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- Tucker Carlson, who pretty much invented it
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Midterm elections are just a week away, and Republicans are pulling out all the voter intimidation and interference stops.
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An Associated Press survey of major party secretary-of-state candidates in 24 states found wide-ranging skepticism of and opposition to hand-counting ballots, including the majority of Republican candidates. Hand-counting is a laborious and highly error-prone process that has gained favor among Big Lie-believing Republicans. Love this shared nightmare we’re living in! Nevertheless, MAGA Republican constituents and their pandering GOP leaders are seeking to expand or require hand-counting of ballots thanks to the lies of disgraced former president Donald Trump and his acolytes. But there is no ambiguity: study after study has found that the error rate for hand counts is higher than the error rate for machine-ballot counters. In that way, it’s no surprise that Arizona’s gubernatorial and secretary-of-state nominees Kari Lake and Mark Finchem filed a lawsuit seeking to outlaw the use of any machine to record or tabulate votes. The case was dismissed by a judge who then leveled sanctions against them. Nice.
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Speaking of Arizona, the Justice Department stepped in to an ongoing election lawsuit in the state yesterday, supporting a claim by the League of Women Voters of Arizona that monitoring ballot drop boxes can amount to illegal voter intimidation. The department said such “vigilante ballot security measures” including filming voters at drop boxes most likely violates the federal Voting Rights Act. DOJ filed a “statement of interest” in the case stating, “When private citizens form ‘ballot security forces’ and attempt to take over the State’s legitimate role of overseeing and policing elections, the risk of voter intimidation—and violating federal law—is significant.”
- Of course, Republican interference in how elections are administered and tallied will be immensely consequential in swing states, but their efforts have been redoubled in not-yet-purple states as well. The latest such battle is in Harris County, TX, the largest jurisdiction in the state. State and local Republicans there are deploying monitors to oversee handling of ballots in this enormous blue jurisdiction. Local Dem officials rightly characterized this move as one meant to intimidate voters and in response asked the Justice Department to send federal observers. Texas’s Republican Secretary of State John Scott announced plans last month to send monitors to conduct “randomized checks” and observe handling and counting of ballots in Harris County. Last week, Attorney General/indicted felon Ken Paxton (R-TX) announced the formation of a statewide “2022 General Election Integrity Team” encouraging Texas to submit “information about alleged violations of the Texas Election Code.” What could possibly go right?
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Those volunteering to police poll sites and stamp out “violations” are the same kinds of extremists who have been welcomed with open arms in the modern GOP.
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There has been a fair amount of coverage about the Republican Party’s coordinated efforts to staff every polling location with MAGA loyalists and election deniers, and now that we’re in the last week before election day, it’s clear just how well that effort has worked for them. In Miami-Dade County, FL, two former members of the far-right white nationalist group the Proud Boys have qualified to serve as poll workers and will be interacting with voters on election day. A third former member in the area applied, but wouldn’t you know, he’s been charged with several felonies for participating in the January 6 insurrection, and currently wears an ankle monitor. Two out of three ain’t bad!
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Nearly three-quarters of Republican voters say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about voter fraud according to a Fox News poll (which, obviously take that with a hefty grain of salt). Independents and even some Democrats are not immune to those fears as well. But here’s the thing: according to every available metric, election fraud is and remains rare in the United States. Almost no elections in the past 50 years have been flipped because of documented voter fraud, with a few exceedingly uncommon instances at the local level. Of the 25 million votes cast in the 2020 election, just 475 were flagged as potentially fraudulent. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, about 90 percent of Americans vote on paper ballots, and elections are run by over 8,000 local governments across the country, not by any centralized system. With 8,000 ways of doing business in elections, it would be near impossible to “steal” a federal election. Not that Republicans won’t try, of course, but even they will have a hard time.
Win or lose, there will be no rest for Dems after this election with a Republican Party that increasingly caters to conspiracy theorists and is on a stop-at-nothing quest to manipulate every election result in their favor.
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Don’t let Election Day sneak up on you this year: There are so many important things on your ballot, and you don’t want to open your ballot and get caught off guard. Vote Save America’s Ballot Ready Tool is here to help you figure out the who, what, when, and where of voting in 2022. At votesaveamerica.com/beavoter you can find out what you’re voting on, check out research to decide how you want to vote, and Build Your Own Ballot to create a handy voting cheat sheet before you head to the polls! Our guide will tell you what a “yes” or “no” vote actually means so you don’t have to wade through confusing legal jargon once you get your ballot. Once you’ve Built Your Own Ballot, you can find out when and where you can vote and make a plan right in the tool!
November 8, Election Day, is your last chance to vote, and if you can, vote before then in case anything unexpected happens. With just a couple weeks to go, now is the time to get Ballot Ready. Go to votesaveamerica.com/beavoter to get started.
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An anonymous Twitter account called “LaxaltStan” was suddenly removed from the website last Thursday. The user had emphasized that the account was “NOT AFFILIATED” with Nevada GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt, but it appears that might not be true. The account in question devoted the majority of its content to bigoted remarks about Jews, women, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized groups. The user behind the account identified himself (before the account was deleted) as Michael Pecjak, a Nevada GOP activist who previously staffed a congressional campaign in the state. Filings show that Pecjak received more than $6,500 from the Lexalt campaign, with all payments except one listed as “salary.” Whoopsie! The “LaxaltStan” account in recent weeks compared abortion to the Holocaust, defended prominent Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes (pick a lane, dude), made statements like “Trans children aren’t real,” and endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who once suggested that California wildfires were caused by a space laser controlled by a Jewish banking family. He also described believing in the QAnon conspiracy theory as the “moderate position.” Wow! Busy guy! This is the most recent in a disturbing number of connections between GOP candidates and neo-Nazi extremists. Now out of terrifying necessity, Jewish leaders are calling on GOP candidates and leadership to denounce antisemitic remarks made by Republican candidates’ colleagues and/or supporters.
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We have a bit of a problem. The Republican media machine has run away with and completely rewritten the story of right-wing conspiracy theorist David DePape’s nearly fatal attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It doesn’t seem to matter that DePape confessed to police that he specifically broke in to target the speaker. All of the usual Republican delinquents with large platforms wasted no time spreading lies (that Paul Pelosi was drunk at the time of the attack, that he let his attacker in the house, that he had a personal relationship with the attacker prior to the incident, etc.), and their works of utter fiction received a huge boost from billionaire Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, one of the leading social media platforms in the world. (Disgraced former president Trump himself is now on the case, too.) As online threats and the rapid spread of conspiracy theories turn into real-world violence, Musk seems to be just as eager as Trump to accelerate the process. Relatedly, Twitter’s Chief Consumer Officer and Chief of People and Diversity both left the company today.
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