Democracy's Flop Era
E4P's Election Watch 2022
We rang in last year’s election with some good vibes because we deserved it after the trash fire that was the 2020 Election!!
But besties, I’m afraid to tell you something: once again, the vibes could not be worse.
Without being too dramatic, democracy is on the ballot yet again this year as a number of election deniers are running for office and, notably, for secretary of state. Today, we’re going to be focusing less on getting out the vote ahead of Election Day tomorrow (although I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t at least try to guarantee everyone reading this is registered and has made a plan) and instead looking at the major problem with election denial, which key races you should keep an eye on, and what’s at stake for America in general.1
I WILL MAKE SURE YOU’RE REGISTERED TO VOTE IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO
First and foremost: if you are worried about your registration status, know that 20 states and Washington D.C. allow for same-day voter registration on Election Day so if your formal residence is in any of the below states and you are not sure you’re registered, there is still time to make sure your voice is heard in this election.
We are past the point of it being cool to not care when it comes to voting so I don’t want to hear diddly squat about your vote not mattering. Vote for whoever but for fuckssake vote!!!
As for the whoevers in question…
You Know What They Say About Whoever Denied It…
On the one year anniversary of Four Seasons Landscaping-gate, it’s only fitting to talk about the Big Lie and those who still deny that former President Trump lost the 2020 Election.
According to the Washington Post, “election deniers are on the ballot in 48 out of 50 states and make up more than half of all Republicans running for congressional and state offices in the midterm elections.” Of the 291 candidates that don’t believe President Biden won, 171 are favored to win their race. States United, a nonpartisan organization, has specifically been tracking secretary of state races and found that this year, 27 states are voting for a secretary of state and 13 of those states have election deniers on the ballot.
This is kind of a really big big deal: as you’ll all undoubtedly remember from last year’s election piece, Alexis Greenblatt told us that secretary of state was the hottest elected office because “having the power to run elections transparently and efficiently is literally sexy. It's too bad a lot of people in this seat are being very unsexy about it and destroying the integrity and ease of the voting process.”
Additionally, governors play a huge role in making sure elections stay free and fair: as States United explains, “along with your attorney general and secretary of state, your governor sets the rules, runs the elections, supervises the counting of ballots, certifies the results, and protects those results” (X). Of the 36 states that have gubernatorial elections this year, 20 states have an election denier on the ballot.
If the people who are elected to maintain the integrity of the voting process decide that they don’t accept the outcome simply because they didn’t like the result, democracy immediately goes out the fucking door.
Now, maybe I’m a little paranoid for believing this but it does sometimes feel like voters in “secure” states don’t believe any of this clown behavior will affect them. I’m saying this as a registered Connecticut voter and whose state has been blue since 1988. But Connecticut has an election denier on the ballot for secretary of state and the Washington Post ranks the race as Competitive. This isn’t just a Maricopa County problem or a Texas thing or something that would only happen in a battleground state. Election denial is on all of our ballots, so it is affecting all of us.
A recent CNN report (I know—fake news) interviewed a handful of people in Arizona who either believe the election was stolen or have absolutely no fucking clue why people believe the election was stolen. What was fascinating was the disconnect even within the GOP: there were Republicans who are covering their license plates so the men with guns monitoring the ballot drop box don’t track them and Republicans who bought 12 copies of the movie 2,000 Mules which claims to uncover the major plot to steal the election from Donald Trump.2
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Most significantly, Bill Gates3, the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, addresses the GOP elephant in the room: 2,000 Mules is named such because it argues that “mules” are voting hundreds of times at dropboxes. While in reality, there is no evidence of ballot smuggling and those voting at drop boxes are just regular voters, those who take the movie’s message to heart no longer see their neighbors or friends or even really people at all. This dehumanization, Gates argues, “is very dangerous because it does justify the use of violence.”
Dehumanization is a tactic that is critical to, among many other -isms, facism, racism, xenophobia, and sexism, because it both others and makes violence against the other feel necessary. We saw this on January 6th, we saw this with the attack on Paul Pelosi, and we’re likely to see this again in the coming days and weeks—especially if elections do not go in the way of deniers.
Typically, the best defense against nonsense is knowledge. But when the nonsense becomes violent and irrational and detached from reality, it is fruitless to play by the rules because the other team is simply not playing the same game.
What’s a Girl to Do? A Diamond (Sane Registered Voter)’s Gotta Shine (Protect Democracy)!!!
We have to stop trying to outsmart the right wing with logic because that is just not working. We (the collective amalgamation of voters who want to preserve the American experiment a little while longer) have to get even.
One way to do this is by following what a progressive group called Operation Libero did in Switzerland. While those on the far right believe they are defending America and its democracy, the rest of us can see plain as day that that’s just not true. When faced with similar opposition, Operation Libero doubled down on what was explicitly said in the Swiss constitution that supported their beliefs and proposed policies that stressed this:
In their cultural context, they framed the vote as an affirmation of their pluralist constitution, “a pillar of the liberal democracy” that the vast majority of Swiss are proud of. They were so effective at re-framing the referenda that the right wing had to change its own argument and go on the defensive (X).
Essentially, this is what First and Second Amendment baddies have been doing for the right: they’ve interpreted our constitution to believe free speech applies to hate speech and the right to bear arms applies to semi-automatic weapons.
So why don’t we try to beat them at their own game?
Congress can propose legislation that does exactly what beloved conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did and call for an originalist reading of the constitution…but by that we mean the Second Amendment only applies to weapons available in 1787. We should take our right to hold public roasts (aka our protected right to assembly) of “free speakers” more seriously. I don’t know—these are just some thoughts to get the brainstorming started.
In George Lakey’s fantastic piece, “How to fight fascism from a position of strength” (which was, in fairness, written pre-pandemic and pre-insurrection), he explains that
right-wing extremists have two main strategies for public actions. One is to set up situations where they can play the victim and increase sympathetic interest in their cause, or at least to polarize and confuse the issues... The other favorite tactic of right-wing extremists is to threaten and use violence to increase the fear level of their opponents… By getting there first, they set the tone, but they don’t win just by doing that. Their victory comes when their opponents respond in a like manner and try to out-intimidate the intimidators.
Lakey circles back to the Operation Libero model of outsmarting right-wing opponents, but I think I have something that might also work. It would take a lot of effort and—I’m paraphrasing here so I don’t owe Harry Styles any royalties—treating others with kindness.
I’d like to bring our focus back to the guy in the CNN report who was covering his license plate for a minute. This man and I are on opposite sides of the partisan aisle but we’re on the same side of the political extremism aisle. Perhaps, then, our best solution for overcoming election deniers and violent extremists is standing in solidarity with one another.
While I won’t ever abandon my progressive beliefs (just as he likely wouldn’t abandon his stances either), what we need to do in the coming elections is to find a way to align ourselves enough so that fewer and fewer voters move so far into the extremes that they literally believe facts they have made up. For Operation Libero, it took four major referendum battles between 2016 and 2018 to overcome their right-wing opponents. What if for the next four election cycles, we vote in such a middle-of-the-road way that cuts extremism off at its knees?
Isn’t that what democracy is really about at the end of the day: voting less for someone and more to spite someone else? Surely, we (the collective amalgamation of voters who want to preserve the American experiment a little while longer) can all agree on that. One nation, incredibly petty, with liberty and justice for all.4
History Has Its Eyes on You, Bitch
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that tomorrow won’t blow everything up.
There are a number of races in former 2020 battleground states that are important to keep an eye on for that reason. One major race to watch is Arizona’s gubernatorial contest between Katie Hobbs (D) and Kari Lake (R). As of right now, FiveThirtyEight shows Lake with a slight +2.6 lead which, although close, is still a problem because Lake has said if elected, she will undermine future elections if they don’t result in her party’s favor.
Wisconsin GOP candidate Tim Michels said the same thing at a recent campaign event, though he is only leading by a +0.4 margin. Both races are marked by the Washington Post as Competitive and are likely to be incredibly close and potentially contested.
(In an attempt not to fearmonger, I should point out that the threat of contesting an election might not result in another January 6th: ahead of the recent Brazilian presidential election, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro claimed he would not accept a loss to opponent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro did ultimately lose to Lula and, while he hasn’t exactly conceded, he did say he would “abide by the constitution” which is a far cry from what he has previously promised. Ergo, if both Lake and Michels should lose, we have at least one single shred of hope that they might do it gracefully.)
Additionally, Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) has been labeled the most vulnerable senator running this year and she’s up against an election denier whose family doesn’t even support him. Her opponent, Adam Laxalt (R) currently has a slight +1.4 lead, according to FiveThirtyEight.
And finally, a race that has brought forth the weirdest crossover of my personal interests: the Georgia Senate contest between incumbent Rev. Raphael Warnock (D) and former football player Hershel Walker (R). I feel like we know by now the love I have in my heart for Georgia and it should go without saying that I greatly enjoy talking about politics. If you all had to guess, what would a third passion of mine be and why did you say the Real Housewives?
That’s right: Georgia knows Jamal Bryant as the pastor of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch just outside of Atlanta, but us Real Housewives of Potomac stans know him as Gizelle’s cheating ex-husband slash ex-boyfriend.
Anyway, the Warnock-Walker race is the first time in Georgia’s history that two Black candidates are competing for the same Senate seat and Warnock is notably “the first African American to represent Georgia in the Senate and the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate by a former state of the Confederacy” (X). He is also, compared to Walker who has faced a number of jaw-dropping scandals in the past few weeks, a really great leader and person.
How does Jamal fit into all of this? For all the havoc he has wrecked in Gizelle’s life, he did not mince words when comparing Walker and Warnock in a recent sermon that went viral.
Currently, Walker is leading Warnock for only the second time throughout the entire campaign with a +0.9 lead. Georgia and Nevada, like Arizona and Wisconsin, were also 2020 battleground states that went blue which is why these races are not only extremely tight but critical if we ever want to reach that place of solidarity. It will be impossible to escape extremism if elections are overturned because the governor didn’t like the result or if legislation is passed by senators who are detached from reality.
It’s scary and weird and there’s a lot on the line right now. But even if things go sideways tomorrow, the number one thing to do is to hold on to empathy. Maybe you live in one of the two states without an election denier on the ballot, maybe you’re in one of the 16 without a gubernatorial candidate who thinks Trump and Biden did a body swap and Trump is actually in office now (or whatever that Face/Off thread of the Big Lie argued), or maybe you still don’t think your voice matters in elections.
But if it didn’t, why would people be making it so hard for it to be heard?
You have to care, at the very least, because whether you think any of this applies to you or not, it surely applies to someone you love. Voting is a team sport in the same way that colleges have golf teams (or so I imagine): in the moment, you’re playing just for yourself but your actions will ultimately have an impact on everyone around you.
Give a fuck. Be petty. Care about someone else. And then vote based on that.
A fucking lot.
It also featured a clip from real-life Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear Bill Barr stating that he, a Trump-appointed attorney general, doesn’t believe the election was stolen and hasn’t “seen anything since the election that changes his mind on that…including the 2,000 Mules movie.”
Not to be confused with the billionaire chip implantee so conservatives, stand down.
And then, of course, when Marjorie Taylor Greene is back in Georgia coaching Crossfit for Karens, we can once again have civil political debates about which of our different beliefs is better (mine).