The Republican National Committee is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in an Arizona election dispute this week and block up to 40,000 of the state’s registered voters from casting ballots in the presidential race.

Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from from voting in person or by mail.

Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney for the Campaign Legal Center who worked on the case, said she found that argument to be surprising.

“They are trying to upend the law as it has been in Arizona at least since 2018,” she said. “The voters who registered using the federal form were not asked to provide proof of citizenship.”

She said the Republican lawmakers and their attorneys who brought the case “didn’t cite a single example of a noncitizen who was enrolled. Not one. Why would someone who is not a citizen try to register? It’s a felony and would get you deported, just to cast one ballot.

  • grue@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    That’s exactly the problem: the MAGA fascists have been spending 4+ years going all-in on inserting their people into exactly those positions, up to and including SCOTUS. (And I don’t just mean SCOTUS’ conservative majority in general; I mean three of them literally helped perpetrate Bush v. Gore.) Are there enough non-traitorous officials left to effectively oppose them? I don’t know! It sure doesn’t seem like it here in Georgia, even despite Raffensperger and Kemp not bending the knee to the cult leader.

    I’m also extremely worried that (a) we need to be a bunch of normal people to form an organized resistance that goes well beyond just voting (e.g. to become poll watchers as a counter-balance to the MAGA ones), but also (b) any such tactics (at least ones I can think of) to counter the MAGAs’ election disruptions would themselves also be disruptive and thus play into the MAGAs’ hands anyway.

    In summary:

    • If MAGA election officials refuse to certify enough votes, they win.
    • If MAGA election observers successfully sabotage the count, they win.
    • If MAGA election observers fail to sabotage the count but cause enough disruption to cast it into doubt/get courts involved (either slow-walking it with MAGA judges like Aileen Cannon, or appealing it up to SCOTUS), they win.
    • If non-fascist election observers try to intervene to stop MAGA ones, it also causes enough disruption to cast it into doubt/get courts involved and the MAGAs win.
    • If non-fascists try to remove MAGAs from being in positions to do these things in the first place, they cry fraud, kick it to the courts, and win.

    There apparently are some new rules non-fascist politicians have passed to try to shore up the certification process, but I fear they’ll be “too little, too late.” (In fact, they’re so few that I can’t even find a news article to cite about them right now…) As for us regular citizens, there’s fuck-all we can do (at least that I can think of) to actively oppose the blatant attempted theft of the election, and instead we can only vote as if nothing is wrong and just sort of hope the MAGAs don’t have enough manpower (despite election denialism continuing to spread!) to pull it off even without any interference.

    I don’t know of any fascist movement in history that has successfully been resisted by acting like it’s business as usual in a normal functioning democracy and hoping for the best. But as far as I can tell, that’s what we’re doing.

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      2 months ago

      The MAGAs only win if the big blue states play along. I know that’s tantamount to civil war, but in the event of blatant election interference they should just refuse to accept the “new” federal government. Peaceful transition of power is a lie if the process is illegitimate.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      the problem with this is anyone who goes along with these plans risks jail etc and any republican pols joining in will deligitimize their own elections. Theres also no guarantee trump will protect these people (rw news called the j6 folks “antifa” at first)

      • grue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Way too many of the people who tried it last time not only remain at large, but weren’t even removed from their positions of trust. It has only emboldened them to try again, harder.