Salon: Vote suppression is what Republicans do best -- but 2020 is their masterwork

[TomCADem]

This is why I think all the attention to polling is misdirected. The question is not really whether the polls accurately reflect who a person would vote for. I think they are accurate in that regard. The problem is that polls do not really measure whether a registered voter who wants to vote for Biden will actually be successful in casting their ballot, particularly if they are in an urban area where the USPS has been slow walking the mail near election day or where a Republican governor has cut back on polling sites and ballot drop off locations.

In other words, if registered voters could actually cast their ballots and get them counted, I think Biden would easily win. However, Republicans know this, which is why they are going all in on trying to sabotage the election through voter suppression. On this front, Republicans have been pretty successful in putting their thumbs on the scale.

https://news.yahoo.com/vote-suppression-republicans-best-2020-125950771.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADL4nftCn-BugPBh2FkgBRd8at1N61-Fl-Q_ykmVTct3ZpmBfLKe-NNNhyI1lh_MFV4TDupMnoh5IPacRTq8Lri4hZhl9VSl6mentTq5XFVINIfLh1bb7ro3r7CX7h6mnmCO-FX_H_mpfvUA2hedTagiO5OzJCvZKuneYxZ5GvVA

Nonetheless, I must at least agree that throughout these last few decades of challenges to voting rights, Republicans have always at least upheld the pretense that they were operating in good faith. It was never believable, but the charade of concern about voter fraud or illegal immigrants voting was the tribute o hypocrisy that vice paid to virtue. They acknowledged, however spuriously, that vote suppression for the express purpose of stealing elections was undemocratic.

As with everything else in the Trump era, such adherence to old-fashioned notions of right and wrong are no longer operative. In this election we are seeing a vote suppression effort of unprecedented scale, with no serious attempt to justify it other than an exercise of sheer partisan power.

The Republican standard-bearer has such a big mouth and is so crudely dishonest that they really have little choice in the matter. He openly declared that if he loses it can only be because the election was rigged by the Democrats and he seized upon mail-in voting during the pandemic as the method by which they would do it. Of course he said the same thing in 2016 without even that much explanation, so it's clear that this is just his all-purpose excuse for any possible defeat. Donald Trump can't lose, according to him; he can only be cheated out of his win. The effect of this self-serving propaganda has been to make Republicans hold out for Election Day while Democrats have been voting early in large numbers, many of them by mail.

The Republican lawyers and operatives who have fanned out to all the swing states are following Trump's lead. As Chris Hayes spelled out on MSNBC on Thursday night, they are filing hundreds of lawsuits, challenging voting laws and procedures all over the country to restrict the ability to vote and disqualify legal ballots based upon a variety of contrived rationales.

[Sherman A1]

1. They have been pulling out all the stops

I hope that sheer numbers will crush them in their efforts.

[soothsayer]

2. We will bury them

[TomCADem]

5. Atlantic - Republicans Are Suddenly Afraid of Democracy

I agree. For us to win, we need the numbers to absolutely overwhelm Republican efforts to suppress the vote. For all their talk about freedom, Republicans have grown increasingly brazen in attacking the idea of Democracy. Embracing the idea that "rank democracy" is bad, opens the door for Republicans to take increasingly extreme efforts to take away the right to vote from Americans.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/republicans-are-suddenly-afraid-democracy/616685/

“We’re not a democracy,” Republican Senator Mike Lee tweeted in the middle of Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate. He was reacting to something he’d heard onstage there, in his home state of Utah. Another tweet: “The word ‘democracy’ appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few.” Hours after the debate Lee was still worrying the thought: “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.”

Why did Lee choose this moment—less than four weeks before an election in which his party seems likely to suffer defeat—to make the familiar, even pedantic, point that we live in a republic rather than a pure democracy? Why did he insist on the point so vehemently that he neglected to mention that power in the American system ultimately lies with the people, which means that our system could also be called a representative democracy? Did he mean rank as in “foul,” “rancid,” or “outright”? If the last, does that mean the tyranny of the majority leading to perverse rule by “the few”? What did this short, misleading course in Civics 101 have to do with anything?

My guess is that Lee wasn’t just being pedantic. Worried about an election in which the people can express their will, Lee was laying the groundwork to contest the results or block an elected majority from governing.

The Trump administration is using the last weeks of the campaign to soften up the country for a repudiation of democracy itself. This project will take some doing. Getting rid of checks on presidential power in the form of inspectors general, congressional committees, special counsels, and nonpartisan judges might drive pundits and experts crazy, but such moves don’t hit home for many citizens. The post-Watergate norms established to preserve the Justice Department’s integrity are not widely understood. But voting is something else. Your vote is your most tangible connection to the idea of democratic government. It’s the only form of political power most Americans possess. It’s proof that government of, by, and for the people hasn’t yet perished from the Earth. Your vote is personal. For a president to throw it out would be an audacious undertaking.

[Walleye]

3. Too bad they didn't work half as hard on Covid suppression.

[StClone]

4. Or FOR the American People

And, because Americans voted R in the past is why the Cons have the power now to destroy the vote. How ironic.

[Thekaspervote]

6. The Dems are not sitting idly by..let's remember that

Link to tweet

?s=21

[TomCADem]

7. Like COVID Response, This Really Should Not Be a Partisan Issue

The idea of letting citizens vote should not be a Democratic versus Republican issue any more than taking steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Yet, it has become a partisan issue.

This really should be reframed, because I would think that even average Republicans are not going to be eager to wait in line for hours to cast their ballot. In Utah, most everyone votes by mail.