsch is ultimately unsuccessful. They know that in a very few years, due to changing demographics alone, it will be almost impossible for them to retain national power. They have known this and have been operating for over a decade with this reality in mind. Witness their extreme push to control the courts, along with their win-at-all-costs vile actions, their lying, and their hypocrisy, all of which is out in the open. They know that everything will eventually be exposed to those few rational voters who don’t already know the truth, leading to a revolt by just enough of them that the GOP will be tossed from power (it only takes a few percentage points).
They are keenly aware of the fact that if their anti-democracy plot fails, the only penalty the voters could give them would be to take power away merely for the few years between now and when demographics alone would have done the trick. So they are risking at most a few years of power that they might not even enjoy, versus a permanent dictatorship.
They obviously are not risking much. Yes, they have nothing to lose. Yes, they will stop at nothing.
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Last edited Sun Jun 6, 2021, 11:44 PM - Edit history (1)
That's the idea I've been getting but I don't know the details of how it works or in which states. Just generally that if there's a "question about the validity" of an election then some part of the state government/legislature can intervene and negate the results. Of course questioning the validity of an election is all they've been doing for months, trying to make it look "official," perhaps laying the groundwork through repetition/advertising that invalid election results are real and very bad but don't worry because they have put a plan in place to take care of it in future elections.
K/R
ETA: Angus King was on State of the Union with Jake Tapper today and cited this issue of legislatures overturning election results as something he is very concerned about. He is on the Senate Rules Committee.