Editorial: Republicans’ election fraudit results: Authoritarian state governments, voter suppression and minority rule
30th August 2021 · 0 Comments
Republicans’ demand for audits of the 2020 presidential election, despite no evidence of fraud, amounts to voter suppression through the back door and Republican control of elections and elective offices for the foreseeable future.
When Arizona’s Republican state senators hired election fraud theorist Dan Logan, the Cyber Ninjas CEO, to audit presidential election results, they wanted to legitimize Trump’s claim that he, not Biden, won the Arizona electoral votes.
The in-your-face boldness of the Republicans to flaunt federal election laws is shocking. They seem to think the Arizona state legislature and state government is part of a “subnation authoritarian regime” that doesn’t have to adhere to federal law.
Federal laws say ballots have to stay in officials’ hands for 22 months post-election. Five months after Trump lost Arizona to President Biden, Cyber Ninjas came to audit already certified results.
The Republicans paid $150,000 to a private company with no experience in election auditing, which hired people with no experience in handling 2.1 million ballots and voting machines. Arizona media has sued the Republicans because they claim the results of the Cyber Ninjas audit will be private.
Cyber Ninjas allegedly provide software security consulting services, including “ethical hacking.” The Sarasota, Florida, company has one employee – Logan – and two cybersecurity consultants.
Logan is front and center in promoting Trump’s “stop the steal’ conspiracy. He appears in a movie called “The Deep Rig” that asserts Democrats stole the U.S. election from former President Donald Trump.
Logan is the face of the election fraud conspiracy. Some familiar Trump sycophants raised $5.7 million for the Arizona audit. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor; Sydney Powell, his attorney who filed fraudulent lawsuits challenging election results; Patrick Byrne, a former chief executive of Overstock.com; and correspondents from the pro-Trump One America News Network, raised funds, according to the AP.
Voter suppression comes with buying new voting machines and tossing out the old ones tainted by untrained people. Knowing Republicans as we do, we understand that the 5,000+ cost of one voting machine will have them squealing about not having the money in the budget to replace the machines that were tampered with or ethically hacked.
The lack of machines may result in a shortage of voting machines in counties where people of color are the majority! Long lines, fewer polling places, shorter voting hours, and mail-in ballot restrictions create voter suppression.
It’s going to be interesting to see which voting machines Arizona buys to replace the tainted ones. Recall that Ivanka Trump got a voting machine trademark from the Chinese in 2018. Are red states going to buy them from her?
Arizona used Dominion Voting Systems machines in the 2020 presidential election. Supposed the Cyber Ninjas ethically hacked Dominion voting machines to figure out how to breach them? That would mean Arizona’s Secretary of State must purchase voting systems from a different company.
Dominion is suing Trump acolytes Sidney Powell, who pushed the conspiracy that Dominion’s machines flipped votes from Trump to Biden, Rudy Guiliani and Mike Lindell for defamation.
Dominion filed three $1.6-billion lawsuits against Newsmax, One America Network (OAN), and ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne for accusing the company of rigging the election fraud claims and sent cease-and-desist notices and warnings to preserve documents to more than 150 people.
The Republicans in Arizona and nationally are doing this through voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, and stripping election officials of their power solidifies their hold on local and national political power.
However, Edward L. Gibson, a social scientist and college professor, paints a more ominous picture of what the Republicans are doing. “Even after a national government is democratized, subnational authoritarian “enclaves” often continue to deny rights to citizens of local jurisdictions,” he wrote in “Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Democratic Countries.”
That’s what Republicans are doing and what they’ve been doing over the last half-century. The Republicans are so desperate to stay in power; they’re committing fraud themselves.
But everyone knows what the saying is when it comes to karma. Not only are Trump’s minions getting sued, but a judge also ordered jurisdictions where Powell and others practice law to consider license suspensions or disbarment. Guiliani got suspended from practicing law in New York and D.C.
Attorney General Merrick Garland last month warned others not to try fraudulent audits. And the Arizona State Court of Appeals ordered the Senate to surrender all records related to the audit. The appellate judges said that includes records held by Cyber Ninjas, which has physical custody of the Senate’s public records.
Voter suppression laws are designed to keep people of color from voting. The Democrats know this, which is why the U.S. House passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act last week. Of course, Louisiana’s Republican representatives voted against it, with Steve Scalise leading the way.
That no Republican voted for the bill named for the iconic civil rights leader speaks volumes about them.
The bill is now in the Senate. Will moderate (sell-out) Senate Democrats kill it? Or will they deep-six the filibuster and get on with the people’s business? We won’t hold our breath.
This article was originally published in the August 30, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
