GOP Voter Suppression Tactics

The local constabulary

Context

Like the president, the GOP is anti-democratic and authoritarian. Both are heavily reliant on dark free speech[1] to create false realities and to tear society apart. The GOP ultimate goal is a radical right libertarian movement (RRLM). The RRLM has a vision of a weak, ineffective[2] federal government and weakened civil liberties, with power flowing to state governments from the people and the central government. The RRLM is essentially demagogic, plutocratic and dictatorial with a heavy tinge of vengeful, greedy Christianity exercising its right to feed off a stream of tax dollars. The point of state governments is simple: They are easier to corrupt and subvert than a strong central government with institutions that stand for the rule of law.

The power transfer is falsely billed as return of proper constitutional authority to states. That is a deception. The wealthy plutocrat elites that created and control the RRLM intend to corrupt and control states governments. The elites want the power for themselves.

An important RRLM goal is subversion of voting and democratic participation. Voter suppression is a key tactic that has been underway for years. This OP is about how this is playing out in an obscure federal commission that was intended to help states conduct elections.

Neutering the federal Election Assistance Commission

A ProPublica article, How Voter-Fraud Hysteria and Partisan Bickering Ate American Election Oversight, describes the decline of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Some congressional republicans want to get rid of the EAC, because it had completed its mission of fixing election problems in the wake of the 2000 voting disaster in Florida. Maybe that was true at one time, but these days, some states are desperately asking for assistance and guidance about how to deal with the upcoming Nov. 3 election. Despite claims to the contrary, the EAC is unable to act. ProPublica writes:

“Election Assistance Commission to plead for help. The EAC is the bipartisan federal agency established for the precise purpose of maintaining election integrity through emergencies, and this was by every account an emergency. In a matter of weeks, the coronavirus had grown from an abstract concern to a global horror, and vote by mail was the only way ballots could safely be cast in the states that had not yet held their primaries. But many officials didn’t know the basics: what machines they would need and where to get them; what to tell voters; how to make sure ballots reached voters and were returned to county offices promptly and securely. “I have a primary coming up, and I have no idea what to do,” Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske said on the call.

She and her colleagues didn’t get the help they were looking for. Of the EAC’s four commissioners, only chair Ben Hovland spoke, and his responses were too vague to satisfy his listeners. The lack of direction was “striking,” said one participant, Jennifer Morrell, an elections consultant and a contractor for The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “It felt to me that there was no leadership. Nobody was saying, ‘Hey, let’s figure this out.’ Questions just went unanswered.”

Dogged by partisan infighting, the constant threat of elimination and a budget that bottomed out last year at less than half of what it once was, the EAC has long failed to be effective or even relevant. Current commissioners have dramatically decreased the number of votes taken on important issues. The EAC also hasn’t approved a full set of voting machine standards since 2005. In 2018, new machines pegged to the old standards malfunctioned in Indiana, and decades-old machines in Georgia failed to record a stunning 150,000 votes for lieutenant governor, spurring ongoing litigation.”

EAC chairman defended the agency: “[The EAC has] one of the smallest budgets in the federal government, and without a dime of the supplemental funding we requested from Congress [for pandemic response]. Now is not the time for keeping score. It’s time to focus on getting the job done. ... I am confident that when we look back at this year, and where the EAC was coming from, we will be proud of what we accomplished.” The chairman pointed out that distributed $825 million in grants to state election officials in 2020.

The EAC is hamstrung in party by partisan disputes. Two of the four commissioners are repeating the president’s unfounded fraud allegations about voting by mail. There is no evidence to show that voting by mail is significantly fraudulent. ProPublica comments: “Voter fraud is vanishingly rare. .... Voting methods once thought routine, like absentee ballots, became grist for partisan bickering. The escalating fight over voter fraud has crippled the EAC, often sabotaging its most dedicated commissioners while emboldening those who are less effective. .... In 2007, the EAC hired two respected researchers to study voter fraud. But after they found little evidence of a problem, the commission decided not to adopt their report, saying the extent of voter fraud was open to interpretation.”

It is reasonable to believe that GOP-backed voter suppression to advance the RRLM’s goal of undermining democracy is well underway right now. One question is how many voters will be disenfranchised on Nov. 3. For the RRLM, the ends justify all legal means and probably some illegal ones. This is about gaining power and wealth by subverting democracy, not serving the public interest.

Footnotes:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

2. Based on their acquiescence to how the president has handled it, the ineffectiveness the GOP favors is seen in the failed federal response to the pandemic. The president has used executive power to undermine federal public health activities.