Permanent minority rule

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The American right is in the midst of a formidable project: installing permanent minority rule, guaranteeing control of the government even as the number of actual human beings who support their political program dwindles. Voter suppression is one, but only one, loathsome tactic in this effort, which goes far beyond just winning one election. Minority rule is the result of interlocking and mutually reinforcing strategies which must be understood together to understand the full picture of what the American right wants to achieve.

Examples are everywhere. Take North Dakota. In 2012, Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, won a surprise victory in a Senate race by just 2,994 votes. Her two largest county wins were in the Standing Rock and Turtle Mountain Reservations, where she won more than 80% of the vote. Her overall vote margin in counties containing Native reservations was more than 4,500 votes. Observing that Heitkamp literally owed her seat to Native voters, North Dakota’s Republican legislature enacted a voter ID law that requires voters to present identification showing their name, birth date and residential address. There’s the rub: many Native voters do not have traditional residential addresses, so this law effectively disenfranchises them.

Rigging the vote: how the American right is on the way to permanent minority rule | Ian Samuel | Opinion | The Guardian

• They have to lie about their policies (tax cuts for the rich and cutting entitlements) because they are VERY unpopular.
  
• They rarely win the popular vote
  
• Vote suppression
  
• Stuffing regulator bodies and courts with conservatives
  
• Campaign law financing allowing unlimited dark money
  

Etc. etc.

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The 2018 midterm elections brought significant gains for Democrats, who retook the House of Representatives and snatched several governorships from the grip of Republicans. But some were left questioning why Democrats  suffered a series of setbacks that prevented the party from picking up even more seats and, perhaps most consequentially, left the US Senate in Republican hands. Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races, and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber.

The obvious discrepancy between votes cast and seats won renewed some frustration on the left with an electoral system they complained gives an advantage to conservative-leaning states. But constitutional law experts said more pressing concerns for Democrats could be found in a combination of gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics that might have prevented them from winning an even larger majority in the House and some key statewide elections. “The rise of minority rule in America is now unmistakable,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University.

Democrats got millions more votes – so how did Republicans win the Senate? | US news | The Guardian

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RealClearPolitics recently published a news story and a column both of which made the astounding assertion that 28 million mail-in ballots went “missing” over the last four general elections. If true, it could be a major stain on the mail-ballot voting process. But it is not true. Here’s why. Both pieces used the term “missing” to describe ballots that were mailed out to voters but not cast by those voters. By this logic, all of the over 250 million votes not cast by in-person Election Day voters from 2012 to 2018 are also “missing.” Conflating voters choosing not to cast their ballot with “missing” ballots is a fundamental flaw in the argument against a voting system that is tried and true, with over a quarter of a billion votes cast nationally from mailed-out ballots since 2000.  In this time when election officials are working to allow voters to participate without putting their health in danger, it is important that this system is evaluated with facts, not misconstrued data. The simple fact is: An un-cast ballot is not a missing ballot.

There Were NOT 28 Million 'Missing' Mail-In Ballots | RealClearPolitics

• Fighting against mail voting with nonsense..
  

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Voter suppression has haunted US elections for decades but the pandemic presents Trump with new opportunities. States are seeking a massive expansion of mail-in ballots so people do not have risk their health by queuing and voting in person. The president has intensified claims that this will lead to widespread cheating, even though several studies have shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS,” was a false claim he tweeted this week in capital letters. “IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”

His wild words are often backed by organizational muscle and action. The Republican National Committee has devoted $20m to oppose Democratic lawsuits across the country seeking to expand voting. Republicans are also reportedly aiming to recruit up to 50,000 people in 15 key states to serve as poll watchers and challenge the registration of voters they believe are ineligible. Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York, said: “What we’re seeing in some primary states is the closures of polling places in African American dominated areas and mistaken purging of Democrats from the voter rolls. Some of this is anecdotal, but it is worrying all the same. And it will, no doubt, continue through the general election.”

Trump bruised as polls favour Biden – but experts warn of risk of dirty tricks | US news | The Guardian

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The Republican-led Michigan senate has voted to bar the incoming Democratic secretary of state from enforcing campaign finance law, one day after Republicans in Wisconsin similarly took action to restrict the power of newly elected Democrats. The 25-11 vote, which fell along party lines, was the latest salvo by Republicans seeking to capitalize on a lame-duck session before handing control of the state’s top elected offices to Democrats. The measure is among several that opponents say ignore voters who spoke loudly at the ballot box during the midterm elections last month, sweeping Democrats into the roles of governor, attorney general and secretary of state in Michigan..

Michigan Republicans vote to strip power from incoming Democrat | US news | The Guardian

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In 1965, the United States began a grand experiment: We decided to finally have free and fair elections.
Before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the United States was more or less a white ethnostate. As Johnson explained in an address to Congress proposing that law, “every device of which human ingenuity is capable” was used in the South to deny Black people the right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act, and especially a provision of that act requiring states with a history of racism to “preclear” new voting laws with federal officials before those laws could take effect, may be the most effective civil rights law in American history. On the day the Voting Rights Act was signed, only about 5 percent of Black Mississippians were registered to vote. Two years later, that number was 60 percent.

Yet in decisions like Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Abbott v. Perez (2018), the Supreme Court dismantled much of this landmark voting rights law.

Supreme Court: How the justices revived Jim Crow voter suppression - Vox

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If you want a preview of how badly this can go, look at what’s happening in Wisconsin. In 2018, Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic governor. A strong majority — 53 percent — also voted for Democratic legislators. But given the way the state’s districts are drawn, Democrats ended up with only 36 out of 99 seats in the State Assembly. And Wisconsin’s elected judiciary is also dominated by Republicans.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the Wisconsin G.O.P. has tried to use its remaining power to undermine Gov. Tony Evers. What you may not know is that this power grab is now turning lethal.

You see, Wisconsin is experiencing a frightening coronavirus surge, which looks on track to match the wave that hit Arizona in the summer. Arizona eventually contained that surge with mask mandates, bar closures and limits on indoor gatherings. But Wisconsin’s Republican legislature has obstructed Evers’s attempts to get control of the pandemic. And on Wednesday a Republican judge blocked an order limiting the number of people who can gather in bars and other public places.

In Wisconsin, then, a party rejected by the voters is nonetheless managing to inflict immense damage, probably including hundreds of unnecessary deaths. And something similar but far worse could all too easily play out on a national level.

Opinion | How the G.O.P. Can Still Wreck America - The New York Times

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Minutes before the US Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday evening, the court issued a 5-3 decision to throw out mail ballots in Wisconsin that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward. The ruling by the court’s conservative majority is a sharp reversal from April, when the Supreme Court allowed 80,000 late-arriving votes to be counted in Wisconsin’s primary.

Wisconsin voters can request a mail ballot until October 29, but it takes an average of 10 days to deliver a letter in Wisconsin because of Postal Service delays. The ruling could put tens of thousands of ballots at risk of being thrown out, given that 700,000 requested mail ballots have yet to returned. Trump won Wisconsin by 23,000 votes in 2016. “The Court’s decision will disenfranchise large numbers of responsible voters in the midst of hazardous pandemic conditions,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent.

But the ruling’s significance goes well beyond Wisconsin. In a chilling concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh echoed President Trump’s rhetoric that ballots postmarked by Election Day but arriving afterward—which are legally required to be counted in at least 18 states—could lead to perceptions of voting malfeasance and signaled he might be prepared to throw out such ballots in any post-election dispute.

Brett Kavanaugh Lays Out a Plan to Help Trump Steal the Election – Mother Jones

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday blasted members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors for "acting as accomplices" to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy while he sabotages the mail—and, as a result, the election—after the panel rejected her request for financial disclosure filings and refused to commit to reversing DeJoy's destructive policy changes. "The USPS Board of Governors has refused to release information about their own financial ties and has doubled down on their support of Louis DeJoy," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement. "Once again, I call on the board members to release their financial disclosure forms, remove DeJoy, and do their jobs by reversing DeJoy's actions."

Elizabeth Warren rips into the plot to sabotage the Postal service — and the election - Alternet.org

• Sabotaging the mail so the ballots don't come in on time and then go to the courts for strict limits, like in Minnesota where ballots have to be received on election day even if they might be 10 days underway and even as it states on the ballot themselves that what matters is the date of the postmark..
  

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Not so difficult:

• Appoint loyalists to the US mail, who under the guise of restructuring, slowing service down
  
• Delegitimize mail-in voting and having people to vote in person in the midst of a pandemic
  
• Drastically reduce the number of ballot drop-off locations, like Texas did
  
• Make it illegal to count votes quickly, then paint the slow count as suspicious
  
• Start a barrage of lawsuits in order to exclude mail-in votes that arrive after election day, even if they have been sent well before it and have postmarks to prove it. 
  
• Voter intimidation by sending armed goons to polling stations
  
• Jam through loyalists in the courts, even the Supreme Court, to decide outcomes