Trump's grip on GOP sparks fears about democratic process

[TexasTowelie]

Seven months after Election Day, former President Donald Trump’s supporters are still auditing ballots in Arizona’s largest county and may revive legislation that would make it easier for judges in Texas to overturn election results.

In Georgia, meanwhile, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill allowing it to appoint a board that can replace election officials. Trump loyalists who falsely insist he won the 2020 election are running for top election offices in several swing states. And after a pro-Trump mob staged a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to halt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory, Republicans banded together to block an independent investigation of the riot, shielding Trump from additional scrutiny of one of the darkest days of his administration.

To democracy advocates, Democrats and others, the persistence of the GOP’s election denial shows how the Republican Party is increasingly open to bucking democratic norms, particularly the bipartisan respect traditionally afforded to election results even after a bitter campaign. That’s raising the prospect that if the GOP gains power in next year’s midterms, the party may take the extraordinary step of refusing to certify future elections.

“We have to face the facts that Republicans — obviously with exceptions — have become an authoritarian party,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.” “It’s impossible to sustain a democracy in a two-party system when one of the parties is not willing to play by the rules of the game.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/michael-pence-donald-trump-election-2020-campaign-2016-capitol-siege-d6cdb60926cfa2d3a57fd4ba9b0084f5

[John Ludi]

1. I see

Biden's election win as a brief respite from a full-tilt headlong plummet into total hillbilly theocratic fascism...which will cause the entire system to collapse as these people can't run anything coherently (as in the USPS under DeJoy extended to the entire country).

Hope I'm wrong.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. I'm a poll worker.

I find the concept of this "auditing" to be somewhere between arbitrary and insulting.

Each poll worker monitors who gets into the booth to vote, where that vote is irrevocable. Any doubt of a voter's registration, signature, status, etc. means that person gets a provisional ballot where it is later reviewed by a panel of administrators, BOTH democratic and republican, for analysis to decide whether to count that vote.

There is a system to protect the integrity of "The Vote" in all districts and counties and states.

To have an "audit" second guess a provisional vote is ridiculous. They have no experience. They don't have others involved to discuss any discrepancy. Call me cynical, but in AZ, I can see a Biden vote being tossed while a Trump vote would be kept.

[mopinko]

3. democracy depends on the consent of the losers.

ya know, now i know why so many were reluctant to fight in 2000, and 2004.
it is a pandora's box.