Trump lays the groundwork to cheat in November | Editorial

The tasks of municipal and county election officials are mostly clerical and benign, but they serve a bedrock function of the government.

These are folks who tally the votes and ensure that there are no uncounted ballots, and then pass the numbers on to the state to be certified. And when the task is completed by this board of bipartisans – most of them appointees -- they go back the next year and do it again. It is all part of the pageantry of our democracy, as election lawyer Marc Elias describes it: Their job is not to be political players, he explains, “their job is to be the scoreboard operator.”

But that changed in 2020, when Donald Trump called on local officials to hold up election certification in places like Wayne County in Michigan. When that failed, he tampered with the state board and tried to get them to pass fake electors. When that failed, he took his case to court. And when that failed – 64 times -- he instigated a riot.

Now Trump is seeking to get swing states to annul the will of voters in November again -- by using these local election officials as the cogs in an election subversion machine -- and it deserves the scrupulous attention of anyone who still values democracy.

There are dozens of pro-Trump election deniers currently working as county election officials in six swing states -- men and women working in the key battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania – and they are not shy about their plans to hold up election results by refusing to certify the votes if Trump comes up short again.

A new investigation by Rolling Stone has identified 70 Republican-appointed zealots in those states – in large part from their social media posts that reflect “an unapologetic belief in Trump’s election lies, support for political violence, themes of Christian nationalism, and controversial race-based views,” the magazine reported.

They are already hard at work: Since 2020, 22 of these officials have refused or delayed the certification of election results 25 times in eight states, with most interference happening in Georgia. They do not conceal their motives.

This post from the election commissioner in Erie County, Pa. – one of 19 election deniers throughout that state -- was typical: “Anyone in this country with an ounce of common sense knows the left cheated to some extent. Their philosophy isn’t about making it easier to vote, just easier to manipulate the vote,” he wrote.

You cannot share this wake up call enough. "70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results.."https://t.co/TK835ophCw — JC Hawman "A republic, if you can keep it." 🏳️‍🌈 (@JConradHawman) July 30, 2024

Trump is their top cheerleader. At his Aug. 3 rally in Atlanta, he name-checked three Georgians and called them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.” This trio – Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King – are members of the five-member Georgia State Election Board, and they all refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won their state in 2020.

Days after the rally, the three approved a new rule requiring a “reasonable inquiry” prior to election certification that could be used to delay and threaten the Nov. 22 deadline for election certification. That’s almost a certainty.

“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election in November,” Elias told Rolling Stone. “Republicans are counting on not just that they can disrupt the election in big counties; they’re counting on the fact that if they don’t certify and several small counties, you can’t certify statewide results.”

There are enough such individuals in these key posts to bring us to a constitutional crisis, added Elias, who represented the Democratic Party in recounts and litigation brought by Trump in 2020.

“Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared,” he said.

And the goal of these so-called public servants, he explains, is to sow enough chaos to prompt GOP legislatures – in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, for example -- to intervene.

But challenging certification is just one part of the anti-democracy strategy: Republican state legislatures have passed 22 bills aimed at “election integrity,” Rolling Stone points out, and most are designed to “take power away from election officials” in favor of political employees, like those on the Georgia board.

As the executive director of that state’s Democratic Party put it, “They were playing poker with the cards up.”

Can they get away with it? It requires vigilance from people like Elias, who has warned of Republican attempts to weaponize certification for years, and leads an army of lawyers that asks courts to clarify the roles of election officials and calls for the removal of bad actors.

Look at the number again: There are 70 election deniers in charge of counting the votes in critical counties of six swing states, and those are just the ones arrogant enough to publicly flaunt their MAGA stripes as they perform what should be a small-D democratic function.

Democracy cannot survive if only one party is willing to accept defeat. That doesn’t mean we should accept its delusions, even if we have come to expect that from Trump, who still considers the deprivation of constitutional rights to be his best election strategy.

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Congress took some steps in 2022 to protect the country from another MAGA attack on our electoral vote counts.

Will MAGA honor the law or find a loophole around it? pic.twitter.com/FcnjnECX0P — Margie 🌊🌊🌊 (@MargieVotes) July 31, 2024

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