Slate "Shame the Random, Unknown Government Officials Aiding Trump's Coup Attempt"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/shame-government-officials-aiding-trump-coup.html

Republicans from Michigan, many of them low-level government officials, have spent the past week flirting with aiding Donald Trump’s coup attempt. On Tuesday, two Republican members of the board that certifies election results from the county that includes Detroit voted against certifying the county’s votes because they favored Joe Biden, leading the group to deadlock. Later that day, they changed their minds and certified the results. Then, after Trump contacted the two Republicans, they changed their minds again and asked to “rescind” their certification votes. It’s as absurd as it is alarming.

There’s also some coup action going on at the state level in Michigan. On Friday, the GOP leaders of the Michigan House and Senate met with Trump in D.C., presumably so the president could ask them to send Trump supporters to the Electoral College. The idea is that they would cast the state’s votes for Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won Michigan about 154,000 votes. John James, the Republican Senate candidate from Michigan who lost his race by nearly 94,000 votes, has, like the president, refused to concede. He’s also asked the Board of State Canvassers to delay its certification of the state’s election results, which it is currently scheduled to do on Monday.

What can be done about all these anti-democratic gambits designed to sow doubt in our country’s elections, to the benefit of a party that’s giving up on winning elections by winning over voters? Democratic leaders are doing some scolding, but they’re mostly waiting for the courts to beat back Trump’s frivolous lawsuits, lest they get drawn into a political battle over something that should be apolitical (the winner of an election taking the office he or she has won). This strategy is generally pretty reasonable, as it lets Trump flail around without dignifying his claims or further riling up his followers.

But the dangerous precedent being set by the Republicans humoring (or helping) Trump’s attempt to nullify votes merits a much more aggressive opposition. After all, why did the two Republicans on the Wayne County board change their minds (the first time) and decide to certify the election results? The furious pushback from leaders and laypeople in Detroit surely had something to do with it. In a public comment period on Zoom held after the initial deadlock vote, the Rev. Wendell Anthony, who leads Detroit’s NAACP chapter, accused the two Republicans of disenfranchising the Black voters of Detroit, almost all of whom voted for Biden. “Shame on you,” he told them, calling their votes a “disgrace.” Wayne State University vice president Ned Staebler used their full names—William Hartmann and Monica Palmer—when he proclaimed that the “stain of racism” they’d brought upon themselves “is going to follow you throughout history.”

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But the little people, like these Michigan Republicans—the statewide officials and local party hacks who are doing their darnedest to invalidate the votes of the Black Americans who overcame dogged voter suppression efforts to oust Donald Trump—shouldn’t fall through the cracks. They may have had no national profile, but they’ve sure earned one now. They want to step into their power to abet a wannabe autocrat? Let them be harangued as publicly and humiliatingly as possible until they certify the election results, and let their neighbors never forget how they chose to use their stupid turn in the limelight.

[MLAA]

1. Name and shame government officials.

Shun and shame such anti democracy idiots in our personal lives. That’s my plan.