Defending Democracy
The GOP’s Three-Part Plan to Subvert Elections
Republicans have been laying the groundwork to subvert elections this fall. It’s all a part of their three-part strategy to undermine free and fair elections and seize power for themselves. Marc Elias and Paige Moskowitz break it down.
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This video was produced by Allie Rothenberg, Gabrielle Corporal and Paige Moskowitz. It was edited by Gabrielle Corporal.
- Duration:
- 14m
- Broadcast on:
- 13 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- aac
Republicans have a three-part strategy to subvert the election this November and we're going to tell you what it is. Welcome back to Democracy Docket. I'm Mark Elias. And I'm Paige Mosquitz. Let's get started. It has become very clear that the GOP has a three-part strategy to try to subvert elections this fall. We're going to walk you through exactly what it is, what they're doing, the lawsuits they're filing, the laws they've passed, the rules they're changing. So Mark, let's break it down starting with the first step to suppress voters. Right. So part one of their strategy is to make it harder for you to vote. They want to suppress people's vote. Why is this so important to them? This is important to them because they know that if every eligible voter were able to vote and cast their ballot, they would lose on a landslide. I mean, let's take a step back. They are not competing in November of 2024 to win the most votes. That is a common misconception that the media continues to perpetuate. The fact is they did not win the popular vote for president in 2020. Joe Biden won it by seven million votes. They did not win the popular vote in 2016. Hillary Clinton won it by three million votes. They did not win the popular vote in 2012. They did not win the popular vote in 2008. They did win it narrowly. George Bush in his reelection in 2004. But they did not then win it in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote and lost the presidency. They did not win the popular vote in 1992. How far back would you like me to go page? The fact is Republicans are not a majority party. They are a minority party who relies on things like the Electoral College, on things like the fact that big states only get two senators and small states get two senators, that they rely on gerrymandering, legislative races and congressional races. In other words, they rely on the rules to maintain power even though they don't have majority support. So what that means to us in the realm of voting is that they have to keep down those margins. They have to find increased ways to prevent people from voting because if those numbers run up too high, then they can't get the advantage of the Electoral College's natural bias against Democrats. They may be overrun even with their gerrymandering, right? The gerrymanders may be broken by such high voter turnout. And we've seen this. We've seen this in recent elections. Democrats did much better in 2022 than people thought they would. Why? Because of high turnout. We've seen it in some of these special elections. Why? Because of high turnout. So the first part of the three part plan is that Republicans are going to engage in voter suppression. They enacted a whole bunch of new laws in 2021. They enacted new laws in 2022 in 2023 and 2024. And they have been filing voter suppression lawsuits. Yes, those major laws we saw in states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, where they tightened who can vote by absentee ballot, who can return an absentee ballot, changing registration rules. We saw in Ohio and Montana changing of voter ID rules. So the long game of voter suppression has been going on for a while now. They have been changing election laws since 2020 to limit who can vote, make it harder to vote. We're also seeing with these lawsuits, they're filing challenging voter rolls, trying to get states to purge voters. They are simply trying to limit the electorate. They're trying to limit who can vote the ways they can vote and whether or not their votes will ultimately be counted. That's right. And we've seen that's why we have seen this huge influx of litigation by the Republican Party itself. And Donald Trump, by the way, and Donald Trump's campaign, you know, we we we didn't see that in 2020. But this election cycle, they have gotten desperate enough in some places they've actually brought litigation, not just in the name of the Republican Party or a state party or a Republican affiliate, but in the name of the Trump campaign. And that's before you get to the web of right wing organizations that work, you know, in in close, you know, collaboration or or at least directionally for the same things in this well funded right wing, you know, web that that file is lost. All of this page is in service of the first of the three part strategy, which is trying to suppress the vote. So that's step one to suppress voters. Step two is to challenge voters and intimidate election workers. Now we've seen the voter challenges part for a while now. So Mark, talk to us about election vigilantism, how Republicans are facilitating these mass voter challenges. Yeah, so I think of the three, this is the one that I think deserves much more attention than it's gotten. You know, people know that there's voter suppression. I think if you ask the mainstream media, you ask a lot of Democrats or or pro democracy groups, they can rattle off a list of voter suppression techniques say and states that have engaged them or laws like you like page you pointed out the Texas law or the or the or the Georgia law. But the one that I think is not getting the attention it deserves is this one, which is voter challenges and intimidation of election officials and the voter challenges, as you said, we started to see this in earnest in the special elections at the end of the 2020 cycle. So we didn't really see a lot of voter challenges before the 2020 election. We actually saw it in the Georgia runoff election in the Senate race in 2020, really the place in January 2021, where you started to see these groups of vote suppressors and election vigilantes compile lists of tens of thousands of people hundreds of thousands of people in the end, who they had never met and they did not know. And they would submit these names to county or local election officials and ask that those people be removed from the rules. So when we talk about a voter challenge, that's what we mean. It is someone in the community, not the state, not the county to someone in the community who gets your name and puts it on a spreadsheet and says you shouldn't be allowed to vote. You should be removed from the voter rules. If that sounds Orwellian, it is. And it's not that it's allowed, but it is not just allowed. It has grown. Georgia in their voter suppression law in 2021 made it easier to challenge and harder to defeat challenges. And just earlier this year, they made it easier to challenge again. And we are seeing litigation now by these folks trying to make challenging easier. So this notion that people should be able to remove other people from the roles is something that is growing. It is a huge threat. It is not just in Georgia. We see these voter challenges in Nevada. We see these voter challenges in Texas, you know, lots of voter challenges in Texas competitive Senate race, by the way, in Texas, as well as, you know, congratulations, important congressional races in Texas. Nevada presidential Senate and congressional races. So we're seeing this around the country and in other states as well, not just those, but this is going to be one of the big stories, I think, in the final two months of the election. And we're seeing these actions happen by the same group. So true the vote, right-wing organization based in Texas challenged over a quarter of a million voter registrations in the runoff to the Georgia Senate races in January of 2021. Like you said, true the vote has also just submitted tens of thousands of voter challenges in the state of Texas. Now the good news is there is that Texas has said we're too close to an election. We have a process in place for voter challenges anyway. So election officials there are not worried about people getting off the roles for this election because of true the votes voter challenges, but it intimidates voters. It sows doubt into the elections process. It makes people hesitant and scared to go and actually cast their ballot because what if they show up and they're told your voter registration was challenged, you're not an eligible voter, or we need you to give us more information to prove you are who you say you are. So intimidation of voters also goes into the intimidation of election officials, which is the second part of step two. Mark, we have heard reports after reports of increased harassment and intimidation against election officials since the 2020 election. Yeah, so every time you read a story about election and I was getting into election offices, ask yourself the flip side. What happened to the good election officials who got out, right? And the fact is a lot of really good election officials are leaving the field. Well, they were just deciding it's not worth. It's not worth the trouble. It's not worth the harassment. It's not worth being docked. And so we are facing a problem, not just of the bad apples getting into the bunch, but the good apples getting out. And that is a really big problem, and it is not accidental. It is not happening by chance. It is happening because this is part of a strategy by the right wing and the Republican Party to make it easier to harass election officials. The Republican Party and their allies have brought litigation in several states claiming a First Amendment right to harass election workers. You heard that right. You can look it up on Democracy docket. Go to democracy.com and you can find it there or even better yet. Subscribe to its free daily and weekly newsletters. A link is in the show notes. And you will get updates on these lawsuits. That Republicans and their conservative allies are bringing in order to enable them to harass and intimidate election officials. It is a big, big problem. And again, it is the second of the three-part strategy that Republicans have for this fall. And the third part of this strategy, Mark, we've talked about it a lot recently, is a goal of refusing or delaying certification. Yeah. And we have talked a lot about this and many of our viewers have written in about this, how concerned they are in what they read about the certification process. You know, on TV, on election night, when you see that a race has been called by a certain, for a certain state or for a certain race, what they're talking about is the unofficial results. These are the results that are coming in from the precincts. Well, ultimately, those precinct results have to be totaled up and reconciled by local election officials. Oftentimes, they're called canvassing boards. And these are usually non-controversial events. They are usually quite celebratory, where everyone, you know, celebrates a job well done. They are usually bipartisan boards. And what we are seeing is that these boards are being weaponized by Republicans. They are replacing reasonable Republicans, and they are putting on these boards, election deniers, whose stated mission is not to certify the accurate results of elections, either refusing to certify it all, insisting on frivolous investigations, or potentially even certifying inaccurate results. You have seen this come to a head in Georgia specifically, where the state election board, MAGA controlled, have been passing rules that will set the playing field for the staff in Georgia. But it's not just Georgia. You know, my law firm had to sue Cochise County, Arizona in 2022 over this. We had to sue county in Pennsylvania over this in 2022. And of course, going all the way back page to 2020, we saw Donald Trump and Ron Abigayo try to get the Wayne County canvassing board in this county that covers Detroit to not certify the election results there. And this is going to be a major battlefield in the post-election in this election. Mark, that's their three-part strategy, suppress voters, challenge voters, intimidate election officials, and refuse to certify the results. What's being done to fight back? Look, so this is an all hands-on deck thing. You know, the lawyers, you know, my law firm, we are in court, other lawyers are in court around the country to fight voter suppression, to prevent and deal with these challenges and intimidation, and to fight against rules that allow for against certification. But it's not just up to lawyers, you know, and the lawyers will be ready after the election as well. But it's not just up to the lawyers, you know, this is up to every one of us to call this out, to not normalize this, not accept that this is a reasonable strategy for the Republican Party to have embraced. It is not reasonable that the Republican Party has openly embraced voter suppression. It is not acceptable that the Republican Party is litigating to harass election officials. And it is beyond the pale. It is so out of bounds as to be as to be extraordinary that they are enabling and encouraging people to refuse to acknowledge the results of elections by certifying on time accurate election results. But this is where we are. So I need everyone who is watching this to do their part. I need you number one to make sure you are registered to vote, that you have a plan to vote, that you confirm those details that you're registered, that you haven't been purged, you haven't been kicked off the rolls, you haven't been subject to a challenge that's removed you, that you have a plan to vote, you that if there's been voter suppression in your community, you know what the rules are now. And that you vote and that you make sure your friends and your family are as well. But I also need you to speak out. I need you to speak out that it is not okay to suppress people's rights to vote. I need you to speak out that it is not okay to harass election officials. I need you to speak out that you expect that your vote is going to be accurately counted and that it's going to be part of an accurately certified election results. And we need to make this a front burner issue in this election. We need to make this a front burner issue for the media. We need to make this a front burner issue for activists because the Republicans count on you being cynical and discouraged. They count on you saying there's no point in voting because it won't matter anyway. They count on them being able to do these tricks in quiet, in the darkness where no one is paying attention. And I promise you, if we all do that, the lawyers will do their part, the campaigns will do their part. They will be ready to defend your right to vote. They are already defending your right to vote in court. And they will do that in the post-election as well. But we all in the next two months need to band together against the Republican's cynical three-part strategy of suppressing the vote, challenging voters and intimidating election officials and refusing to certify elections. Please make sure you are subscribed to Democracy docket and its free daily and weekly newsletters. The link is in the show notes below. And we will see you next time. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]