I saw this today and it was no shock to me. But it seems to have stirred up the clickbait. So I wanted to try to post something quickly that helped put into context Trump’s comments on Dan Bongino’s podcast in which he suggests that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least… 15 places.” I would assume he means states, 15 of the roughly 20 or so blue states in the nation. Don’t worry, there are some he forgets exist.
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While it is of course concerning when a top politician starts throwing around ideas about illegally ratchetting down voter rights in opposition-majority states, this is only a means of disruption. The more he can sow destabilization into unruly states, the more he can push his supporters (the few still following him) into believing something other than state sovereignty is desirable.
This also gets to some of the worries I have about TESCREAL, but let’s not try to solve one conspiracy theory with another.
Just from a political leverage standpoint, Republicans have a long history of claiming voter fraud or vote instability in order to destabilize the voting process. It’s the Republicans pushing for HR 22 (The SAVE Act) that would make it more difficult for citizens, specifically women (last name change bureaucracy to verify registration) and people of color (in-person documentation as opposed to voting drives more commonly utilized by Black communities), to prove their status in a way that enables voter turnout.
Republicans don’t want to rely only on populism being popular. They want to ensure that those that disagree don’t even have a chance to do so. And the SAVE Act may ensure that tight races find favor for demographics that align to their values.
But even the suggestion of federal voting interference is enough to distract people and plant suggestive ideas in MAGA. It’s working, but it’s perhaps just a fanning of the flames that are already burning.
I’ve so far heard several rebuttals from the right to moderates and left-leaning pundits that not only agree that voting should be taken away from blue states but that HR 22 doesn’t go far enough. Like many opinions early last year echoed by MAGA after Trump suggested it, they claim the Democratic Party should be outlawed as a designated domestic terrorism organization.
Even worse, the MEGA Act was introduced recently, coincidentally or not. It’s a more aggressive version of SAVE, making voting a privilege not afforded to people who don’t have constant exact documentation on their person at all times (“show me your papers”).
But it does one thing that is telling of the entire game: it bans rank-choice voting.
Rank-choice voting is the single greatest threat to political party power. It is the thing I want to see in all state and local elections, and possibly in federal elections. It would remove the electoral college and make third parties and coalitions a more prominent part of our political discourse.
You want to nationalize voting? I might support it if the solution is to require all voting to be rank-choice. At the very least, it would be an enforcement of actual fairness in elections through probability and the effective voice of every single voter down to the end.
In the meantime, watch, denounce, and be wary. But know that this “admission” on a random podcast is destabilization, not prophecy.
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