Republican
presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a news
conference at Trump National Golf Club, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, in
Bedminster, N.J.
On Monday, the Republican National Committee asked the Supreme Court to step into an election dispute in Arizona by blocking up to 40,000 registered voters from casting ballots in November. That’s because the more likely that it becomes that Vice President Kamala Harris will win this election, the more focused Donald Trump and his supporters become on that other contest—the one to ensure he regains power no matter how Americans vote.
Since Harris began her candidacy and quickly gathered the support necessary to become the Democratic nominee, Trump has been pushing the idea that her ascendency was somehow illegal. As The Washington Post reports, the narrative meant to delegitimize Harris as a candidate has included Trump claiming that Harris should be “disqualified” for what Trump claimed was a fake image of a campaign rally crowd (it wasn’t). But the more consistent theme from Trump is that Harris took over as the Democratic candidate in a “coup” and that the presidency was “Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him.”
At the same time that Trump is prompting his followers to question the legitimacy of Harris as a candidate, Republicans are also preparing for Insurrection 2.0. They're not waiting for Jan 6, 2025. Efforts to stop democracy are already underway from state governments to the Supreme Court.
As The Los Angeles Times reports, Arizona set state rules requiring that voters show proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate, when registering, which exceeds the requirements of federal law. Now Republicans want to disqualify all the voters who signed up without meeting those proof-of-citizenship requirements.
As Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes points out, there’s no evidence of fraud among any of these voters, most are Native Americans, students, or service members who didn’t have a birth certificate available at the time of registration.
But the possibility of eliminating a large group of voters who are mostly young, Native American, or both is enough to get Republicans salivating. Native American voters in Arizona played a critical role in the 2020 vote and Harris’ rapid improvement in recent polls has been largely driven by a combination of women and younger voters. Biden’s margin of victory in Arizona was 10,457 votes in 2020, so 40,000 voters taken off the rolls could definitely affect the outcome in that state.
But trying to keep voters from voting in the first place is just one way that Republicans are attempting to keep democracy down. Trump supporters have gained power over local election boards in multiple states. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has identified at least 35 “rogue election officials” who have already refused to certify election results and may do so again.
But no state may be doing more to help defeat democracy in advance of the election than Georgia.
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