On Monday, the Republican National Committee asked the Supreme Court to step into an election dispute in Arizona by blocking up to 40,000 registered voters from casting ballots in November. That’s because the more likely that it becomes that Vice President Kamala Harris will win this election, the more focused Donald Trump and his supporters become on that other contest—the one to ensure he regains power no matter how Americans vote.
Since Harris began her candidacy and quickly gathered the support necessary to become the Democratic nominee, Trump has been pushing the idea that her ascendency was somehow illegal. As The Washington Post reports, the narrative meant to delegitimize Harris as a candidate has included Trump claiming that Harris should be “disqualified” for what Trump claimed was a fake image of a campaign rally crowd (it wasn’t). But the more consistent theme from Trump is that Harris took over as the Democratic candidate in a “coup” and that the presidency was “Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him.”
At the same time that Trump is prompting his followers to question the legitimacy of Harris as a candidate, Republicans are also preparing for Insurrection 2.0. They're not waiting for Jan 6, 2025. Efforts to stop democracy are already underway from state governments to the Supreme Court.
As The Los Angeles Times reports, Arizona set state rules requiring that voters show proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate, when registering, which exceeds the requirements of federal law. Now Republicans want to disqualify all the voters who signed up without meeting those proof-of-citizenship requirements.
As Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes points out, there’s no evidence of fraud among any of these voters, most are Native Americans, students, or service members who didn’t have a birth certificate available at the time of registration.
But the possibility of eliminating a large group of voters who are mostly young, Native American, or both is enough to get Republicans salivating. Native American voters in Arizona played a critical role in the 2020 vote and Harris’ rapid improvement in recent polls has been largely driven by a combination of women and younger voters. Biden’s margin of victory in Arizona was 10,457 votes in 2020, so 40,000 voters taken off the rolls could definitely affect the outcome in that state.
But trying to keep voters from voting in the first place is just one way that Republicans are attempting to keep democracy down. Trump supporters have gained power over local election boards in multiple states. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has identified at least 35 “rogue election officials” who have already refused to certify election results and may do so again.
But no state may be doing more to help defeat democracy in advance of the election than Georgia.
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024.
On the stop-them-before-they-vote front, the state of Georgia has created a website (using taxpayer money) allowing anyone to challenge the voting status of Georgia voters. That’s on top of a law that passed in July making it easier to challenge the status of whole groups of voters. As The Brennan Center reports, the new law makes it easier for people to kick their neighbors off voter rolls. And getting back on isn’t just a matter of re-registering, it can require making a personal appearance at a public hearing to defend their right to vote.
If that’s not enough, hardline Trump supporters have now completely taken over the State Election Board. On Monday, that board passed a new rule that requires precincts to track down any “discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of people who voted in a precinct, no matter how minor," ProPublica reported.
That rule followed another new rule passed earlier this month that instructed them to conduct a "reasonable inquiry" into any reported discrepancy. There is no time limit or any instructions on how such an inquiry should be conducted.
This makes both of these rules seem like simply an invitation to block the reporting of Georgia’s vote should it happen to go against the desires of the Trump-supporting board.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, there is pressure to remove some of the worst offenders from the board. There are also potential legal challenges to the new rules, as their open-ended nature may make them simply unconstitutional—the state constitution requires certification within a week of the election. But right now, some of the proposed fixes would require people who have been actively trying to break the system to voluntarily take action to reverse their steps.
As Rachel Maddow wrote on Monday in The New York Times, it’s not hard to imagine a situation in which swing states are split on Election Day, leaving Georgia as the determining factor in the race.
The point of these certification refusals may not be to falsify or flip a result, but simply to prevent the emergence of one. If one or more states fail to produce official results, blocking any candidate from reaching 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment prescribes Gerald L.K. Smith’s dream scenario: a vote in the newly elected House of Representatives to determine the presidency. Each state delegation would get one vote; today, Republicans control 26 state delegations; Democrats control 22; and two are evenly divided.
Republicans are engaged in a multi-layered approach to destroying democracy. They want to block Democratic voters from voting in the first place. If that doesn’t work, they have election boards ready to block certifications. And if that isn’t enough, they have a plan to simply generate as much confusion as possible, and then take advantage of that confusion.
Republicans have put years into building these systems. Democrats aren’t going to remove them between now and November. But we need to be alert, aware, and informed if we hope to minimize the damage.
While Georgia Republicans are trying to sabotage their neighbors, you can help yours be informed and be ready to vote on Election Day by signing up for the Neighbor-2-Neighbor get-out-the-vote program.
