The Coming Coup: How Republicans Are Laying the Groundwork to Steal Future Elections

It cannot be overstated how vital this is for us to see, understand and absorb, and act in every way possible to stop this madness, brutality, and growing dangers to our nation and to life on Earth. These are very frightening times which I believe ask of us again and again to not turn away, but to instead choose to join together in the great universal struggle for a more just and humane world. ― Molly

Democrats are nearly out of time to stop them.

By ARI BERMAN

A week before the ninth anniversary of her son’s murder, Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) discovered that Republicans had radically redrawn her district to oust her from Congress. 

A political novice, McBath had become a leading gun control advocate after her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was shot by a white man in 2012 in an altercation over the volume of rap music he was playing. She went on to stage one of the biggest electoral upsets in Georgia’s recent history when, in 2018, she became the first Black person to represent the state’s 6^th District, Newt Gingrich’s home turf for 20 years. Her victory exemplified Democratic inroads in formerly red states like Georgia and the new power being exercised by communities of color in the rapidly diversifying South. But those gains are quickly being erased by the GOP through a toxic combination of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and election subversion that together pose a mortal threat to free and fair elections. 

Georgia is a microcosm of the extreme tactics Republicans are using across the country to entrench power in advance of the midterms. What can appear as a series of seemingly disconnected state-level skirmishes is in fact part of an insidious national strategy that goes far beyond previous efforts to suppress and undermine Democratic influence. Fueled by the Big Lie, this effort picks up where last year’s insurrection left off by putting in place the pieces to steal future elections by systematically taking over every aspect of the voting process.

Over the course of 2021, 19 states passed 34 laws making it harder to vote—the greatest rollback of voting access since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those changes include more than a dozen GOP-controlled states passing new provisions to interfere with impartial election administration, while Trump and his allies aggressively recruit “Stop the Steal”–inspired candidates to take over key election positions like secretary of state offices and local election boards in major battleground states.

“What we’re seeing is a multifaceted, multilevel attack on American democracy,” says Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State.

McBath’s district is a striking case in point: Under a new redistricting map crafted by Georgia Republicans, her diverse suburban Atlanta seat—where moderate white voters joined an influx of Black, Latino, and Asian American residents to elect her—would now stretch all the way to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, with Republicans adding three deeply red and predominantly white counties—Forsyth, Dawson, and Cherokee—where Donald Trump won 70 percent of the vote. (Forsyth is infamous for forcing its more than 1,000 Black residents to leave after a Black man was lynched in 1912.) Her district would go from one that favored Biden by 11 points to one that Trump would have won by 15, one of the most drastic transformations of any district in the country.

“What we’re seeing is a multifaceted, multilevel attack on American democracy.”

After the map passed the legislature on November 22, McBath decided to run in a neighboring district, held by Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, that absorbed some of the most Democratic parts of McBath’s old district. “I refuse to let [Georgia Gov.] Brian Kemp, the NRA, and the Republican Party keep me from fighting,” McBath told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in announcing her candidacy. But even if she wins a messy primary against Bourdeaux, Democrats will have lost a House seat in 2022 in a state that is trending blue, and communities of color will have less political representation—even though they account for all of the state’s population growth over the past decade. Moreover, because of the new redistricting maps, Republicans are set to control nine of 14 congressional districts in a state where Democrats won the presidency and two Senate seats in 2020.  

A similar outcome is being replicated in other key battlegrounds, like Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas, where Republican legislatures passed redistricting maps that will hand their party between 65 and 80 percent of US House seats in states where Biden narrowed the GOP’s 2016 advantage. Though Democrats are faring slightly better in the redistricting process overall compared with the last decade, these extreme maps in GOP-controlled swing states, combined with Biden’s sagging approval ratings, will likely help Republicans pick up enough seats to retake the US House in 2022 and lock in dominance of state legislatures for the next 10 years.

And make no mistake, if Republicans prevail in rigging the 2022 election, they’ll be even more emboldened in 2024, especially if Trump is on the ballot. The lies of a stolen election propagated by Trump—and exploited by Republican lawmakers who know better—are now being used to lay the groundwork to sabotage elections for real. “Their endgame?” President Joe Biden asked rhetorically during a major speech in Atlanta on January 11. “To turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion—something states can respect or ignore.” This isn’t just about the normal ebb and flow of partisan politics; it’s a test of whether a party that is deadly serious about ending American democracy as we know it will regain control of ostensibly democratic institutions.  

 “The insurrection, the gerrymandering, the voter suppression, the attacks on professional election officials—all of this puts our democracy at risk to a degree we have not seen since the Civil War,” former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder told me recently. “That’s how serious this is.”

Please continue this article here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/01/how-republicans-are-taking-over-election-system-big-lie/