Republican attacks on democracy are a national emergency. Will Democrats ever fight back?

Republican attacks on democracy are a national emergency.

I suppose it is merely accidental that all of these actions make it easier to pack ballot boxes with fraudulent votes.

Progressives are getting hysterical because they won't be able to cheat in elections anymore.

Based on data collected by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the incidence of voter fraud in the two decades before last year’s election was about 0.00006 per cent of total ballots cast. It was negligible in 2020, too, as Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, acknowledged at the time.

What distinguishes these efforts is that they target not only voters but also poll workers and election officials. The Texas bill makes it a criminal offense for an election official to obstruct the view of poll watchers, who are typically partisan volunteers, and grants those observers the right to record videos of voters at polling places. In Iowa, officials could be fined ten thousand dollars for “technical infractions,” such as failing to sufficiently purge voters from the rolls. In Florida, workers who leave drop boxes unattended, however briefly, can be fined twenty-five thousand dollars. In Georgia, poll watchers can challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters.

Even before the pandemic, sixty-five per cent of jurisdictions in the country were having trouble attracting poll workers. The threat of sizable fines and criminal prosecution will only make that task harder, and that’s clearly the point. Polls can’t operate without poll workers. Voters can’t vote if there are no polling places, or if they can’t stand in hours-long lines at the sites that are open—not to mention if other means of casting a ballot, such as by mail, have been outlawed.

That seems rather flippant, more like just shooting off a gratuitous insult -- "hysterical cheaters" -- than dealing with the facts at hand.

Based on data collected by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the incidence of voter fraud in the two decades before last year’s election was about 0.00006 per cent of total ballots cast. It was negligible in 2020, too, as Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, acknowledged at the time.

Can you address these actions and explain why you think they are justified?

Quote:

The Texas bill makes it a criminal offense for an election official to obstruct the view of poll watchers, who are typically partisan volunteers, and grants those observers the right to record videos of voters at polling places.

In Iowa, officials could be fined ten thousand dollars for "technical infractions," such as failing to sufficiently purge voters from the rolls.

In Florida, workers who leave drop boxes unattended, however briefly, can be fined twenty-five thousand dollars.

In Georgia, poll watchers can challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters.

The justification for that is, it prevents election workers from altering ballots.

The justification for that is, we don't want dead people casting votes.

The justification for that is, we don't want votes to be tampered with.

The justification for that is, we don't want dead people casting votes.

But there's no evidence that election workers change ballots.

Dead people don't cast ballots.

How would votes be "tampered with" when placed in a locked box? Ballot drop boxes are built to be secure -- they're not cardboard boxes sitting on a street corner. Electronic security should be installed as a backup in any case.

They don't.

This law means partisan poll watchers could challenge an unlimited number of living voters as well.

What happens is progressives show up and vote under the names of the dead people.

In October, a Luzerne County man — a registered Republican — was charged with felonies after trying to apply for a mail-in ballot in his dead mother’s name.

But possibly on a much larger scale.

And you know very well that I did not suggest that it is the Republicans who are doing it on a much larger scale.

Yes. Exactly like that. But possibly on a much larger scale.