The Great Civics Lesson: How the GOP Will Steal the 2022 Election

During the run up to the 2020 election, one of the topics blogged about was how the Ol’ Pussy Grabber would steal the election. Ye Olde Blogge accurately predicted that he would use the electoral college and try to submit alternate slates of electors. Lucky for us, the anti-democratic forces were being led by the likes of Ruddy “Four Seasons” Giuliani and and Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell and, of course, Trump himself, who can’t lead a damn thing or do anything right.

It was an easy call, though. (a) Trump never does anything without cheating. He’s afraid to risk losing, so he cuts straight to cheating. Based on this alone, the 2016 election was stolen. And (2) once Biden was declared the winner, the only way to “legally” steal the election was through the electoral college.

Now that Trump is choking the Republican Party’s chicken, cheating has been deeply etched into the brand of MAGA so much so that no one can run, or at least thinks they can win, without embracing the Big Lie and promoting the absolute worst policies. In order to be a successful GQP politician, you have to be willing to allow 30,000+ preventable deaths per year to happen due to gun violence; you have to be willing to defend the 1,000,000 and counting preventable deaths from #COVID19; you have to be willing to prevent millions of Americans from being insured by Medicaid; and you have to be willing to condemn women to poverty and death by outlawing abortion. The only people willing to carry that load of shyte on their backs are those afflicted with the dark tetrad personality traits.

Only narcissists, sadists, psychopaths, and Machiavellians are willing to trade American lives and misery so that they can reap the windfalls of insider trader and all that sweet sweet dark money free speech that comes with elected office. Only the absolute worst among us without morals, guilt, or shame believe that the most important aspect of life is that they hold their elected office. In the cease pit that GQP has become, it is only the biggest stinkiest pieces that have floated to the top.

The only question left to answer is how will they try and steal the 2022 election and can we stop them? Unfortunately for us and our democracy, there are corrupt turds floating in the toilet bowl of the Republican Party that have sufficient executive functioning to make a better run at it. Also, lucky for us, there are some who are hanging around with enough moral scruples and concern for democracy to leak bits and pieces of their plan. The illustrious Heidi Przybyla formerly of NBC News has published a piece in Politico on leaked audio and video tape detailing the Michigan Republican Party’s plans for stealing that election.

Voter Suppression and Nullification

We all know about the grand GQP plan to pass voter suppression and nullification laws in various states. Voter suppression means making it harder to register to vote, stay registered, and vote. They’ve done this by creating hoops for voters to jump through to register, purging voter rolls of already registered voters, and then limiting access to polling places and voting methods. Voter nullification means being able to reject ballots that have already been cast so that they are not counted. Most of us think of this happening by allowing the state legislatures to interfere with local elections boards and take over the election certification process.

They have other tools that they are willing to use. They plan on hijacking the mechanics of the election as it is happening.

There are two types of non-voting people staffing polling stations: poll watchers and poll workers.

POLL WATCHERS are people who are present at polling stations and during ballot counting to observe the process. Because elections are administered by the states, each state has laws that govern who can be poll watchers, what they can do, and how they are trained and qualified. However, in general, they appointed by candidates or political parties, so they can be explicitly partisan.

Because of their partisan nature, states have laws that prevent them from intimidating or interfering with the operation of the polling station or the counting of the ballots. And, you guessed it, in 2021, state legislatures across our fair land enacted laws that expanded their powers and allows them to interfere more easily and intimidate more effectively.

POLL WORKERS are usually little old ladies who sit at a table and smile a lot. They help you figure out if you’re registered, tell you what to do if you’re not or there is some other problem, and give you your ballot. They also help set up the polling station, including whatever machines are being used to vote and help get the ballots to the counting stations after the polls close.

They are trained by local elections officials. It is a paid position. Because of the #COVID19 pandemic, many of the older adults who usually did this work didn’t in 2020, and it was taken over by younger folks in overwhelming numbers. Their whole job is make sure that everyone showing up at the polling place has their best shot at casting their vote! That’s their job: understand the process of voting, the problems that might occur, the solutions to those problems, and help people navigate it from standing in line to carrying the cast ballots to the place where they’re counted.

Poll workers play a crucial role in ensuring the strength and integrity of the voting process. They are the lifeblood of America’s election system and they help secure our rights as U.S. citizens.

What is a Poll Worker?

Here’s the Republican plan as stated by a Republican Party operative during a meeting of grassroots activists in Michigan:

1. Place their trained poll workers in key polling sites in heavily Democratic districts. The parties send lists of recommended poll workers to be trained and appointed by the election officials.
2. Recruit local attorneys who will be in contact with the poll workers through a specially developed messaging app to advise them in real time.
3. Develop a network of party-friendly district attorneys to block vote counts in targeted districts.

This is a complete subversion of our electoral process. Poll workers are supposed to be there to help, not cruise the polling places for “suspicious,” read that Black, voters like some common Ross Jeffries wannabe cruising the local disco for hot chicks. It is being done with complete malice aforethought. This is premeditated. It is planned, plotted, and executed.

“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.

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

They set a goal of recruiting 5,600 potential poll workers and recently submitted 850 names to the Detroit clerk. The clerk is legally bound to choose names from the list to ensure “bipartisanship.” In this case, the GQP has put the partisan back into bipartisanship.

The lesson from the 2020 election is that the coup has to have a thin veneer of legality smeared over it. That veneer comes from bringing cases in court. They need lawyers to advise on the legalities of the challenges and then district attorneys to bring the cases. The 2022 election will be fought in the courts. They want to bog the whole thing down to force non-democratic resolutions to contested elections. As Seifried said, “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?”

Tim Griffin, legal counsel to The Amistad Project, a self-described election-integrity group that was once affiliated with Trump’s campaign through the malodorous machinations of Rudy Giuliani is recorded as claiming that district attorneys are more powerful than members of Congress because they can start investigations, seat grand juries,use subpoenas, and invoke many other legal measures.

Apparently, dancing in the fever dreams of many GQP operatives is cascade of chaos:

• A politically motivated and politically trained poll worker initiates challenges to numerous voters (Black) at targeted polling places (heavily Democratic districts).
• Realtime legal advice is given to the politically motivated and trained poll worker by an equally politically motivated lawyer to make sure that things are mucked up but good.
• Politically motivated challenges to the vote at the targeted heavily Democratic districts are brought to the Board of Canvassers, which have politically motivated believers in the Big Lie appointed to them who are impressed by the shear stink arising from all of the challenges. By Jove, where there’s smoke, there must be fire! Except when it is just dry humping ice in water.
• Politically motivated local district attorneys initiate investigations into polling fraud due to all of the plausible accusations initiated by the politically motivated and trained poll workers, supported by the politically motivated and trained lawyers.
• GQP dominated legislatures then intervene who refuse to certify the election results.
• And presto changeo, Whitmer’s election as governor and Jocelyn’s election as secretary of state are no longer valid.
• Throw in GQP federal and state judges and suddenly even the legal challenges are in doubt.

If you had any doubt about the malice for democracy that courses through Republican veins, this should clear that up for you. They are seeking to dismantle democracy from the inside out. They are going to remove the very pieces, the people, that make democracy work and replace them with people who will subvert the will of the people.

Image Attribution

“Domino’s scooters” by Bourguiboeuf is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.