Update on Republican election subversion

Republican critical thinking in action

Research on the March primary in Texas is showing some evidence that new Republican anti-election laws are creating a race gap in rejected ballots. That is a high priority effect of GOP election subversion efforts. The New York Times writes:

A new Republican voting law led to the sharp rise in rejected ballots in the state’s recent primary election. An analysis shows that Black areas of Houston disproportionately had votes thrown out.

More than 18,000 voters in Texas’ most populous counties had their mail-in ballots rejected in the state’s primary election this month, according to a review of election data by The New York Times, a surge in thrown-out votes that disproportionately affected Black people in the state’s largest county and revealed the impact of new voting regulations passed by Republicans last year.

In Harris County, which includes Houston and is the state’s most populous county, areas with large Black populations were 44 percent more likely to have ballots rejected than heavily white areas, according to a review of census survey data and election results by the Harris County election administrator’s office.

The analysis also found that Black residents made up the largest racial group in six of the nine ZIP codes with the most ballot rejections in the county.  

The rejection rate in the state’s most populous counties was roughly 15 percent. By comparison, during the 2020 general election, nearly one million absentee ballots were cast statewide and just under 9,000 were thrown out, a rejection rate of roughly 1 percent.

This is early evidence that Republican anti-election laws could be having the intended effect of suppressing more Democratic votes than Republican votes. The key question is how effective will these efforts be nationwide in the 2022 and 2024 elections. 

If suppression of Democratic votes is insufficient to give results satisfactory to Republicans after the 2022 elections, it is likely (~98% chance IMO) that existing or new anti-election laws will be amended or written to improve targeting of Democratic votes with minimal impact on Republican votes. Those changes, if any, will be done in time to try to more effectively subvert the 2024 primary and general elections.

This is just an early glimpse of the effect GOP efforts to kill democracy and install some form of authoritarian Christian theocracy. One can only hope that more data will become available to the public. 

Obviously, release of inconvenient data like this will be troubling to Republicans. They may fight back by making it illegal to release voting data for independent analysis. Maybe the secrecy would be justified in the name of national security. Regardless of their excuse, by hiding election data for independent analysis the GOP would be free to lie about what effects their election subversion project had. Republican propaganda claims would then be that their laws have no differential effect on Democratic votes vs. Republican votes. There would be no data available to confirm or dispute that, leaving the GOP free to lie without concern about inconvenient facts and truths. 

Undoubtedly, the GOP will tell the public there is nothing to be worried about because “election integrity” will have been restored and all the massive voter fraud of 2020 will have been righteously eliminated by valiant Republican patriots in their defense of democracy and free and fair elections.[1]

Footnote: As argued here multiple times, blatant lies and hypocrisy do not even slightly faze Republican politicians and propagandists. They will effortlessly and shamelessly tell us they have cleansed American elections of all fraud while intentionally corrupting them for their own partisan gain.

Republican alt-reality