Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias reminds all of us that there is a way to fight back against these MAGA extremist election deniers that Republicans have installed across the country that are hoping to steal the presidential election for Trump.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s hair has been on fire about this, almost to the point where it’s been suppressive with the doom and gloom that there’s nothing Democrats can do about Republicans and Trump once again trying to cheat.
It’s good that she’s calling attention to what they’re trying to do, but she seems to keep ignoring one point that Elias drove home during the latter portion of his interview with her this Monday.
The people who have tried this nonsense did end up getting sued by Elias, and he won, and then they subsequently got indicted for their actions.
Elias has written a couple of really great posts at his blog on what’s going on with the Republicans’ plans to refuse to certify the presidential election. Here’s some of what he wrote about last Thursday: The Fight To Certify Elections Has Already Begun :
Earlier this week, the Rolling Stone published a deep dive investigation into the pro-Trump election deniers who may refuse to certify accurate election results at the county level.
In the article, I voiced my concern for this possibility, predicting that “we are going to see mass refusals to certify the elections” because Republicans are “counting on the fact that if they don’t certify in several small counties, you cannot certify these statewide results.”
After Rachel Maddow featured the article on MSNBC, my concern quickly reached far and wide, with thousands of people taking to social media and flooding Democracy Docket’s inbox with questions about how this could happen and what can be done to prevent this seemingly new threat.
Except, this isn’t a new threat. I have been fighting against it in court for years.
Elias went onto discuss the recent court battles they’ve fought and won, and why it will be worse this year.
But it’s worse this election than previous ones because this year, the GOP is far more organized. They might have tried to subvert the results in a handful of places in 2020 and 2022, but this year, they will try to subvert them all, setting the stage now for what’s to come in November.
With fewer than 100 days until the election, Republicans are building an election subversion war machine.
They have sacrificed traditional get out the vote activity to fund and recruit for their massive voter suppression program. They have a constellation of well-funded legal groups supplanting these efforts with unlimited money and grassroots volunteers. They are sending their lawyers into courthouses around the country to lay the groundwork for their anti-democratic plans.
So what are pro-democracy advocates like me supposed to do about it? Already, we’re fighting back. We’re in court to prevent Republicans from changing the rules so they can cheat later on. The excitement generated by Democratic candidates from top to bottom is aiding in our own volunteer efforts. And, there are dozens of election officials of both parties who take pride in their work and want a free and fair election.
I am glad that people have awoken to the genuine threat posed by election deniers. It is an opportunity for people to remember to check their voter registration status and make a plan to vote. For people with the time, it may motivate them to volunteer as a poll worker or help a local campaign.
As Maddow and Elias also discussed, Trump gave a shout out, by name, to the three Georgia State Election Board officials he’s hoping will help him steal the election in 2024.
Elias in a subsequent article addressed what should be done about that threat as well.
Rolling Stone recently reported that there are more than 70 election deniers in office in key swing states. After four years of infiltration, the actual number is almost certainly in the hundreds if not thousands.
The nonpartisan desire to lift up election officials obscures a critical characteristic of these election deniers. While not all Republicans are election deniers, all election deniers are Republicans. And many Republican election officials operate along on an uncomfortable continuum between voter suppression and outright election subversion.
As we have seen in Georgia, this difference is smaller than many people want to believe, and it is converging as we approach November. While Kemp signed Joe Biden’s election certificate in 2020, he later admitted that part of what motivated his support for Georgia’s 2021 voter suppression law was the frustration he felt that Biden and other Democrats had won.
Though Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) refused to “find” 11,780 votes in 2020, he has championed legislation to allow for mass voter challenges — a tactic increasingly used by the right-wing to disenfranchise citizens. In that vein, he recently unveiled a website that allows the submission of names to be removed from the voting rolls via the internet.
The real heroes of democracy are the voters. The people who overcome the obstacles Republicans put in their way to register to vote. The citizens who wait in long lines at polling places to cast their ballots. The voters who navigate the series of arbitrary objections to ensure their votes count.
The pro-voting, pro-democracy movement needs to spend the months ahead centering on their needs and protecting their rights. Where election officials are pro-voter, we need to support them. Where they are not, they deserve only our scorn and condemnation.
Elias also added this during his discussion with Maddow:
ELIAS: We all play a role. First of all, thank you for calling this out. Lawyers, we go to court but making this public is a big part of the battle, and I’d ask every person listening to this to speak out on this, you know, don’t stay silent. You all have a town square. You don’t all have millions of viewers like Rachel Maddow, but each and every one of you can post on social media. You can attend these canvas board meetings. You can file comments in Georgia before the state election board. In your own counties, you can know who is on these boards and attend their meetings. Every citizen has a role to play here. If we all do that, I am confident we will defeat these efforts and Kamala Harris will be sworn in as the next president of the United States.
We all owe Elias a huge amount of thanks for being out there working every single day helping to preserve what’s left of our democracy. He’s going to need all the help he can get from all of us to prevent these anti-democracy MAGAs from trying to prevent our votes from being counted.
