Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[LFC]

DeSatanist lied, crammed, and quite possibly broke the law to ensure election theft in Florida.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was incensed. Late last year, the state’s Republican legislature had drawn congressional maps that largely kept districts intact, leaving the GOP with only a modest electoral advantage.

DeSantis threw out the legislature’s work and redrew Florida’s congressional districts, making them far more favorable to Republicans. The plan was so aggressive that the Republican-controlled legislature balked and fought DeSantis for months. The governor overruled lawmakers and pushed his map through.

DeSantis’ office has publicly stressed that partisan considerations played no role and that partisan operatives were not involved in the new map.

A ProPublica examination of how that map was drawn — and who helped decide its new boundaries — reveals a much different origin story. The new details show that the governor’s office appears to have misled the public and the state legislature and may also have violated Florida law.

DeSantis aides worked behind the scenes with an attorney who serves as the national GOP’s top redistricting lawyer and other consultants tied to the national party apparatus, according to records and interviews.

[snip]

Analysts predict that DeSantis’ map will give the GOP four more members of Congress from Florida, the largest gain by either party in any state. If the forecasts hold, Republicans will win 20 of Florida’s 28 seats in the upcoming midterms — meaning that Republicans would control more than 70% of the House delegation in a state where Trump won just over half of the vote.

The reverberations of DeSantis’ effort could go beyond Florida in another way. His erasure of Lawson’s seat broke long-held norms and invited racial discrimination lawsuits, experts said. Six political scientists and law professors who study voting rights told ProPublica it’s the first instance they’re aware of where a state so thoroughly dismantled a Black-dominated district. If the governor prevails against suits challenging his map, he will have forged a path for Republicans all over the country to take aim at Black-held districts.

“To the extent that this is successful, it’s going to be replicated in other states. There’s no question,” said Michael Latner, a political science professor at California Polytechnic State University who studies redistricting. “The repercussions are so broad that it’s kind of terrifying.”

There are just two more election cycles, this one and 2024, that would allow voters to prevent America from completely falling apart into a failed democracy ruled by a fascist Republican Party. I have zero faith it will happen. The number of people who seem to actually care is depressing. TPM covers the issues.

As the U.S. moves closer to the 2022 midterm elections, a sizable number of Americans express a lack of confidence in the accuracy of the vote count.

That distrust is built largely on the widespread – and false – assertion that Donald Trump was re-elected in the 2020 presidential election, and that Joe Biden’s win was based on fraud. Despite the 2020 election being the most secure in American history, and the courts and U.S. Department of Justice uncovering no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome, consistently about 70% of Republican voters suspect election fraud, and overall mistrust in the neutrality of the election process remains high.

In some states, this has prompted the passage of voting restrictions and legislation aimed at interfering with the administration of elections. Legislation passed in various states has changed rules on how voters cast ballots, reduced the role of state chief election officials and shifted some aspects of election administration to partisan bodies.

As a scholar of public governance and a former local government official, I believe that there’s trouble ahead for the bedrock institution of U.S. democracy: elections. U.S. elections long relied on the good faith of the public, the nonpartisan behavior of election officials, as well as a two-party system of political checks and balances to ensure the legitimacy of results. Now, the public’s mistrust of elections is combining with changes to election law and a major voter shift away from party affiliation to endanger the integrity of those elections.

When the whining starts, and it will, my only question will be if they consistently voted Democrat from 2000 on when all of this was getting rolling. If not then they are invited to sit back and relax with a big, steaming mug of STFU.

[LFC]

This could easily have gone in the fascism thread. Republicans are passing laws and creating rules that will punish poll workers, VOLUNTEER poll workers, for good faith mistakes. They are clearly trying to drive all normal people out of the process of running elections and then they won't prosecute the crazies who jump in no matter what they do. Goose stepping to victory!

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, extremist candidates, state legislatures and disgruntled Trump supporters have come together to attack election workers. Among the fruits of their labor are a collection of new laws across the country that impose strict new penalties on election workers — in some cases for minor mistakes, or for carrying out their work in the way they have in past elections.

At least six laws in five states — Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma — create new penalties for election workers, according to a Brennan Center for Justice analysis outlining new voting restrictions that have been enacted during this year’s legislative session.

The penalties for these new rules aren’t light, either: At least half of them threaten election workers with felony convictions.

Two such laws were passed in Arizona, a state that has become ground-zero for attacks on election administration: H.B. 2237 prohibits same-day voting registration while H.B. 2492 requires that election officials ensure that voters provide “satisfactory evidence of citizenship” to cast their ballot.

Arizona’s laws both threaten Class 6 felonies, which can result in a prison sentence of up to 5 or 6 years.

The laws “criminalize basic human error,” said Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor to the Elections program at the Democracy Fund and a former Arizona elections administrator.

“In some states, if you mail out information that turns out to be incorrect or have a proofing or transcription error, those would then be criminal activities,” she told TPM.

The charges, ironically, could also imperil an election worker’s right to vote: While Arizona does automatically restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated citizens upon release, they only regain that right once they’ve completed their prison sentence or probation.

“By turning something that might be an innocent mistake or disagreement about how to interpret the law into a criminal act,” Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel to the Brennan Center’s Democracy program, told TPM, “it increases the temperature and makes election officials concerned that they’re going to get blamed and threatened for things that people don’t like.”

“Election officials, of course, always strive for 100% accuracy and correctness,” Patrick said, “but elections are conducted by people and people can make mistakes.”

[LFC]

Kari Lake is pulling a Trump. So are many other Republican candidates. There are only two possible outcomes to the election: they win or the election was fraudulent. 2020 really was just a dry run.

“I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” Arizona Republican Kari Lake said this weekend when repeatedly asked whether she’d accept the results of her election if she lost.

In a CNN interview Sunday, the Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate evaded multiple questions about whether she’d accept the results or not.

“If you lose, will you accept that?” host Dana Bash followed up with Lake.

“I’m going to win the election and accept that result,” Lake repeated.

It was an exchange that highlighted a predictable yet alarming reality: Those same candidates who have denied the outcome of the 2020 presidential election could apply the same rhetoric to their own races in 2022.

Lake isn’t alone in laying her cards on the table early. Last month, the Washington Post asked candidates in 19 high-profile statehouse races whether they’d accept the results of their elections if they lost. All 19 of the Democratic candidates said yes; only 7 of the Republicans answered in the affirmative. 12 others either said no or refused to answer—including Kari Lake.

Among those who did not respond or would not say whether they’d accept the results were Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Texas’s gubernatorial incumbent Greg Abbott, Michigan’s gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, Wisconsin’s Sen. Ron Johnson and Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida.

Lake, in particular, is running to represent a state that has become a hub for the Big Lie. It has three election deniers on the ballot for state-wide office: Lake, secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, and Senate candidate Blake Masters, who also didn’t clarify whether he’d accept his loss.

[LFC]

Reality doesn't matter to Trump, his minions, or his MAGAts. And they don't mind swearing to their lies under oath because it seems like nothing ever happens to them. Besides, the next Republican president will just pardon them if they've been convicted. They really are a completely fascist, post-truth party. Welcome to the death of American democracy.

President Trump knew that data supposedly showing voter fraud in the 2020 election was false, but signed a court document attesting to it regardless, a federal judge said on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge David Carter for the Central District of California found that Trump likely lied to a Georgia federal court in December 2020, when he claimed that Fulton County had counted the votes of the dead, convicted felons, and unregistered voters.

Trump had already filed a lawsuit making the claims in Georgia state court.

But when the former President’s legal team began to consider moving the state court case to federal court, Trump attorney John Eastman realized that the data was flawed, Carter found.

“Although the President signed a verification for [the state court filing] back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate,” Eastman wrote in a Dec. 5, 2020 email cited by Carter. “For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate.”

Trump and his lawyers ended up filing the federal lawsuit with the faulty information anyway, Carter said. The judge remarked that the federal lawsuit was filed “without rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise changing” the incorrect data.

Eastman has argued that he should not have to turn over many of his records to the committee due to attorney-client privilege protections.

Carter has since found that while some of the materials are protected by attorney-client privilege, the actions of Eastman and his client, Trump, in the run-up to January 6 ran afoul of the law on two fronts: trying to disrupt congressional proceedings on January 6, and engaging in a conspiracy to defraud.

[LFC]

A bunch of ex-Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s emails were leaked. I put this here because it reveals just how certain Republicans were truly bought into the idea of a coup to keep Trump in office.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) sought to recruit Loeffler to not only join in on the plan for “how to vote on the electoral college on Jan 6th” but also attempted to get Loeffler to join the now-infamous meeting at the White House on December 21. Loeffler’s aides advised her to tell Greene that she would be with Ivanka Trump all day and couldn’t attend. “Everything is on table with regard to Jan 6!” she replied to Greene.

Some text exchanges show Loeffler expressing some uncertainty with her staff about joining efforts to object to the election results. She reportedly didn’t respond to a text from Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) on December 17 asking if she planned to join the effort. She also rebuffed texts from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) around the same time asking her to sign on to a statement from Senate Republicans about not certifying the election and calling for an audit. Loeffler of course did end up announcing at an 11th-hour rally with Trump that she was going to vote to decertify.

There were also some frantic messages exchanged with her staff on Jan. 6, expressing concern about the violence as it was unfolding and questioning whether she should stick to her plan to not certify President Biden’s victory. She ultimately was convinced by a staffer to drop the plan and voted to certify.

[LFC]

Little Lindsey is desperate to avoid having to testify under oath about his role in the attempted Republican coup.

Appeals Court Orders Graham To Testify In Georgia DA’s Probe

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Thursday lost his bid in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to dodge Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ subpoena seeking his testimony in her Trump election meddling investigation.

• More specifically, Graham will have to testify in front of a grand jury on his conversations with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) about the 2020 election results, including the one in which he allegedly asked Raffensperger about throwing away mail-in ballots wholesale.

• Graham’s almost certainly going to appeal the order, which was issued by a three-judge panel on the court. The Republican senator can bring it to either the full appeals court or the Supreme Court.

• Former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and ex-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) have testified in front of the grand jury in Willis’ probe, according to a new CNN report. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published texts from Loeffler’s phone earlier this week revealing details of the then-senator’s decision-making as MAGA World tried to pressure her into supporting Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results.

[LFC]

It's sad when you have to ask the DOJ to defend your elections against your own state. Texass state gov't is already all in on The Big Lie where all the fraud is, conveniently, in the areas that tend to vote blue.

Three top officials in Texas’ most populous county have asked the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to send federal monitors to Harris County for the midterm elections to oversee what they view as an effort by Republican state officials to “chill voters’ trust in the election process” and “intimidate” election workers.

Earlier this week, the director of the Forensic Audit Division of the Texas secretary of state’s office sent a letter to Harris County election officials informing them that it would be sending “a contingent of inspectors” to observe the “central count” next week, when early voting in Texas is slated to begin. The letter said the inspectors would “perform randomized checks on election records” and that the state attorney general’s office will also “dispatch a task force … to immediately respond to any legal issues identified by secretary of state, inspectors, poll watchers, or voters.”

The teams are necessary, the secretary of state’s office said, because of their findings in an ongoing “audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Harris County, which includes Houston.

[AnBr]

Man arrested by DeSantis’s election police has his case dismissed

[goldenvalley]

Oct 23, 2022 11:12:20 GMT AnBr said:

Man arrested by DeSantis’s election police has his case dismissed

Eh it was dismissed because dismissed the statewide prosecutor didn’t have jurisdiction.  That's not exactly a resounding rejection of the law the guy was charged under.  I see a big waste of state resources here though. In the wake of the hurricane some sane Floridians are going to say why is money being spent on prosecutions like this?  Or maybe they'll just complain that the evil federal government should be sending more FEMA money so the governor can go on creating a record upon which to run for president.

[LFC]

Little Linsdey is in complete panic over having to testify about his role in Trump's attempted coup. Now he's trying to hide behind mommy's skirt the robes of right-wing partisan hack SCOTUS.

Graham Turns To SCOTUS For Rescue

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) filed a motion on Friday asking the Supreme Court to block the Fulton County district attorney’s subpoena for his testimony in her Trump election interference probe.

• This was his next move after a panel of judges on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him to testify the day before.

• Graham’s running out of options to avoid testifying on his damning alleged conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) about throwing out ballots in the 2020 election.

[jackd]

The sad thing is that we can't trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing.

[LFC]

Nevada's election is, quite intentionally, lining up to be a complete shit-show.

A rather amazing column by the Post’s Dana Milbank about the situation in Nevada outside of Las Vegas. All the Big Lie stuff you’d imagine. But just a complete gutting of the officials who’ve administered elections for decades and replacing them with conspiracy theorists who at best simply have no experience administering elections. In other words, chaos by design if not always strictly by intention which further makes elections into a circus and gives GOP officials their opening to simply step in and declare winners because the elections have been too chaotic.

It's just part of a broad Republican fascist trend that ensures that, if given any amount of control, fair elections are impossible. On top of that they screech non-stop as they spew election lies. They are tearing down our entire electoral system in both word and deed.

The state officials who administer fair, accessible and secure elections have historically operated quietly without garnering much public attention. Elections happen, votes are counted, the winners are declared and democracy moves on.

But since 2020, secretaries of state and other state officials who oversee elections have come under increasing scrutiny and been exposed to increasing abuse.

Studies have shown both state Democratic and Republican chief election officials oversee elections with similar partisan outcomes, turnout rates and administrative policies. And despite the fact that most of these officers are selected through explicitly partisan processes, the majority of them behaved in a nonpartisan manner to ensure fair and secure elections.

But given the increasingly polarized and hostile political environment in the U.S., is the country about to experience an Election Day filled with conflict, contested election results and chief election officials who are no longer trusted?

Overall mistrust in the neutrality of the election process is high, and voters are losing trust in U.S. elections. Claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent have been repeatedly disproved through exhaustive audits, recounts, reports and reviews. Yet despite this fact, consistently about 70% of Republican voters suspect election fraud.

This has led some states to alter the role of the chief election official. Some states have passed legislation that has shifted aspects of election administration to partisan bodies such as state legislatures or partisan-dominated election boards. When responsibility for an aspect of an election is changed in this way, it can intensify partisan gamesmanship, which in turn further erodes public trust.

Further affecting their reputation for neutrality, from 2000 to 2020 almost 30% of state chief election officers publicly endorsed a candidate running in a race under their supervision.

Additionally, in the upcoming 2022 midterms, chief election officer candidates in three swing states – Arizona, Michigan and Nevada – are running as election deniers.

Their platforms include eliminating mail voting, ballot drop boxes and even the use of electronic voting machines while giving power to partisan election observers and expanding their roles. Voting by mail makes voting more accessible to large groups of individuals and reduces the cost of elections. Eliminating the practice can make it harder for certain groups of people to vote. Expanding the role of partisan election observers can lead to voting intimidation.

Secretaries of state or chief election officers can’t single-handedly change an election’s results, but they can certainly undermine this system on a number of fronts.

They can refuse to certify the results of an election, triggering involvement of the governor or courts. They can also allow multiple audits by internal and external entities of election results and foster overall distrust in the election process and its outcomes by making public comments about the election’s results that signal the public shouldn’t trust the outcome of the election.

Chief election officers are also being confronted with extreme partisan groups seeking to disrupt and exploit the system of election administration before, during and after election. This includes endless post-election challenges to the veracity of election results.

During elections, problems can be expected as extreme partisan groups have moved to assign supporters, poll workers and observers to disrupt voting centers, tamper with equipment or call voting procedures into question, as Trump loyalist Steve Bannon has encouraged. And even before Election Day, chief election officials are seeing a coordinated campaign of requests for 2020 voting records, in some cases paralyzing preparations for the midterm election season.

The changing nature, role and perception of state chief election officials is damaging their ability to administer fair elections. The end result: Democracy is weakened in the U.S.

"Weakened?" Dude, it will be destroyed in the next two election cycles.

[goldenvalley]

I can't figure out if things like what's happening in Nevada is part of a nationwide strategy by whatever is left of the RNC or is a loosely coordinated strategy by a bunch of fringe organizations, sort of like what the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and others tried to do with 1/6.  Disruption but with each group doing it's own thing too.

Seems like here in California the places where the most complaints about voter fraud are in rural or largely rural counties that vote heavily Republican anyway, where Trump won the popular vote.  That looks more loose coalition of fringe than organized to me and heavily extreme libertarian, perhaps a rejection of Republican Party too. The fringe is emboldened with lots of attention received now, the feeling that Trump is on their side, and weapons.

[LFC]

Oct 24, 2022 18:12:50 GMT goldenvalley said:

I can't figure out if things like what's happening in Nevada is part of a nationwide strategy by whatever is left of the RNC or is a loosely coordinated strategy by a bunch of fringe organizations, sort of like what the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and others tried to do with 1/6.  Disruption but with each group doing it's own thing too.

Seems like here in California the places where the most complaints about voter fraud are in rural or largely rural counties that vote heavily Republican anyway, where Trump won the popular vote.  That looks more loose coalition of fringe than organized to me and heavily extreme libertarian, perhaps a rejection of Republican Party too. The fringe is emboldened with lots of attention received now, the feeling that Trump is on their side, and weapons.

From what I've read there are groups that are providing the necessary support and talking points to these local groups. It isn't organic as they've found statements / justifications made across groups that are identical. This is most definitely planned.

[LFC]

Oct 24, 2022 14:21:47 GMT LFC said:

Little Linsdey is in complete panic over having to testify about his role in Trump's attempted coup. Now he's trying to hide behind mommy's skirt the robes of right-wing partisan hack SCOTUS.

And it worked! Half of DC's most corrupt political power couple came to his rescue. They aren't even trying to look legitimate anymore. They pure "we can so we will."

Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday agreed to temporarily freeze a lower court order requiring the testimony of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in front of an Atlanta-area special grand jury that is investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state.

Thomas acted alone because he has jurisdiction of the lower court that issued the original order.

Thomas’ move is an administrative stay that was most likely issued Monday to give the Supreme Court justices more time to consider the dispute.

The court has asked for a response from the Georgia investigators by Thursday.

[LFC]

MAGAts ALWAYS defend their side, no matter what.

[LFC]

The only reason these Republicans folded on their outright refusal to obey the state's election laws is that it's New York and they knew that without a fascist government to back them they'd go to f***ing jail.

On Friday, Oct. 28, just twenty four hours after the lawsuit was filed, the Republican commissioner in Albany County agreed to process and count absentee ballots as required by state law, pending any further rulings on the legality of Senate Bill 1027-A.

[LFC]

The law means nothing to the supposed party of law and order.

[LFC]

Predicted after the last election. This is a litigious version of flooding the zone with shit. Remember when Republicans complained about frivolous lawsuits? Yeah, good times.

The run-up to Election Day is often a contentious time.

In recent years, it has also become a litigious time — parties increasingly turn to courts to resolve disputes about the rules for voting.

This year, our research shows a significant uptick of those lawsuits occurring in the state court system and challenging every step of the election process — from whether candidates or ballot initiatives qualify to appear on the ballot, to what address information must be completed in order to accept mailed ballots. It also extends to specific procedures for county clerks or poll watchers as voting occurs.

This surge in state litigation yields a mixed picture. As scholars of state courts and constitutions, we have studied the crucial role of state courts in safeguarding elections and democracy.

State courts have made important rulings — for example, protecting voting and rejecting extreme partisan gerrymandering — rooted in state constitutions’ distinctive democracy provisions.

But the current volume of state election litigation also has the potential to derail the safeguards that state courts can provide. When every aspect of an election becomes a lawsuit, negative effects may follow — including destabilizing elections, overwhelming already strained courts and imposing significant costs on states.

Lots of details follow.

[LFC]

This is democracy dying. It's too long to excerpt much but a national organization is training Republicans to attack election officials with lies in an effort to crush fair elections, even in regions that voted highly, but not 100%, Trump. I don't see how American democracy survives this effort unless people get out and vote NOW. I'm not convinced they will. In 2024 it will be too late. Here's one snippet.

Unbeknownst to Huff, a national network of election deniers had been making inroads in Surry County, on the fringe of Appalachia. In early 2022, several members of the Surry County GOP had attended a training, put on by North Carolina Audit Force, which describes itself as a group that forms grassroots coalitions to “reveal election irregularities.” There, they were taught to “canvass” for election fraud by door-knocking to check for inaccuracies in public records, such as if a different person lived at an address than was listed on voter rolls. Discrepancies, canvassers claim, can indicate fraud — though experts say that canvassers often misinterpret normal imperfections in difficult-to-maintain voter lists, such as someone failing to update their address when moving. By early March, canvassers were crisscrossing Surry County, following “walk books” put together by data analysts associated with North Carolina Audit Force, who mapped routes for efficiency.

[goldenvalley]

Oct 31, 2022 18:44:24 GMT LFC said:

This is democracy dying. It's too long to excerpt much but a national organization is training Republicans to attack election officials with lies in an effort to crush fair elections, even in regions that voted highly, but not 100%, Trump. I don't see how American democracy survives this effort unless people get out and vote NOW. I'm not convinced they will. In 2024 it will be too late. Here's one snippet.

Unbeknownst to Huff, a national network of election deniers had been making inroads in Surry County, on the fringe of Appalachia. In early 2022, several members of the Surry County GOP had attended a training, put on by North Carolina Audit Force, which describes itself as a group that forms grassroots coalitions to “reveal election irregularities.” There, they were taught to “canvass” for election fraud by door-knocking to check for inaccuracies in public records, such as if a different person lived at an address than was listed on voter rolls. Discrepancies, canvassers claim, can indicate fraud — though experts say that canvassers often misinterpret normal imperfections in difficult-to-maintain voter lists, such as someone failing to update their address when moving. By early March, canvassers were crisscrossing Surry County, following “walk books” put together by data analysts associated with North Carolina Audit Force, who mapped routes for efficiency.

WaPo has an article about a county in Georgia in which the County Counsel is dealing with demands to see the ballots cast in 2020 in a county that went for Trump.  Their guy won in that county, why isn't that good enough for them in light of the total absence of any fraud?  

[LFC]

Wisconsin Republicans are completely open about their fascism.

[LFC]

A little more on the Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate that flat out admitted that he would kill democracy in the state. Welcome to the new normal.

Where Things Stand: Wisconsin GOP Guv Candidate Is Saying The Quiet Part Very Loud And Clear

The Republican challenging Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers next week has openly fessed up to his plan to target elections administration in the purple state in a way that ensures Republicans permanently control it.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels made the remarks on Monday during a campaign stop and they caught fire on Twitter today.

“Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” Michels said.

In a longer recording of the remarks obtained by The Washington Post, Michels reportedly did not get into the specifics of what exactly he meant from a policy perspective. But he’s flirted with Trump’s Big Lie beliefs in the past, and Wisconsin is the poster child for aggressive gerrymandering and other ratfuckery. It’s not hard to imagine the range of things he might be nodding at policy-wise.

The Republican candidate and executive of a construction company — who won his primary after a Trump endorsement — has previously indicated an interest in decertifying the 2020 election results in Wisconsin if he were to win the election, a legal impossibility. He also has vowed to make changes to the state’s bipartisan election commission, but has not floated anything specific.

He has previously dodged questions about whether he would certify the 2024 results, but has vowed to sign into law a handful of voter suppression bills that passed the Wisconsin state legislature but that Evers vetoed in 2021. The bills were part of a package of new election laws that state Republicans tried to push after Trump’s 2020 loss — all part of the GOP’s broader embrace of the Big Lie and election denialism.

Per Wisconsin Public Radio, some of the bills that Evers vetoed last year centered on restrictions meant to suppress voter turnout, like expanding voter ID laws and limiting ballot box drop off locations, among many other things. WPR has a good breakdown here.

[LFC]

The long simmering GOP plan of suing over virtually every lost election just to create chaos is about to come to fruition. Welcome to fascist hell, Republican style.

When pestered with questions about how and why they would gather conservative activists, ask them to masquerade as the real electors in the 2020 election, waiting in the wings to be called forth, acolytes of the former President constantly return to one argument: They didn’t know that what creating fake elector slates was wrong.

In December 2020, they were in a situation of pure legal chaos, they’ll explain. Any measure that they took to instill order — including creating slates of alternate, bogus, electors — was not only legal, but prudent.

Underlying the argument is the idea that the legal chaos in the aftermath of an election can justify virtually any measure, or any claim.

But it neatly sidesteps the fact that Trump’s allies sought to exploit every legal avenue, from the realistic to the frivolous to the entirely absurd, in order to create and then maximize that chaos.

That same approach is now beginning to rear its head for the 2022 midterms, as some of the same characters who tried — and failed — to subvert the 2020 presidential election sow chaos again, this time hoping for more favorable results.

An odd feature of this is it’s not clear to whose benefit the chaos will redound. Exhortations by conservative commentators and operatives to mistrust — and challenge — results that may ultimately favor Republicans lack a clear partisan point.

But they go towards creating a yawning void into which opportunists can pursue claims that, otherwise, appear ridiculous.

In 2020, laying the groundwork for this kind of chaos relied heavily on filing numerous lawsuits to keep the sense of controversy alive.

[LFC]

Finally, a bit of sanity in Arizona.

Judge Reins In Vigilante Group’s Actions At Arizona Drop Boxes
A federal judge on Tuesday prohibited Clean Elections USA, a right-wing group that’s been monitoring ballot drop boxes in Arizona, from engaging in some of the surveillance methods that’ve led to voter intimidation and harassment.

• Both sides stipulated to the temporary restraining order, though it appeared to go farther than what had been discussed earlier in the day in open court.

• The agreed-to order prohibits the group from: taking photos/videos of people at the drop boxes, spreading information about the voters online, and lying on social media or in interviews about Arizona’s laws on early voting.

• The judge, Michael Liburdi, had previously allowed Clean Elections USA to keep monitoring the drop boxes last week in a different lawsuit by the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Voto Latino. Liburdi said on Tuesday that the evidence provided in this suit, which was brought by the League of Women Voters, was more compelling.