Category Archives: Voter Suppression

We May Have Already Lost Our Democracy.

Posted on by

If you believe we dodged a bullet on January 6, 2020, you are most certainly correct. But the outcome of the insurrection is still very much in doubt. Forget Trump 2024. He will likely already be in prison by that time. At very least, he will be banned from holding office.

The real threat is the five-vote radical majority in the Supreme Court.

Flexing their newfound muscle, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas have already agreed to hear a case that could give state legislatures the power to choose the winners of elections. All they need is to convince the Trump-appointed Coney-Barrett to help them further gut our Constitution.

In the most extreme Republikkkan-controlled states, that would mean legislatures could overturn the will of the people if they don’t like the election outcome. Given such power in 2020, states like Arizona would have almost certainly handed the presidency to Trump. And, given that a majority of the states are currently GOP-controlled, that could ensure a never-ending chain of Republikkkan presidents, regardless of the popular vote.

Unfortunately, we have precious few ways of preventing such an outcome. We can call for the four justices who perjured themselves during their Senate confirmation hearings to be impeached, so that a new court majority can overturn the most egregious of this court’s decisions. But impeachment convictions are unlikely to pass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

That leaves us with only the ballot box at our disposal. In the coming mid-term election, everyone who wants to preserve our democracy must repudiate the radical right by voting for solid Democrat majorities in both the US House of Representatives and in the US Senate. Congress can then go about the process to codify reproductive rights, privacy rights, and same-sex marriage rights, as well as strengthening voting rights for all Americans.

This is the only means certain to prevent our nation from becoming a failed democracy further controlled by theocrats, autocrats, and plutocrats. (If you don’t know the definition of these terms, I suggest you look them up. Because no matter your political or theological beliefs, if they gain even more control, you will wind up holding the short end of the stick.)

It Is No Longer Accurate To Call White Nationalists Extremists.

Posted on by

While those who espouse white nationalism may seem extreme to Democrats and to many independents, it has become clear that they now represent the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Don’t believe me?

Perhaps you will trust Miles Taylor, the former Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during the Goerge W. Bush and Donald J. Trump administrations. A former Republican himself, he says that fully 50 percent of today’s GOP voters believe in Replacement Theory, the racist theory that Democrats are encouraging the illegal immigration of people of color in order to reduce white Christian Americans to minority status.

Once a theory propagated by only the most twisted racists on the very fringes of society – the KKK and neo-Nazis – it has been elevated from the sewers by Trump and mainstreamed by Fox News along with rightwing radio pundits, social media, and various Internet celebrities. The violent results of their hateful rhetoric have accelerated throughout the last 5 years, beginning with the “Alt Right’ March in Charlottesville and culminating in last week’s racist shootings at a Buffalo grocery store.

Of course, those who have incited such hatred refuse to claim any responsibility. And, though they may well briefly tone down their rhetoric, they will soon return to full-throated racism.

To underscore the ties between the GOP and racial terrorism, CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) will hold its annual conference in Budapest, Hungary. Why? Because Hungary’s dictator, Viktor Orban, espouses the same racist replacement theory as much of the GOP. Indeed, so does Russia’s resident dictator and Trump supporter, Vladimir Putin. Which may explain why 25 percent of the Republican congressional caucus voted against more military aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Putin’s invasion.

Moreover, according to Taylor, 50 percent of GOP voters believe in the cult-like conspiracies espoused by QAnon, including the preposterous belief that Democrats are pedophiles and that Democratic leaders and A-list Hollywood celebrities are running a child sex trafficking ring.

Finally, Taylor notes that 70 percent of the GOP think the 2020 election was stolen despite all evidence to the contrary. Not even Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General nor the Trump-appointed judges and justices believed in the claims of widespread voter fraud. Of course, there were a few notable cases of individual voter fraud. But they were Trump supporters who returned ballots for dead family members. And, of course, there’s the case of Trump’s Chief of Staff who illegally registered to vote in two states.

Nevertheless, the GOP and many of its candidates continue to espouse the “Big Lie.” At the same time, GOP governors and legislatures are working overtime to ensure they control upcoming elections. By that, they don’t simply mean they want to win the elections. They are taking steps to rig them by any means necessary.

Taylor says the DHS determined the biggest national security threat is domestic terrorism. I would amend the threat to include the GOP.

Why You Should Take Tyrants At Their Word.

Posted on by

In the 1970s and 80s, after looking at the nation’s changing demographics, Republicans embraced southern racists still angry at having lost the Civil War and furious with forced integration of schools. Around the same time, they also crafted a deal with far-right evangelicals – people like Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Kenneth Copeland, Jim Baker, John Hagee, and Pat Richardson. The deal was that this so-called “Moral Majority” would deliver votes in exchange for the GOP embracing their cruel and hateful ideas, including a ban on abortion.

This unholy alliance resulted in the daily picketing of clinics, harassment of women seeking abortions, distribution of home addresses and license plates of clinic personnel, the bombing of clinics, and the murder of abortion providers.

Through it all, the GOP platform and most GOP candidates called for an end to abortion. They began stacking the courts with anti-abortion judges and they prayed for the deaths of liberal and moderate Supreme Court justices. They passed draconian laws in GOP-led states like Texass that would imprison women for having an abortion, even if they traveled to another state where abortion is legal or if they ordered abortion pills online.

Most of the GOP’s current or pending laws make no exception for victims of rape and incest. They have made it clear that they will not help feed the children of forced births. They will not provide them with healthcare. They will not even agree to pay for improvements to our already over-stretched and disastrous foster care system.

In reality, the GOP is pro-birth. Not pro-life.

And given the fact that a significant majority of Americans, including Republicans, favor reproductive freedom, this is truly tyranny by a minority. Yet many of you, much like the cancer stricken notorious RBG who refused to resign when a Democratic president could appoint her successor, failed to act. You simply assumed they couldn’t take away a woman’s reproductive freedom.

It took them 50 years but, through a combination of legislative tricks to steal a SCOTUS seat and to hypocritically fill another one, they have apparently succeeded. You didn’t need a crystal ball to see it coming. They told you what they would do if they gained control of the Court.

And if you take these same people at their word, they won’t stop there.

They have openly talked about banning contraception, gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, LBGTQ rights, and affirmative action. They have tried to take away public school funding, Social Security, and Medicare. Even the freedom to practice religions other than Christianity, the right to assemble, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the rights of certain minorities to vote are on the line.

It doesn’t matter that most Americans disagree with Republicans and evangelicals on these issues. They have a plan to seize permanent control of our government. They may have failed on January 6, 2021, but, if you listen to them, they haven’t given up. The only way to stop them is to vote while you still can – in the midterms and beyond. To end this pending nightmare and the collapse of our democracy, they must be convincingly and overwhelmingly repudiated.

Why It’s Entirely Appropriate To Call Republicans Fascists.

Posted on by

The ideology of today’s Republican Party not only meets the original definition of fascism (government by the corporate right), but Republicans have also embraced many of the bullying actions of some of history’s most notorious fascists.

Cloaked in nationalism and a veneer of religion, they are well on their way to diminishing many of our constitutional rights. For example, they are focused on making it more difficult for blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Democrats to vote. They have labeled Black Lives Matter protests as terrorism. They are determined to take away the right of women to control their own bodies. In their attempts to block immigration, they have demanded unlawful arrests and unlawful searches and seizure of property. They have passed laws to undermine protections for minority groups. And they seem fixated on taking away freedom of religion and freedom from religion by naming the US a Christian nation.

More worryingly, despite all evidence to the contrary, a super majority of Republicans actually believe that Joe Biden, our 46th president who was duly elected by a large margin of popular and electoral votes, is illegitimately in office. And a significant number of Republicans believe that violence is an acceptable way to deal with losing an election. Indeed, many Republicans – including those in Congress – have condoned, justified and excused the violent insurrection of January 6.

Moreover, a recent study published by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden (an independent research institute that measures the stability of the world’s democracies) shows that the Republican Party in the US is flouting democratic norms and is becoming more akin to authoritarian parties in Turkey and Hungary. As proof, prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many Republican leaders and pundits, including the former Republican president of the United States and MotherTucker Carlson, embraced the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin, calling him a “genius” and “a better leader than Joe Biden.” In fact, it’s no secret that the twice-impeached former president openly admired Putin, bragged about accepting Russian funds for his companies, tried to delay sanctions against Russia, and held military shipments to Ukraine hostage for political purposes. In addition, many in Trump’s 2016 campaign had multiple contacts with Russian operatives. And the NRA has admitted to taking money from 23 Russian sources and it’s suspected of illegally funneling much of that money to Republican political campaigns.

Having thus enabled and encouraged Putin, Republicans are now crying crocodile tears over Russia’s war crimes while, at the same time, blaming President Biden for being “weak” and not doing enough to defend Ukraine.

None of this should come as a surprise to any casual political observer given that the Party has elected and supported such notables as Sarah Palin, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Lauren Boebert – people who are more suited to occupy a mental ward than a congressional seat. Much of the rest of the party, people like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Kevin McCarthy, and Ron Johnson, are cynical opportunists who are far more concerned about winning office and staying in office than they are about maintaining our democracy.

If you want more evidence of the Republican Party’s decline into fascism, think back to the summer of 2020 when the Republicans most hated bogeymen was a loosely-knit group of counter-protesters calling themselves Antifa, which – wait for it – stands for anti-fascists.

The GQP’s Decades Long, Multi-Pronged Assault On Democracy.

Posted on by

If you think the insurrection ended on January 6th, I regret to inform you that it was only the tip of the proverbial autocratic iceberg. In fact, the billionaires have been working to undermine our democracy for more than 60 years. And they haven’t stopped now.

In one of history’s greatest ironies, Charles Koch, James McGill Buchanan, Jr. and the remnants of the John Birch Society used the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education to co-opt the Republican Party – the political party that had ended slavery. Since then, they have spent hundreds of millions to undermine our federal government and democracy itself.

Hiding under the cloak of the Republican Party, they have tried to starve the government of the funds it needs to serve the people. Through large donations, they corrupted law schools and university economics programs to teach their political views. Once they gained control of the Supreme Court, they pushed for legal opinions to equate money with free speech (Buckley v Valeo) and to equate corporate rights with those of individuals (Citizens United v FEC) to better fund their operations. That resulted in an avalanche of dark (aka dirty) campaign money to help elect like-minded candidates.

Shouting liberty and freedom, they eroded common sense regulations designed to protect Americans. They repealed the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine which unleashed their propagandists (Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, and rightwing radio hosts) to use mass media to deliver and repeat their many hateful lies. And recognizing that it’s more difficult to win elections when more people vote, they have implemented a decades long attack on voting rights with strict ID laws, reduced voting hours, reduced numbers of polling places, and restrictions for mail-in voting.

Believing it’s easier to control state governments than the federal government, they created ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) to provide conservative legislators with “model” bills that are written by and for large corporations. To spread fear of the federal government, they embraced the NRA to expand gun ownership and to create even more fear. When cities passed ordinances to regulate short-term rentals, to ban plastic bags, and to protect undocumented immigrants, they passed laws to pre-empt cities’ self-rule.

As they filled Congress with anti-government zealots and conspiracy theorists, they have continued to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy causing the nation to descend into a plutocracy. They have used the filibuster to block most legislation that would benefit ordinary working people. Once they got a wannabe autocrat into the White House, they used him to further cut taxes, cut regulations, sell-off oil-drilling rights and mineral rights on protected lands, and to pack the courts with partisan judges.

To ensure Trump and their other candidates would maintain control of the government, they tried to extort a foreign government into opening a false investigation into the Bidens. They purged voter registrations and replaced the postmaster to slow the pandemic-created avalanche of mail-in ballots. When that didn’t work, they tried to get state election officials to find enough votes to change the election outcome. They continued to promote the idea of massive voter fraud which resulted in the January 6 insurrection in a violent attempt to block the certification of electoral votes. Even now they continue to contest the election results by claiming that China dumped thousands and thousands of ballots into the states Trump lost and that Italy had hacked electronic voting machines.

Even more concerning is that Trump’s disgraced National Security Advisor and Qanon conspiracy theorist, Michael Flynn, has called for a Myanmar-style military coup!

So, the choice is no longer between Republican and Democrat. It is now between autocracy and democracy.

Do Republicans Believe In Democracy? Have They Ever?

Posted on by

It’s a legitimate question. Especially given their response to the 2020 election.

Instead of accepting the fact that Biden won by an overwhelming margin and conducting a self-examination of their policies, Republicans have chosen to believe Trump’s big lie that the election was “stolen.” That is simply not true as confirmed by more than 60 court cases filed by the Trump campaign that found there was no evidence of voting improprieties. Georgia? Led by the Republican Secretary of State, two recounts confirmed Biden’s win. Arizona? The state has long had one of the secure election processes in the US. Pennsylvania? Biden won the state by more than 34,000 votes. What’s more, federal election officials, including Trump appointees, issued a joint statement that the 2020 election was the “most secure in American history.”

So what is the Republican response? They’re dead set on counting and recounting the votes until they like the results. As if that’s not enough, they’ve set about making it more difficult for minorities and Democrats to vote by restricting early voting, mail-in voting, poll hours, poll locations, and instituting new ID requirements. In some states, they’ve introduced bills to limit the powers of Democratic Secretaries of State and County Recorders. And, in Georgia, they even passed a law making it illegal to provide water to those waiting in line to vote!

All of this is despite the fact that in many of those states and districts, down ballot Republicans won their elections. So why would Democrats “rig” the presidential election while permitting other Republicans to win? It simply does not make sense!

This isn’t the first time Republicans have been at odds with democracy.

In the 1950s, Republicans led by Senator Joe McCarthy, suspended the civil rights of thousands of Americans who were accused of having attended a communist rally, listened to a socialist speaker, or even reported on them. They “blacklisted” hundreds of Americans, causing them their reputations and their livelihoods.

In 1960, without evidence, Republicans screamed that the election was rigged for JFK.

In 1968, Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon sent envoys to the Paris peace talks between the US and Vietnam asking the Vietnamese to delay the talks until after the election to improve his election chances. He won. But, as a result, the war continued another 2-1/2 years and thousands more died. And, in 1972, Republican incumbent Nixon subverted the election by ordering his “plumbers” group to break into the Democratic National Committee’s offices to steal information on his opponent.

Following Nixon’s example, in 1980, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan undermined hostage negotiations between Iran and the Carter administration promising Iranians a better deal if they delayed the hostages’ release until after the election. Several years later, Reagan secretly sold US-made weapons to Iran in exchange for funding for a secret war conducted by the Central American Contras.

In 2000, the conservative majority of Supreme Court, stopped the recount in Florida and awarded the election to Republican George W. Bush. A consortium of media later confirmed that a significant majority of Floridians intended to vote for Al Gore. But Gore’s victory was undermined by Governor Jeb Bush and the Republican Secretary of State who purged thousands of voters from voting rolls in Democratic majority counties. As a result, despite winning the popular vote, Gore fell 5 electoral votes short of Bush.

In 2016, Republican candidate Donald J. Trump used polling information and strategies stolen from the DNC, DCCC, and the Hillary Clinton campaign in addition to a large disinformation campaign orchestrated by Russians to defeat Clinton by narrow margins in four key states. Trump lost the popular vote by more than 3 million.

And, despite losing the 2020 election by more than 7-1/2 million votes and 74 electoral votes (an electoral margin Trump called a landslide in 2016), Trump enflamed his supporters and aimed them at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 to stop the certification of the vote. Though the violent insurrection failed, Trump and his most virulent Republican supporters continue to call for the violent overthrow of our duly elected government. Trump’s former National Security Advisor and convicted felon, Gen. Michael Flynn, even called for a Myanmar-style military coup at a QAnon gathering last week.

It’s clear that, as long as the Republican Party exists in its current form, our democracy is in extreme jeopardy.

The Ongoing Theft Of Generational Wealth From Black And Brown People.

Posted on by

As we mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, it’s important to understand how little has changed in the past century.

First, it should be noted that the Tulsa massacre was only one of at least 40 similar attacks on people of color, not including the genocide of Native Americans. We should also recognize that all of these acts were committed by the white majority population inflamed by sensationalized stories in a biased media. And, though smaller in scope, the attacks are still happening – by white supremacists, by the police, and by our flawed criminal justice system in which the poor, especially people of color, are pushed to accept plea bargains under threat of draconian sentences.

Further, as in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood, most people of color have been robbed of their ability to accumulate generational wealth.

For example, Native Americans have had their lands stolen and treaties broken. They have been robbed of mineral rights. They have been denied sufficient funds to build proper schools and infrastructure. The courts have continually denied them the ability to block the destruction of sacred lands, including burial sites. And, as the result of recent legislation, they have, once again, been robbed of the right to vote.

Similarly, Asians have been victimized by periods of violence, as well as legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the government-ordered Japanese Internment of World War II which resulted in stolen property and wealth. And, though we rely on Latin American immigrants to harvest and prepare most of our food, they are mistreated and denied reasonable compensation for their work under constant threat of deportation.

Yet many Americans, indoctrinated by rightwing media and unwilling to recognize such theft, would have you believe that the reason so many people of color live in poverty is that they lack the work ethic of Caucasians. That they’re all too willing to live off the taxes from “real” Americans. They simply can’t understand or admit that much of poverty is the result of a biased and unfair system in which the wealthy white majority makes the rules. For example, the current Mayor of Tulsa refuses to acknowledge that the victims of the attack on Black Wall Street are owed reparations. Yet his own ancestral family came to wealth and prominence off the backs of nearly 1,000 slaves!

If we are ever to achieve racial equality, it must include an acknowledgment of our historical misdeeds and their impact on the present. Our actions must go beyond embracing the 1619 Project designed to teach children the truth of our history of slavery and racism. We must go beyond affirmative action. Beyond criminal justice reform. We must stop the GOP attempts to restrict voting rights for people of color. And we must agree on some form of reparations. We must pay for our sins.

Stop Calling Senator Joe Manchin A Centrist!

Posted on by

For more than 40 years, the Republican Party has moved further and further to the right until 2020 when it dived right off the political spectrum into a delusional abyss. What once was a political party that believed in free markets and fiscal restraint has, over time, become anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, white nationalist, pro-gun, pro-violence, and pro-fascist. And, since 2016, it has become a cult of Trump – the willing accomplices of a conman and crime boss.

By contrast, since the 1950’s, the Democratic Party has experienced relatively little change. It has long believed in the power of government to do good. To help people by providing safety nets, retirement funds, healthcare access, and social justice. Unlike the GQP, it believes in protecting working people from predatory corporations and the wealthy. It promotes worker safety, living wages, freedom, human rights, and democracy. And it holds fast to the principles of the Constitution. (The real Constitution. Not some 18th Century interpretation conflating the Constitution with the Articles of Confederation.)

As you can see, there really is no middle ground.

With such a gaping canyon between the two parties, what is there to negotiate? What is the compromise between fascism and democracy? Between discrimination and compassion? Between dying and living?

How then can anyone, like Manchin, claim to be a centrist? Clearly, what Manchin has become is a self-serving obstructionist. A pawn the GQP can use to stop any form of progress. By refusing to consider ending, or even modifying, the filibuster, Manchin and his sidekick, Kyrsten Sinema, stand in opposition to voting rights, racial justice, gender equality, a thriving economy, a healthy environment, and a healthy climate.

If you want a term that more accurately describes Manchin, I’d recommend “opportunist” because he’s relishing his newfound attention and power. Or, if you’d prefer a term that describes his political ideology, I’d suggest “conservative.” He more accurately fits in that category than the GQP politicians who long ago abandoned it.

The Self-Defeating Politics Of Now.

Posted on by

Now that President Biden has completed his first 100 days in office, a number of special interest groups have expressed their frustration that he has not yet fixed all of the nation’s problems. Of course, it’s to be expected that Republicans are upset with the Biden administration. But many of his supporters are also unhappy.

For example, organizations representing the immigrant community believe that the Biden administration has not moved quickly enough to reunite children with their families after the Trump administration’s separation policy. They believe that unaccompanied children have not been moved out of holding facilities quickly enough. And they are frustrated that Biden has not yet introduced an immigration reform bill.

Likewise, the environmental community is upset that Biden has not yet banned fracking or ended fossil fuel subsidies. They believe he has not moved quickly enough or far enough to mitigate climate change. The groups against gun violence are frustrated that Biden has not pushed strongly enough for gun control and assault weapons bans. The black community is frustrated that more has not been done to fight voter suppression, police brutality, and systemic racism. Other groups believe that Biden should have already expanded the Supreme Court to offset the seat stolen by Mitch McConnell and the GQP, that he should have held fast to the $15 minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan, that he hasn’t eliminated college debt, that he hasn’t shared enough COVID-19 vaccines with developing countries…the list is long and growing.

Some of these groups have even threatened to end their support of Democrats in the next election!

Have they forgotten who created all of these problems in the first place? Have they forgotten that it was Republicans who ripped immigrant children from the arms of their parents and failed to keep track of them? Have they forgotten that Republicans support and are supported by the gun lobbies? Have they forgotten that the voter suppression bills have all been sponsored by Republicans? Have they forgotten that the Trump administration embraced white supremacists? Have they forgotten the rampant corruption within the Trump administration? Have they forgotten that the Trump administration failed to react to the pandemic, costing more than 575,000 American lives? Have they forgotten that the GQP violently invaded our Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election?

At the same time, these people seem to have ignored what Biden has done.

In his first 100 days, Biden signed more than 60 executive orders to overturn some of the Trump administration’s most heinous actions. His Rescue Plan has helped bring the economy back from the brink. His vaccination plan has made COVID-19 vaccines available to more than 200 million Americans. He has reopened negotiations with Iran to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons. He has restarted foreign aid to Central American nations to reduce the need for their citizens to emigrate to the US. He has sanctioned Russia for its interference in our elections and its cyberattacks. He has announced an end to America’s longest war. He is sending vaccines and aid to India, the country hardest hit by COVID. He overturned the Trump administration’s discriminatory ban on transgender Americans serving in the military. He has stopped the deportation of US military veterans who had agreed to serve as a way of gaining citizenship. And that’s only a partial list of his accomplishments in the first 100 days.

These groups, which have been given voice by the media, would do well to remember that the Trump administration refused to cooperate during the traditional transition period – the roughly 10-week period between the election and the inauguration – a period that included a GQP attack on democracy. So, in reality, Biden’s first 100 days were the transition period! Given that, and the traditional GQP obstruction, Biden’s accomplishments are truly amazing!

To the well-intentioned groups that have been so vocal in their frustrations, I can only advise: “Patience, grasshoppers!”

Turning Point.

Posted on by

The threat of losing our democracy in the US did not end on January 6th. Republicans insist the 2020 election is not over. Not by a long shot.

Never mind that the Trump campaign lost more than 60 court cases to overturn 2020 election results, including in courts ruled by Trump appointees. Disregard the fact that Trump lost numerous recounts. Forget the fact that Biden accumulated over 7 million more votes than Trump. Ignore the fact that the few examples of voter fraud were committed by Republicans.

In a true democracy, that would be enough to force a political party to accept defeat. But Republicans no longer care about preserving our democracy. Having failed at their many attempts to overturn a free and fair election, including a violent insurrection aimed at murdering Democrats and holding congressional representatives hostage until they agreed to reinstall Trump in the Oval Office, it is abundantly clear that Republicans only care about winning. Winning at any cost.

So here we are on the precipice of becoming a failed democracy. A nation in which some citizens, based on the color of their skin and the size of their bank accounts, have long found it difficult to vote. A nation in which the vote of a resident of Wyoming counts nearly four times that of a California resident. A nation in which millions of residents of Washington, D.C. have no representation. A nation in which legislative and congressional districts are created to ensure that only Republicans can win them.

Yet, despite their advantages, neither of the last two Republican presidents won a majority of the popular vote.

As the Republican Party strayed further and further from reality, as its policies became increasingly unpopular, it resorted to fear tactics. Fear of the other. It created a propaganda network to constantly attack Democrats. It pandered to corporations, sponsoring legislation written by the secretive ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council). It pandered to evangelical Christians by demonizing abortion and promoting discrimination. It pandered to millionaires and billionaires by promoting tax cuts and looking the other way as they exploited tax shelters to protect their wealth. And it embraced violent militias and white supremacists.

Now, having recognized that its structural advantages and dirty money are no longer enough to win, the party has decided to attack democracy itself. In 49 of our 50 states, Republicans have introduced legislation designed to make voting more difficult, especially for black and brown people and the working poor. And, in Arizona, the Republican-led legislature has engineered an audit of the 2020 vote, using a questionable company led by a conspiracy theorist. While denying access to the process by journalists and impartial observers, and by questionable procedures including ultraviolet lights and photographic scans of ballots, they hope to prove their previously announced claim: The election was stolen. If they do, Republicans are certain to conduct similar audits in other states with the goal of claiming that Biden is an illegitimate president.

Given Republican attempts to engineer elections and their results, it has become abundantly clear that Congress must pass bills to recognize the District of Columbia as a state and to create national standards for elections, improving voter registration and voting access while protecting election integrity.

Our democracy hangs in the balance.