Considerable numbers of election officials have resigned their positions in recent months as Trumpish terror campaigns against them have ramped up. Real terror, up to varied threats of torture and death to them and their families. The plan is to put in stooges who don’t care anything about law or justice or fairness, as long as they can pretend to have a legal claim that their vicious old white, pardon me, orange, guy won.
In addition to voter suppression and gerrymanders, which constitute the war on voters, there are three fronts in this war on elections: terrorizing officials to get them to quit, replacing officials involuntarily if they don’t quit, and taking away officials’ authority to oversee elections. We will come to the other two next after we look at terrorism.
We cannot allow the media to call these terrorists protestors.
There are two ways of dealing with all of this: outlaw them or outvote them. We are working on both, of course. But in the meantime, we are putting this to the public in Truth Sandwiches.
Not, of course, our beloved original patriotic Three Stooges (at a time), thus.
You Nazty Spy, with Larry Pebble, Moe Hailstone, and Curly Gallstone
Truth Sandwiches
We all say we want free and fair elections. But only one party is lying about the 2020 election and passing voter suppression laws.
Protect voters and voting officials from this assault on the Constitution.
Indivisible #TruthBrigade Starve the Big Lie; Feed Democracy in America
Election Officials Under Attack: Scapegoated for election outcomes that some politicians and voters did not like, election officials have been under unprecedented attack. Here's a plan to protect them. #TruthBrigade #VoterProtection
That one omitted the opening common ground, our need for free and fair elections that we should all be able to trust. But I’ll forgive Flip it Blue in MO. Won’t you?
This next calls out a piece of the Big Lie that inflamed these domestic terrorists.
Good. A strong push back against this lie is essential. Election Night most likely will not be Results Night & that's normal. #TruthBrigade @IndivisibleTeam Officials Flame ‘Garbage’ Trump Camp Argument That Counting Votes Is Election Theft
There is, of course, a multitude of other Truth Sandwiches out there on Twitter, on every aspect of the 2020 elections and what various forces are working on for the 2022 midterms and for 2024. We are working on expanding our activities on Facebook and elsewhere, too.
News and Analysis
The nation’s secretaries of state used to be little-known, wonky bureaucrats who operated in near-anonymity. But after the 2020 election, they are now on the front[ ]lines of the battle over trust in American democracy.
The catastrophic cost of "humoring" Trump's Big Lie: A generation of election officials are fleeing in terror, to be replaced by @GOP's goons and thugs.
There is no shortage of job openings for local election officials in Michigan. It’s the same in Pennsylvania. Wisconsin, too.
After facing threats and intimidation during the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath, and now the potential of new punishments in certain states, county officials who run elections are quitting or retiring early.
Exceptionally important thread pointing out the wave of right-wing mob/vigilante terror that undergirds the new TX abortion & GA voting laws as well as the waves of threats against election officials and school board ambushes.
I would add: January 6th.
It’s critical to understand the TX law b/c it is part of a desperate effort to do by harassment, intimidation, & menacing what could not be accomplished by regular channels of democratic engagement. It is of a piece w/recent voter suppression bills and anti-truth school bd mobs.
Jun 11, 2021 — 'You and your family will be killed very slowly': Trump's false voter-fraud claims sparked a campaign to terrorize election officials and ...
Jun 11, 2021 — AUDIO FROM PHONE CALL: "If you have a hand in this, you deserve to go to prison. You actually deserve to hang by your goddam, soy boy, skinny-ass neck."
In the days and months following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Fulton County elections director Richard Barron received hundreds of harassing messages.
Must-read Reuters: “Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers”—electionlawblog.org
Jun 11, 2021 — Late on the night of April 24, the wife of Georgia’s top election official got a chilling text message: “You and your family will be killed very slowly.”
A week earlier, Tricia Raffensperger, wife of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, had received another anonymous text: “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.”
Aug 12, 2021 — “We are in harm’s way as never before,” says a Colorado election director. And as with the January 6 riot, the threats could be a sign of dire things to come.
Amid unhinged attacks from Donald Trump last year, Gabriel Sterling, a top Republican election official in Georgia, was forced to have police protection at his home
Trump's election lies endanger the lives of election workers—Vox
Jun 16, 2021 — Nearly 1 in 5 election officials say they've been threatened because of their job.
Dec 3, 2020 — WASHINGTON —In his urgent demand Monday that President Donald Trump condemn his angry supporters who are threatening workers and officials overseeing the 2020 vote, a Georgia elections official focused on an animated image of a hanging noose that had been sent to a young voting-machine technician.
“It’s just wrong,” the official, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican, said at a news conference. “I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have over this.”
and lots and lots more.
I have omitted some of the more triggering threats. Please don’t go looking for them unless you mean it, and are well-armored against such things, for example with the practices of Buddhist compassion and equanimity.
Part 2 Preview
Salon.com, Igor Derysh
Jun 26, 2021 — Republican “election subversion” plan kicks into high gear with ouster or replacement of many local officials.
Part 3 Preview
In the extreme case, Republican legislatures are claiming the ability to undo Presidential elections in their states, and substitute their own slates of electors for those chosen by the voters. It isn’t bad enough that they choose their voters with voter suppression and gerrymanders. Now they want to choose the next President regardless of public preference.
Closing Music
Sometimes democracy fails, or is viciously sold out.
Viva La Quince Brigada - Pete Seeger and the Almanac singers
Our only desire,
Rumba la rumba la rumba la!
Is to end fascism!
XV International Brigade