January 6 was the day America came “face to face with the raging war that it had been waging against itself for years.” … If Americans do not learn the lessons of the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, “we will consign ourselves to another Jan. 6 in the not-too-distant future, and another after that, and another after that.” -- J. Michael Luttig, former federal appellate court judge who testified at last week’s Jan. 6 Committee hearing.
In 2020, the Republican Party tried a hail Mary scam to overturn the presidential election by pushing Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results from several swing states.
For 2024, they’re working to steal it before things even get that far.
In effect, 2020 was practice, and 2024 will be the real thing. God help us all if it works.
We’ve already seen the GOP start laying the groundwork to cheat two years from now. Things like voter suppression, purging voting roles, and state legislators giving themselves the power to interfere with the election process at the local level could all spell the end of our democracy if they result in questionable vote totals that favor the Republican candidate.
But there’s more to it than that. If the GOP has its way, the will of the voters in Republican-controlled swing states where the Democratic presidential candidate wins could be brushed aside as the state legislature approves its own slate of Republican electors for the Electoral College.
Republicans in those states will simply claim there are too many “irregularities” in the vote, insisting that having the state legislature pick the winners is the only fair choice.
Can they do that? A lot of people think they can’t, but if they get away with it, we’ll have something called The Independent State Legislature Theory – which J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appellate court judge, calls the “Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election,” – and a complicit U.S. Supreme Court to blame for it.
The Brennan Center for Justice describes the Independent State Legislature Theory as “a dubious interpretation of the Constitution,” whose “adoption would radically change our elections.”
Regarding presidential electors, the Constitution says, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” A small group of advocates are pushing the theory that this gives state legislatures exclusive and near-absolute power to regulate federal elections.
As the Brennan Center reports: The nightmare scenario is that a legislature, displeased with how an election official on the ground has interpreted her state’s election laws, would invoke the theory as a pretext to refuse to certify the results of a presidential election and instead select its own slate of electors.
If enough states get away with that, then Republicans won’t need to push for any shenanigans on the day the House and Senate convene to receive the slates of electors from various states. The fix will have been in before that happens.
Of course, this would all end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, where some of the conservative justices have already expressed support for the theory in previous cases. Do we trust this version of the court to do the right thing for Democracy instead of supporting Republican ideology? I don’t.
You can read Luttig’s very thorough CNN opinion piece on the subject read here.
You can read the Brennan Center report here.
If all this doesn’t scare you then I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. This would be the Republicans’ boldest and, if successful, their most devastating move in tearing down our democracy to ensure themselves political victory and the power that comes with it.
I don’t know how far this is going to go, but we need to understand that when you give Republicans control of a state’s government, it’s opening the door to all types of corruption. The GOP is as corrupt as the day is long. Don’t think they won’t go to any lengths to regain control of the White House and both houses of Congress.
That’s why the upcoming midterms are so important. The less success the Republican Party has at all levels of government, the harder it will be for it to steal the 2024 election. This is no time to be sitting it out.
This isn’t your father’s Republican Party. The worst-case scenario has gone from a theory to a real possibility. Our democracy is on the edge. The other side will cheat, lie, and steal. If Democrats default to their milquetoast ways, they’ll offer too little resistance at a time when resistance is of paramount importance.
What do we do if the 2024 presidential election is stolen from right under our noses? What if we watch our chosen candidate wrongly declared the loser? Do we sulk? Do we march in protest? Do we launch a civil war?
Right now, we need all hands on deck to fight for the best result.
But we damn well better be ready if we get the worst.
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Thank you for reading my post. You can read my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.