The Republican war on elections continue; Warnings continue to fail

Republican representative Madison Cawthorn, holding a shotgun he was asked to sign, says the Second Amendment is not for hunting or target shooting but rather for fighting tyranny. He advises the crowd to begin stockpiling ammunition for what he says is likely American-versus-American “bloodshed” over unfavorable election results. 

He repeats his claims that the American election system is “rigged” and that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump, who, he says, is still America’s legitimate president .... He says rioters arrested in the fatal attack on Congress on Jan. 6 are “political prisoners,” and discusses plans to “try and bust them out.” He tells the crowd “we are actively working on” plans for another similar protest in Washington. “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes your duty,” he says. -- Sept. 2021

“No one can convince me that Georgia’s a blue state.” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) is most likely going to be the GOP nominee for Georgia secretary of state, and if he wins the office he will be in charge of regulating and certifying the 2024 election. In a Sept. 28 appearance on the Real America’s Voice network, host John Fredericks asked him, “Do you think Trump won Georgia?” Hice responded, “Yeah, I mean, obviously the audit is going to show that.” He went on to say, “I don’t believe, not for one moment, that Georgia is blue, but for election irregularities and fraudulent activity.” 

“When do we get to use the guns?” At an October stop in Idaho on Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA tour, an audience member cut to the chase in a Q&A session: “When do we get to use the guns? . . . How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” Kirk responded, “I’m going to denounce that,” adding, “You’re playing into all their plans.” -- Washington Post, Dec. 12, 2021

At this point, posts like this warning about danger to democracy and elections are not going to change anyone’s mind. Most Republicans firmly believe the 2020 election was stolen. They are hell bent on putting radical conspiracy theorists in control of election administration and conduct. They are going to end free and fair elections in the name of protecting free and fair elections. 

The latest news sounds pretty much like the other posts here that try to warn us that we are on the verge of losing our democracy. More warnings just won't make any difference. At this point it seems more likely than not that 2020 was the last relatively free and fair national election we will see for quite some time, maybe decades, maybe as long as America stays a single country. My guess now is that in addition to the voter disenfranchisement of gerrymandering, there is about a 65% chance that the 2022 election will be demonstrably rigged and tip races to Republicans, including by outright nullification of inconvenient elections where necessary. 

Being able to prove this assumes that in states where republicans are in control, they allow analysis of the elections and the data. They will fight it tooth and claw and the Republican Supreme Court probably will mostly or completely protect that secrecy (~75% chance) in the lawsuits filed after the 2022 elections.

Futile as it may be, another New York Times article, In Bid for Control of Elections, Trump Loyalists Face Few Obstacles, sounds the warning one more time:

A movement animated by Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election lies is turning its attention to 2022 and beyond.

ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. — When thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on Jan. 6 for the Stop the Steal rally that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol, one of them was a pastor and substitute teacher from Elizabethtown, Pa., named Stephen Lindemuth. 

Mr. Lindemuth had traveled with a religious group from Elizabethtown to join in protesting the certification of Joseph R. Biden’s victory. In a Facebook post three days later, he complained that “Media coverage has focused solely on the negative aspect of the day’s events,” and said he had been in Washington simply “standing for the truth to be heard.”

Shortly after, he declared his candidacy for judge of elections, a local Pennsylvania office that administers polling on Election Day, in the local jurisdiction of Mount Joy Township.

Mr. Lindemuth’s victory in November in this conservative rural community is a milestone of sorts in American politics: the arrival of the first class of political activists who, galvanized by Donald J. Trump’s false claim of a stolen election in 2020, have begun seeking offices supervising the election systems that they believe robbed Mr. Trump of a second term. According to a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, more than 60 percent of Republicans now believe the 2020 election was stolen.

This belief has informed a wave of mobilization at both grass-roots and elite levels in the party with an eye to future elections. In races for state and county-level offices with direct oversight of elections, Republican candidates coming out of the Stop the Steal movement are running competitive campaigns, in which they enjoy a first-mover advantage in electoral contests that few partisans from either party thought much about before last November.

“This is a five-alarm fire,” said Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, who presided over her state’s Trump-contested election in 2020 and may face a Trump-backed challenger next year. “If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in ’24.”

There's a bit of understatement in that. No one may be able to ensure that democracy prevails again in ’22. The Republican stolen election alt-reality leads people to say things like they were merely “standing for the truth to be heard” while screaming for blood at the Republican’s 1/6 coup attempt. 

One person, just one rotten person, was mostly single-handedly dragged what was left of the already rotting Republican Party into the abyss of a corrupt, incompetent American Christian fascism based on colossal lies, irrational distrust and seething bigotry and hate. 

No one who laments the loss of our democracy can say that we have not been warned. Heck, George Washington warned of exactly this thing way back in 1796.[1] Lamentations and regrets will be too little, too late.

Questions: Was all that personal commentary over the top nonsense? Was it just irrational, alt-reality partisan alarmism? Most Republicans unshakably believe that.

Footnote: 

1. Good old George wrote this in 1796 about the danger to democracy that radical political factions or parties pose:

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.