Trump Deja Vu Season 6: Running-The-Tables To Turn Over The State's Elections Laws

Law-and-Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Free-and-Fair Elections

"In June, 200 prominent American scholars of democracy signed a letter warning that changes to state laws are “transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections”. Another longtime student of American democracy, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said in January that if an election could be overturned by fact-free allegations from the losing side, “Our democracy would enter a death spiral.”

Yet that is just what his party is facilitating.

The real risk to America’s democracy

The Economist | Jul 3rd 2021

Elections

HAVING CAMPAIGNED for the presidency on a promise to rejuvenate democracy around the world, Joe Biden finds himself in a battle to defend it at home. . . For Democrats the threat to elections is about who can cast votes.

They decry changes to laws on identification, postal ballots and so on, which they call “the new Jim Crow". Instead the real threat comes after votes have been cast.

> In Arizona, for example, the legislature wants to limit the independence of the chief elections officer; a state representative introduced a law letting the legislature overturn the results of a presidential election, and then started campaigning to oversee elections herself.

> In Georgia the state legislature can now replace the leadership of county election boards.

> Texas is considering a bill that makes it easier to prosecute election officials. Across the country, the officials who administer elections in states where Republicans hold sway have been attacked for upholding the election results. Many are at risk of being replaced.

These might seem like distant, bureaucratic changes. In fact they raise the chances of a contested election that the courts cannot sort out. They weaken America’s voting system in ways that will outlast the hysteria over the 2020 result.

Trump may or may not run again. By contrast, the changes to state election machinery being made by Republican legislators will be in place in 2024 and beyond for a candidate of either party to exploit. The greater risk is that the chaos following the 2020 election becomes normal.

The silent non-Trump faction of the Republican Party may hope that all this will blow over and that those sounding the alarm about democracy are exaggerating. They may believe they can play a greater role in safeguarding America so long as they stay on good terms with their base.

Yet that logic has proved faulty since Mr Trump’s inauguration in 2016