Source: Drew Angerer / Getty
It seems that the GOP has conceded Trump can’t get the votes to win unless they help him cheat. Earlier his month, we reported that the Georgia State Election Board voted in favor of disrupting democracy through a policy that essentially gives legislators the right to refuse to certify votes in the 2024 presidential race if they believe (not prove) the election process has been tampered with. And since the MAGA-fied GOP has a four-year record of seeing election interference where it doesn’t exist, critics of the bill understandably fear Republican officials will use it to justify declining to certify votes for Vice President Kamala Harris even if there’s no evidence that the votes are illegitimate. (It’s not paranoia if you’ve already seen them do it.)
On Monday, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party of Georgia and several other plaintiffs, including county board members, filed a lawsuit against the Georgia State Election Board, accusing it of making up new rules that, among other things, conflict with already existing rules.
From NBC News:
At the heart of the civil suit, filed in Fulton County, are two items the election board passed this month: the reasonable inquiry rule and the examination rule.
The suit says that the rules conflict with Georgia’s statutes governing certification and that the election board did not follow procedures for rulemaking as required by state law. It therefore asks the court to pause the two rules to the extent that they conflict with existing law.
The plaintiffs are also asking for a declaration that election results must be certified by Georgia’s statutory deadline of Nov. 12 and that certification is mandatory rather than discretionary.
In all fairness…
The language in the bill doesn’t allow Republicans to flat-out refuse vote certification just because they’ve poked their fingers in their ears and sang, “la, la, la, la, la, I don’t care, Trump won!” in response to receiving votes declared for Harris. The new rules would allow county election board members to conduct “reasonable” inquiries before they certify results. The issue is—when in the last four years have we seen MAGA Republicans employ reason?
Convicted Jan. 6 Rioter-Turned-Snitch, Samuel Lazar Source: U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Department of Justice
…But Georgia GOP has been proud to try to cheat
As I’ve noted numerous times during my election coverage, in 2020, 147 Republican legislators voted to overturn a legal election based on an election fraud assertion that was not backed by a single shred of tangible evidence. Most of those legislators are still in office. Some of them represent Georgia and are poster children (who were clearly left behind) for white conservative politics in the Peach State on the national and local levels. (Seriously, Marjorie Taylor Greene somehow still has a job in lawmaking, people.)
Of course, Trump, the guy who started the Republican trend of interfering with elections by lying about election interference, cheered on the Election Board’s decision, which should serve as a glaring red MAGA flag indicating that this vote was not about election security, it was about undermining democracy.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way… They’re on fire, they’re doing a great job,” Trump said at a rally in Atlanta earlier this month, where he name-dropped the three Republican board members — Rick Jeffares, Dr. Janice Johnston, and Janelle King. “Three pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”
Yeah — they’re “fighting” for legally weaponized propaganda, not “transparency,” and damn sure not “honesty.”
Here’s more on the lawsuit from NBC:
The examination rule, the lawsuit says, would allow “demands that county boards make available to any board member for examination ‘all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.’” The rule leaves key terms undefined, failing to specify what documentation must be provided.
The suit claims that the election board has tried to “turn the straightforward and mandatory act of certification” into a “broad license for individual board members to hunt for purported election irregularities of any kind.”
The complaint asks for a declaration that the obligation to certify county-level results is mandatory and not up to the discretion of local officials. It also seeks an injunction of the rules to the extent that the court finds they are inconsistent with county boards’ certification obligations and/or are procedurally defective.
“For months, MAGA Republicans in Georgia and across the country have been trying to lay the groundwork to challenge the election results when they lose again in November,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Quentin Fulks said in a statement. “But Democrats are prepared, and we will stop them. Certifying an election is not a choice, it’s the law.”
Again, this is not paranoia. In the last few months alone, the GOP has promised to deploy an army of poll watchers to police election workers based on Trump’s lie. Republican legislators have proposed a bill that would make it illegal for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections despite the fact that it’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections, which is why it’s not actually a thing that happens. Meanwhile, Trump, himself, has not been able to stand behind a microphone without continuing to lie about voter fraud that never happened.
In short: A vote for Trump is a vote against democracy and truth, and it’s a vote for the normalization and legitimization of easily debunked propaganda.
This is what voters must remember in November.
SEE MORE:
Appeals Court To Decide If Texas County’s Racist Redistricted Voting Map Violated Voting Rights Act
Arizona AG Indicts 7 Trump Aides And 11 Fake Electors In Yet Another Election Interference Case
