Republicans Are Planning To Steal The Midterms. Here's What You Can Do To Stop Them.
This is a dry run for 2024, so Democrats need to figure out how to counter their domestic terrorism.
by Justin Rosario
Despite what Republicans and the press are trying really hard to sell as reality, next Tuesday does not appear set to deliver a massive red wave. Turnout is reaching 2018 highs and younger voters are making themselves heard. These are very bad signs for Republicans. And when I say “bad,” I really mean it:
That is not to say Democrats have it in the bag. There are a lot of thumbs on the scale for Republicans. But even with the historic headwinds of being the party in power and contemporary headwinds of inflation, artificially inflated gas prices, and a deeply broken press, there is a very real chance Democrats will keep the Senate and possibly the House. Down-ballot elections are not a lock for the GOP, either, as a parade of clowns and extremists have been making it clear that they intend to set the country on fire if elected.
But regardless of the outcome of next Tuesday, a red wave, a red trickle, or a red wipeout, Republicans are going to take a sledgehammer to the process. Election day will be messy by design and what comes next will be a dry run for the different ways the GOP plans to tamper with elections in 2024. All of this will be practice for the brass ring: Stealing the White House.
Here’s how they are going to do it.
Election day “confusion”
Since before the 2020 election, Republicans have been harassing and threatening election workers all across the country. This domestic terrorism campaign (let’s call it what it is), has chased away thousands of volunteers, leaving a number of municipalities either short-handed or staffed by people with a vested interest in corrupting the results of elections.
Ballots will be “lost.” Voters will be turned away improperly (on purpose). Lines will be even longer. Equipment will “break.” All in the name of election security and integrity. Can’t be too careful. Lots of voter fraud, don’t ya know?
It’s just as bad at the state government level. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis made sure to expand voting access for heavily Republican areas of Florida that were ravaged by Hurricane Ian but ignored areas that lean Democratic. In Virginia, 60,000 voters received the wrong polling place information under Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. Half of that just happened to be voters in deep blue Northern Virginia. Surely a coincidence. But it won't just be alleged clerical errors. There will be straight-up terrorism as well.
Outside of polling places, there will be armed and masked vigilantes looking to chase off voters in Democratic-voting locations. One Trump judge already said this was fine which is completely insane. His reasoning? It would violate First Amendment rights of vigilantes.
I’m old enough to remember when the entire right lost its mind for years on end over a single Black man standing in front of a polling place in a Black community, protecting Black voters from being interfered with. This was the worst case of voter intimidation in American history according to right-wing media. He didn’t even have a gun. These days, though, armed white men can station themselves at minority-heavy polling places and it’s all good.
This was a test case for election day. Now that a judge has signed off on it, don’t be surprised if a small army of terrorists with their faces covered and their guns on display show up right outside polling places in key minority districts. This is the kind of terrorism the GOP engaged in for years before the courts put a stop to it in 1981. That consent decree was lifted in 2018 and now the terrorism will be worse than ever.
The fear and manufactured confusion only begin with voting. The real work starts after the ballots are cast.
Counting for dummies
Once upon a time, when America had a population of 500 people and 40 chickens, we used to count ballots by hand. These days, we have cities with populations in the millions, and counting ballots by hand is not just silly, it’s counterproductive. Vote counting is a very slow, incredibly expensive, and extremely error-prone process. Naturally, Republicans are trying to force us to go back to this outdated and easily-abused method. Reuters explains how the GOP is sabotaging the Arizona election:
LOS ANGELES, Oct 25 (Reuters) - A Republican-controlled county in the presidential battleground state of Arizona voted to hand count ballots in next month's midterm congressional elections, a tallying method that has been called for by Republicans who claim voting machines are unreliable.
Despite warnings by election experts that hand counting is less reliable, could delay results and is more expensive than machine tallies, the Cochise County Board of Supervisors in rural southeastern Arizona voted 2-1 on Monday to count ballots in November's elections by hand.
Republicans in Nevada are trying to do the same thing but have been temporarily stopped.
The stated goal is “election integrity” but the actual goal is to turn an orderly process into a protracted shitshow. Not only would hand-counting guarantee no preliminary results on election night (you never see the actual final count on election night), it would take days, if not weeks, to figure out who won in larger counties. And all during that time, Republicans would wage a relentless campaign to convince the public that something sinister was happening. We know this because that is precisely what they’ve done in the past, even with their own recounts.
In other words, they are deliberately slowing down the process of ballot counting explicitly so they can claim the lengthy nature of the process is inherently shady. At the same time, by removing machines with paper trails (Democrats tumbled to that GOP trick after the 2004 election), Republican operatives are free to make as many “mistakes” as they want.
To be clear, these are not “election deniers.” That euphemism makes them sound like the only thing they do is refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election. If that’s all it was, that would be bad enough. But these are people who refuse to accept the results of any election in which a Democrat wins and now they are in positions to affect those results. It’s not cheating if you already “know” the other side has “rigged” the election, right? You’re the good guy, especially if you’re a holy warrior tampering with the results in the name of Jesus. Glory be!
The best cover for election tampering is election chaos and Republicans are poised to wreak havoc across the nation, even in areas Trump won by large margins. You would think they would only focus on Democratic strongholds but the more widespread the confusion, the easier it will be to convince the public that all elections are fraudulent.
That’s where the courts come in.
You get a lawsuit and you get a lawsuit. EVERYONE gets a lawsuit!
After Biden won the 2020 election, one of the various plans to keep Trump in power was to sue everything and everyone with an eye on having the Supreme Court overturn the results. But for some reason, Trump and his insurrectionist cronies didn’t do any of the prep work to actually implement this plan. All of the lawsuits and legal teams were (poorly) slapped together after Trump lost and that produced a string of losses in court that continue to be a punchline today.
Republicans have learned an important lesson from this: Break elections on November 8th and then be ready to sue at 12:01 AM on November 9th. Trump’s main legal insurrectionist counsel, John Eastman, a man who should already be in jail, has been organizing a massive legal assault to start the second the voting stops. Vanity Fair explains the underlying scheme:
This approach — to manufacture a pretext for an election challenge — appears, on its face, to be less aggressive than, say, the armed poll watchers who have been observed in Arizona. But the idea, broadly speaking, is roughly the same: To gum up the electoral process and make it as painful as possible to cast, count, and certify votes. “You’ve got a bunch of poll watchers who are preconditioned to believe there is wrongdoing,” Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of the bipartisan election watchdog group Issue One, told Politico, which was first to report on Eastman’s recent comments. “They’re going to start documenting stuff that is not wrongdoing and they might also intentionally misdocument something just for the sake of being able to hold up or not certify an election, which is terrifying,” Penniman continued, warning that Eastman’s call for partisans to seek out election board positions could produce a “potential nightmare we’ve never had to deal with before” in previous American elections.
With the judiciary littered with Republican judges eager to trample on the rule of law, Eastman will find many sympathetic courtrooms. Does he need to win every spurious lawsuit based on flimsy evidence and manufactured conspiracies? No. He only needs to win enough to hand control of the House and possibly the Senate to Republicans. Bonus if he can put several Secretary of State seats in the GOP’s hands or maybe flip a few legislatures red.
The real goal here, though, is to normalize the process of flipping elections via lawsuit, something that is deeply abnormal in American history. Once it becomes a routine part of the electoral process, Republicans will have permanently corrupted American democracy and there will be no turning back.
This will not be a process that Democrats will be able to use in equal measure. Just as voter ID laws and gerrymandering overwhelmingly benefit Republicans, so too will using a corrupt judiciary to steal elections from Democrats. And where judges refuse to hand power over in red states, Republican legislatures are busy giving themselves the power to simply flip elections anyway based on nothing more than a feeling of election impropriety.
The stretch goal is to completely demolish any and all faith in free and fair elections in America. Once that is accomplished, fascism becomes not only tolerable but desirable for the right. If every election is rigged by the globalist cabal of blood-drinking pedophiles, why not use violence to sieze power and put your enemies to the sword? Again, especially if your holy crusade is blessed by Jesus.
What you can do
If this seems like a lot, it is. If it seems hopeless, that’s the point. But it’s not. If your vote didn’t matter, Republicans would not be sending armed terrorists to scare you away. They would not be trying to tamper with your ballot. They would not be spending millions to overturn elections in court. It’s important to note that without all of the GOP’s ratfucking and election rigging, America would be significantly to the left of most of Europe. As it is, we have to fight tooth and nail just to keep fascism from destroying the planet.
So here’s what to do: Vote early and bring a friend to avoid delays on election day. Vote on election day if you must and bring two friends. Safety in numbers (and more votes). If anyone comes near you that is not an election worker, take pictures of them. If they harass you in any way, record the confrontation and make a scene until they either go away or the police show up. Do not let MAGA terrorists prevent you from voting.
Donate money to the ACLU. Before Trump took office, the ACLU was ready for a bare-knuckle brawl and their work was invaluable. They will be ready once again to fight Republicans when they try to steal elections after next Tuesday.
The most basic thing you can do, however, is not tune out. Republicans have been making politics as ugly and nasty as possible for decades with the explicit intent of forcing the average American to look away. Republicans count on low engagement. It’s easier to rob a bank or steal a car when no one is looking. Right now, they’re practicing how to steal elections. They can only get away with it if we let them.
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California isn't perfect, but here in Long Beach CA, the city and its council make it easy to vote. Plenty of places to do it, and little to no waiting in lines.
Everything Democrats accuse Republicans of doing they themselves are guilty of the only ones stealing elections are the evil Democrats themselves they’re the ones pushing the take down America agenda and partnering with the communist countries they’re nothing but liars thieves and cheaters that cannot be trusted they are the true wolves in sheep‘s clothing.