Since the November 2020 elections, I thought that Republicans would be tempted and cross a line from merely alleging massive fraud and crimes by Democrats to fabricating evidence to “prove” their false allegations. I expected the crackpot Cyber Ninja vote recount in Arizona to be an example of evidence fabrication, but that did not happen. The Cyber Ninjas and Republican vote fraud claims were just repeated, without any evidence of widespread vote fraud. No evidence, e.g., fake ballots with fake votes, was fabricated and shown as proof of vote fraud in Arizona.
Republican neo-fascists just didn't quite have the guts to fabricate and submit vote fraud evidence.
Republicans definitely want to commit vote fraud. So far, the clearest evidence of Republican intent to commit fraud has included the phone call the ex-president made to the Georgia Secretary of State, where he asked the Secretary to "find" about 11,780 votes so that he could be named as the faux winner of the 2020 election in Georgia. If the Secretary had done so, that would have been an example of the massive vote fraud that Republican elites have been constantly howling about.
Now, Republicans in Michigan appear to have crossed the line into real live evidence fabrication on a large scale. Evidence of Republican fraud is fake signatures on a state ballot measure and on nominating petitions for Republican candidates for Governor of Michigan. Evidence has been fabricated. Republicans in Michigan have crossed this critically important line of defense of democracy and the rule of law.
Several sources are reporting on massive fraudulent signatures that Republicans have gathered, and in some instances, fraudulently submitted to state officials as valid signatures. Yahoo News reports:
A Republican effort in Michigan to put what they describe as an anti-voter fraud initiative on November’s ballot has failed after tens of thousands of signatures on a required petition were discovered to be fraudulent.
The Wolverine State GOP had mounted a petition drive to place something they call “Secure MI Vote” on the ballot during the November midterm elections. The initiative is nearly identical to a bill restricting absentee voting and imposing voter ID requirements that was vetoed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer last year.
If successful, the initiative would’ve enacted the restrictions into law without any chance for Ms Whitmer to veto it.
But organisers have dropped plans to submit their petition after realizing that roughly 20,000 of the 435,000 signatures gathered were fraudulent.
There, the faux signatures were gathered, but the Republicans behind that fraud did not have the guts to submit them. They feared what is left of the rule of law.
As usual, the radical right propaganda sprang into instant damage control and spin & lies action. Truthout writes on the spin control and the actual fraud the Michigan GOP committed:
“The fact of the matter is our volunteers, our supporters had put in too much hard work for us to end up getting bounced off the ballot due to some technicality,” he told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.
The announcement came just days after the state’s Bureau of Elections and Board of Canvassers disqualified five of the 10 Republicans running for governor, including frontrunners James Craig and Perry Johnson, after discovering that thousands of the signatures on the petitions they circulated to qualify for the ballot were fraudulent. The Bureau of Elections identified 36 petition circulators who submitted at least 68,000 fraudulent signatures in the gubernatorial primary, as well as in nine other nominating contests. Craig and Johnson argued they were victims of the fraud, not its perpetrators, but a court upheld both of their disqualifications this week.
“At the end of the day, you have to take responsibility for who you hired to collect your signatures,” said Nancy Wang, executive director of Voters Not Politicians, a nonpartisan advocacy group that successfully backed a citizen initiative to reform redistricting.
Wang accused the campaign of trying to “abuse” the citizen initiative process.
“They’re trying to use it as a way to do an end-run around the voters,” she said. “In fact, they’re supposed to be using it to demonstrate that they have a level of support, that they have the right to be on the ballot. They haven’t been able to do that.”
Roe suggested that the petition circulators had faked the signatures. But long before Wednesday’s announcement, the Secure MI Vote drive was plagued by allegations that petition circulators were misleading voters. Numerous reports on social media and in local news outlets alleged that petition circulators made blatantly false statements to Black voters while trying to convince them to sign a petition that could “risk their own disenfranchisement.”
The ballot measure fraudsters claim that 20,000 fraudulent signatures were just a mere technicality. Just a technicality. Republican laws to subvert elections in red states rely heavily on punishing technical errors by voters in elections. Some of those errors are felonies. Neo-fascist Republicans are hell bent on severely punishing errors by voters who make honest mistakes. But Republican elites who make 20,000 mistakes, honest or not, dismiss that a just an innocent technicality.
Here is another key trait of American neo-fascism: The laws apply to most average people, particularly non-Republicans, but they do not apply to Republican elites and rich people generally. Elite neo-fascists can break laws in the name of technicalities, while most everyone else gets the shaft.
Also note, the GOP governor candidates who committed their fraud claim victimhood. They assert they were victims of fraud by the signature gatherers. They deny all responsibility. They have plausible deniability on their side.
One can just feel how tempting it is to fabricate evidence. Once that line is crossed for the first time, it gets easier on the second, and even easier on the third. And then democracy and the rule of law falls to tyrant demagogues and kleptocrats.
Q: What are the odds of any Republican politician in Michigan being prosecuted for fraud?
A: Close to zero.
Q: Should Republican candidates who submitted fraudulent signatures for candidates for governor be held responsible for submitting 68,000 fraudulent signatures?
A: Opinions will vary. But Republicans will say hell no and they have plausible deniability, the fraudsters’ best friend, on their side. It does not matter what non-Republican opinions are, because plausible deniability will protect the Republican guilty, even more than it protects the non-Republican innocent.
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