The Republican Party plan to subvert the 2022 elections is coalescing

This is another warning about the neo-fascist push by the Republican Party to kill American democracy and install a kleptocratic dictatorship. As discussed here yesterday, the GOP is focused on making fraud by Democratic voters a key part of its election subversion strategy. This post discusses another prong of attack on elections, intimidating voters at the polls and, in my opinion, that includes setting up the political infrastructure to fabricate evidence of voter fraud. The GOP is dead serious about attacking elections and Democratic and independent voters.

Politico writes:

‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections

Placing operatives as poll workers and building a "hotline" to friendly attorneys are among the strategies to be deployed in Michigan and other swing states.

Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.

The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.

“Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by POLITICO.

Backing up those front-line workers, “it’s going to be an army,” Seifried promised at an Oct. 5 training session. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

Separately, POLITICO obtained Zoom tapings of Tim Griffin, legal counsel to The Amistad Project, a self-described election-integrity group that Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani once portrayed as a “partner” in the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election, meeting with activists from multiple states and discussing plans for identifying friendly district attorneys who could stage real-time interventions in local election disputes.

On the recording, Griffin speaks of building a nationwide network of district attorney allies and how to create a legal “trap” for Winfrey.

“Remember, guys, we’re trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman,” Griffin said during a Sept. 21 meeting. “They’re the ones that can seat a grand jury. They’re the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.,” he said.  

In the introduction graphic on his training presentation, Seifried says the RNC’s goal is to “make it easy to vote and HARD TO CHEAT.” 

The recordings are among the first windows into what former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon, who’s been urging listeners to his podcast to take on election leadership positions, calls “the precinct strategy.”

But Penniman, the election watchdog, believes the strategy is designed to create enough disputes to justify intervention by GOP-controlled state legislatures, who declined to take such steps in 2020.

By now, most neutral observers can see that there are a few thin lines that still hold back Republican Party neo-fascism. One of them is crossing the line from not finding evidence to support GOP crackpottery and lies like the 2020 election was stolen. Crossing that  thin line to fabricating evidence needed to "prove" their crackpottery and lies is a huge temptation. It is just a very thin line. What harm could there possibly be in crossing it for the sake of the country?

And, once Republicans control political offices needed to pull off their crimes, that line will more likely than not be crossed for the first time (assuming it has not already been crossed). After that, it becomes easier to cross it again. Then again and again and again. The last vestige of a moral qualm will be buried under the Republican Party's overriding moral imperative: Sacred Republican Party ends justify the corrupt, immoral and/or criminal means. Republicans cannot win on the merits, so they will win on the deceit and cheat.

Then democracy and truth will die. The kleptocrat tyrant will rise, hiding behind the false claim that the effort was selfless and just for the sake and welfare of us and democracy.

Republican Party training materials in voter intimidation