Republicans Don’t Want You To Vote

Less democracy is good news for Republicans, so they are now engaged in a plot to subvert it.

Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – This week I considered writing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain worms. I also thought about another rant directed at Jon Stewart’s myopic trolling about President Biden’s age. And I’m sure I could say a lot about David Plouffe’s cynical cash-grab podcast with Kellyanne Conway.

Instead of all that, I chose to write about a topic that’s less sexy and will probably get fewer views because of it, but I don’t care. 

We exist in an era when democracy is under threat of extinction, where if any of our near-future national elections go the wrong way, it could mean the rise of authoritarian white nationalism – permanently so. If Donald Trump and his copycats manage to seize enough elected offices, they won’t be giving up those offices when it’s time to go. Worse, the damage they’ll inflict on the rest of us ranges anywhere from horrendous to horrifying.

There are two ways this happens: 1) if too many voters are pumped full of disinformation and upside-down priorities, and 2) if Republicans suppress and disenfranchise voters. This is how we end up with minority rule. After all, playing on-the-level – making sure everyone can vote based on facts and reality – means far more victories for Democrats. Put another way: democracy favors Democrats, or more broadly speaking: Normals.

One of the tricks they’re pulling this time around is a series of lawsuits aimed at making sure votes aren’t counted, and they’re spending a fortune in legal expenses to achieve that anti-democratic goal.

Last week, the Republican National Committee sued Nevada in order to stop counting votes after midnight on Election Night. It’s an obvious and cynical move to help Donald Trump win by blocking any last minute mail-in votes, while stopping the vote counting before the more populated areas of the state are tallied – cities where there are more votes to count and more Democratic voters.

Weirdly, Nevada is the only swing state (so far) where this suit has been filed, but I suspect there will be more. Pennsylvania, probably. ABC News:

The lawsuit comes after Republicans sued to overturn laws permitting the tallying of ballots received after Election Day in Mississippi and North Dakota, and it's the 83rd election-related suit filed by the party six months before Election Day.

There’s already a significant chance Trump will win Mississippi and North Dakota anyway. Why, then, are they spending money on lawsuits in states where Trump will do very well even if votes are still being counted a couple days after the election? At first glance, it’s probably to distract attention from swing state Nevada. In other words: Well, if they’re doing it in red states, too, it must not be nefarious. Other than that, I have no idea. There’s no explaining Trump Logic, and Trump and the RNC are the same entity now.

But the misdirect is working. It barely registered in the political discourse when the news dropped even though it should be framed as a pre-emptive Bush v. Gore situation when the Supreme Court stopped the vote counting at a point when George W. Bush was leading in Florida. Now they want to stop counting votes when Trump has historically been leading in the results – only because many traditionally Democratic votes ostensibly haven’t been counted.

To date, there hasn’t been any widespread voter fraud and the only cases of fraud that have been discovered are cases in which Trump voters committed it. Exactly none of the mail-in vote conspiracy theories have been proved to be true. Yet Republicans are legislating and filing lawsuits based on Trump’s desperation and fragile ego.

The encouraging thing about this is obvious: Trump and the Republicans are panicked. If this election were going as well as some of the public pollsters say, why waste time and money on lawsuits to block votes from being counted? It’s a desperation move. Between Trump’s wishy-washy reaction to the Arizona abortion law and now this series of lawsuits, I get the sense that internal RNC polling is looking nightmarish – far more favorable to Democrats than what we’re seeing in the RealClearPolitics averages.

Never forget the words of Paul Weyrich, the late co-founder of the far-right Heritage Foundation (architects of Project 2025, by the way): “I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Less democracy is good news for Republicans. More democracy is bad news for Republicans. That means the best way to protect democracy is to register as many voters as possible and then to make sure they vote. If that happens, Republicans lose and democracy wins.

Please consider supporting The Banter by getting a Banter Membership. You’ll get access to Members Only articles, our locked archive, The Emergency Meeting Podcast, and Member chat threads. You’ll also be supporting truly independent media. Thank you!

Read the latest on The Banter: