(Dobbs) Should We Go Back To Hanging Chads?
Would Trump's minions ever let free and fair elections get in the way of their ambition?
Can we trust our elections? Yes we can. What we can’t trust are the right-wing forces out there who change election laws to make it harder for minorities to vote, who fabricate phony electors to confuse the certification of the Electoral College winner, who concoct illegal schemes to alter the outcome of an election. And now, who support a lawsuit that goes to trial today in Atlanta to disqualify Georgia’s electronic voting machines, which verifiably recorded the state’s results in 2020. But Republican partisans figure, the machines must be bad: that vote went against the GOP.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit— including a liberal election integrity group— say the voting machines are vulnerable to cyberattacks and that this could deprive voters of having their votes accurately recorded…. as if the right-wing in the wake of 2020 weren’t trying to do that very same thing. They want to return to paper ballots which, you’ll remember from the presidential election in Florida in 2000, can themselves have nasty little flaws called “hanging chads.”
The touchscreen voting machines in question come from Dominion Voting Systems which, in case it sounds familiar, is the company that Fox News repeatedly accused of election fraud in 2020 but which, in the largest-ever defamation proceeding in history, sued Fox and won more than three-quarters of a billion dollars. Personally I trust Georgia’s chief election official, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who says he “vigorously disputes” the plaintiffs’ protestations that these machines could turn an election. He’s the official who had the integrity to refuse Donald Trump’s pleas to just “find 11,780 votes” because he had lost Georgia by 11,779.
So yes, we can trust our elections if they’re free and fair, which is a foundation of American democracy. What we can’t trust are those in the body politic who are messing with them.
You’ll find these people in county buildings, you’ll find them in statehouses, you’ll find them in Congress. These are people who say, if we can’t win one way, we’ll find another. Their ambition puts the lie to their patriotism. Their ceaseless drumbeat of a “rigged election” three years ago— even though many know better— only gets worse.
Saturday, on the third anniversary of the insurrection of January 6th— which aimed to invalidate the legitimate presidential election of Joe Biden— the loser from that race threw more fuel on the flames.
He regurgitated yet again at a campaign rally in Iowa that the 2020 election was rigged, persistently ignoring the fact, ignoring the reality, that in the aftermath of 2020, when his henchmen tried to challenge election results across the country, virtually every judge in every court— including Republican judges, including judges he had appointed— said they had no case. Four months ago, the-loser-by-seven-million-votes promised to issue a report with “irrefutable” evidence that the election was rigged. No report ever materialized.
He also tried to rewrite history, stiffening his defense of the violent insurrectionists who tried to keep him in power. Already having promised to pardon many of them on his first day in office, he told the Iowa rally that the insurrectionists’ freedom shouldn’t have to wait that long. “They ought to release the J6 hostages,” he said, “they’ve suffered enough.” He has called them “peaceful protestors,” he has called them “patriots.” He’s talking about almost 900 rioters who were found guilty in federal courts. More are charged and awaiting trial. The convicted criminals’ suffering pales in comparison to democracy’s.
And his cult followers have joined his corrosive campaign. Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, Elise Stefanik, perfectly parroted her leader’s words: “I have concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages.” George Washington University political science professor Michael Miller summarized the takeaway of their matching statements to The Washington Post: “Violence and criminality is okay if it’s in service of my power.” House Speaker Michael Johnson professes concerns from the 2020 election itself: he has argued for the “independent state legislature theory,” which would let each state set its own rules, federal laws be damned. The U.S. Supreme Court shut him down, Chief Justice John Roberts writing that the clause Johnson claims invalidated results in some states “does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.”
So does anyone think that people like these— and there are too many like them— would ever let a small issue like free and fair elections, honest elections, elections as unhindered as practicably possible by partisan politics, get in the way of their ambition? Stefanik is said to be on the short-list for Veep if 2020’s loser wins the 2024 nomination.
Here’s where I want to do something I never thought I’d do: a thankful shout-out to former Vice President Mike Pence. Although he never can be forgiven for his four years as Trump’s trustworthy toady, he has broken ranks and said Sunday on CNN that the January 6th insurrectionists “ransacked our Capitol and did violence against police officers that day.”
It says something about politics in America today that a politician deserves our gratitude for the simple act of being honest: “To see people literally breaking windows, ransacking the Capitol, it just infuriated me. I remember thinking ‘not this, not here, not at the United States Capitol'.”
But in the GOP, Pence is now an outlier. A Washington Post poll a week ago reported that right-wing conspiracy theories about both the election— that Biden is an illegitimate president— and the insurrection— that the FBI instigated the rioters to storm the Capitol— have gone viral and taken hold: a third of Republicans believe them.
Our best hope is that more Republicans, and most Americans, don’t.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Hi Greg!
Long time listener (I used to listen to you as a kid in the KOA days!), first time commenter. I recently came across your substack and am delighted to once again hear your thoughts on the world! I still fondly remember “Uncle Greg’s Story Hour”.
I just wanted to thank you for your perspective on this nightmare election season. I was living abroad during the traitorous Jan 6 insurrection, and I was astounded at how much the US had changed in the few short years since I had left. I moved back to the US (Colorado) a couple of years ago, and am shocked at how much has changed post-COVID. I am left wondering why this MAGA cult has taken such a firm hold in our country. Was this mindset just always festering?
The audacity with which MAGA minions work to subvert reliable elections astonishes me. So glad we have a press/media that increasingly reports these subversive efforts to win at any cost. Thanks Greg