Update on Republican election subversion

The Republican Party has been intent on subverting elections since the 2020 election. The rank and file are fine with all of this. Poll data indicates that over 80% of them sincerely but falsely believe the election was fraudulent and Biden is an illegitimate president. Continuously spreading the lie and arguing that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent is a core Republican propaganda talking point these days. 

To deal with this faux problem, Republicans have been passing laws and doing things to (i) suppress votes in non-Republican areas, (ii) intimidate non-Republican voters, (iii) intimidate honest election officials, (iv) rig elections and (v) outright overturn results that Republicans do not like. The election subversion effort in about 18 red states is multi-pronged and complicated. As early 2022 voting starts, it is of great interest to see how Republican election subversion efforts are playing out. The 2022 elections could be the first in modern times that are sufficiently subverted to make it impossible for one party to control congress and legislatures. This applies to many red states. The effects of successful election subversion could last for decades or even much longer, which is the Republican dream of single-party rule.

The New York Time writes in an article, Texas Voting Law Leads to Jump in Ballot Application Rejections, about how the Republican subversion plan is playing out in Texas:

Texas Republicans said the state’s new voting law would make it “easy to vote, hard to cheat.” County election officials say it’s sowing confusion ahead of next month’s primaries.

Thousands of Texans have had their absentee ballot applications denied as a result of regulations put in place under the state’s new election law, a jump in rejections that could force many older and disabled voters to either vote in person or not at all in primary elections early next month.

With a Friday deadline, election officials in the state’s most populous counties have rejected 10 percent — or 12,000 — of the absentee ballot applications received as of Thursday, according to voting data obtained by The New York Times. Officials said the rejection rate reflected a significant increase from past years, and most often because a voter failed to satisfy the new identification requirements.

“It’s high, there’s no question,” Bruce Sherbet, the election administrator for Collin County, northeast of Dallas, said of the number of rejections. Mr. Sherbet said his county typically rejects a handful of applications. This year, that number was roughly 300.

The Times tallied rejected applications in 12 of the 13 Texas counties with more than 400,000 residents. Bexar County, home to San Antonio, did not disclose its numbers. The total of rejected ballots could still change as applications were still arriving ahead of the Friday night deadline.

As they prepare for the March 1 primary, election officials say the new law is sowing confusion among voters and further burdening already taxed local election offices.

As one of 18 states to pass more restrictive voting laws after the 2020 presidential election, Texas’ rocky rollout could provide a preview of what could come elsewhere.

Confusion over absentee ballot applications has a more limited impact in Texas than in many other states, however. Texas only allows voters who are over 65 or who have a verified disability to vote by mail. During the 2020 election, more than 1 million Texans voted by mail, although that number is expected to fall, as turnout regularly dips in the midterm elections.  

There are signs that the problems, particularly with new identification rules, may extend beyond applications to processing ballots. With less than a week of data on returned ballots, Harris County said its ballot rejection rates were as high as 34 percent, and Dallas County had rejected about 20 percent of ballots.

“We’re seeing an alarming number of mail ballots being rejected and local officials are left scrambling to protect voter access as the deadline looms,” Isabel Longoria, the elections administrator of Harris County, said in a statement.  

Some rejections stemmed from layering the requirements of the new law atop a byzantine electoral bureaucracy.  

 

Dr. Larry Schoenfeld, professor emeritus at UT Health San Antonio, and Heidi Schoenfeld, Democratic Party Precinct Chair in Bexar County, had their initial absentee ballot applications rejected 

“The system is designed for failure,” said Ms. Schoenfeld [a voter who tried and failed twice to get the paperwork right]. “It’s designed to make it very, very difficult for people to vote.” (emphasis added)

Note that one county refuses to provide data about rejected ballots. Going forward, it is reasonable to expect less and less election subversion information to be released for propaganda and deceit purposes. Probably less data will be officially collected, making it easy to claim faux ignorance. The less the public knows about how effectively elections have been corrupted and subverted, the easier it is to sell false narratives. 

The profoundly mendacious Republican Party and its lying politicians and propaganda organs (Fox News, etc.) will lie and tells us that all the massive (non-existent) vote fraud has been wrung out of the process by valiant Republicans passing patriotic election-cleaning laws. The public will be lied to and deceived with a vengeance.