How do we maintain our democracy when Repulbicans have given up on democracy and now want authoritarianism? (1 Viewer)

[coldseat]

It's hard to believe how far down the road we've gone towards authoritarianism. Republicans are not even trying to hide anymore. If they are able to recapture control of the House in 2022, I have serious concern about how much longer we'll be able to maintain our democracy. Just look at how far they're willing to go in the article below. How can we stop this speeding train towards authoritarianism and nationalism in the Republican party and get them to defend and support democracy once more?

Their polls found that after the election, a supermajority of Republicans backed Trump's efforts to overturn the results: 86% said his legal challenges were appropriate, 79% said they weren't confident in the national vote tally, and 68% said Trump really won. Another 54% said Trump should never concede, and a plurality said state legislatures should override the popular vote.
This set the stage for Trump, GOP lawmakers, and right-wing media outlets to continue pushing the lie that the election was "rigged," which Trump did yet again in a press release this week.


Additionally, only 34% of Trump voters said they would accept Biden as the legitimate president, according to the post-election polls. That pales in comparison to similar surveys conducted by Gallup after previous controversial elections -- 68% of Al Gore voters in 2000 accepted George W. Bush's legitimacy, and 76% of Hillary Clinton voters in 2016 accepted Trump's as president.
The organization was among the first to raise the alarm last summer about the potential for unprecedented political violence if the 2020 election was disputed -- warnings that became a reality with the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. They released the new polls as part of a series of reports about the manufactured "crisis of confidence" in US elections.

New polls show GOP willingness to subvert 2020 election

New polls released Thursday show just how far Republicans were willing to go to support then-President Donald Trump's unprecedented efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

www.cnn.com

An excellent podcast on how Hungary's democracy has fallen and the similarities between what Orban and his party have done and how Republicans are doing the same thing here in the US.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Can anyone provide proof, actual proof, not 'might be' or 'could be' but an actual law that has passed in Georgia or any other state that is actual voter suppression?

Do it for me then. Post proof.

This seems to be a really weird request. I should think it is self-evident that taking away drop boxes, making it harder to vote by absentee ballot, banning giving water away to those waiting in long lines at the polls makes it harder for someone to vote.

Ie, it should be self-evident that for some people, voting by mail is a lot easier than taking off work and driving to a polling place and waiting in a long line. And just by statistics, every time something gets harder there are those who just won't do it.

So, making it harder to vote suppresses the vote.

Theoretically, everyone should have the same level of difficulty in voting. Ie, a poor person working 12 hour days, with limited day care should be able to vote just as easily as a rich single person with a flexible work hours. Obviously, this is an ideal that is impossible to hit, but that is the goal the government should be working towards.

I think there is a degree of panic over these laws because they seem to be in reaction to a problem that hasn't been proven to exist (voter fraud effecting an election), so it seems the intent is to not correct a problem but to stop people they don't like from voting.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

The more problematic issue from the Georgia bill is allowing the state legislature to overturn local election officials, and remove them. It seems to be moving elections to a more partisan exercise.

 

[coldseat]

Most of the things removed by the new laws are the partisan policies (ballot harvesting, drop boxes, mail out ballots) that were put in place because of the pandemic (and to make sure Trump was beaten).

Why are those things partisan?

 

[JRad]

This seems to be a really weird request. I should think it is self-evident that taking away drop boxes, making it harder to vote by absentee ballot, banning giving water away to those waiting in long lines at the polls makes it harder for someone to vote.

Ie, it should be self-evident that for some people, voting by mail is a lot easier than taking off work and driving to a polling place and waiting in a long line. And just by statistics, every time something gets harder there are those who just won't do it.

So, making it harder to vote suppresses the vote.

Theoretically, everyone should have the same level of difficulty in voting. Ie, a poor person working 12 hour days, with limited day care should be able to vote just as easily as a rich single person with a flexible work hours. Obviously, this is an ideal that is impossible to hit, but that is the goal the government should be working towards.

I think there is a degree of panic over these laws because they seem to be in reaction to a problem that hasn't been proven to exist (voter fraud effecting an election), so it seems the intent is to not correct a problem but to stop people they don't like from voting.

^ word

You can't prove something like this is or isn't going to happen until it does or doesn't happen. If you reduce access to the polls, the logical conclusion is you reduce voting. You can rest assured CNN or Fox will happily caw about whichever happens.

Your last line is the real issue - you have a party that's lost some big seats (the flips, not the raw numbers) all based on made up voter fraud. So you're passing laws to create a nonexistent issue you created right after you lost those two GA seats and the presidency. It's nonsense.

The real hang-up for me on any of these was the changes to who can confirm results or whatever that GA change was*

*What UTJ said below

 

[MT15]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...its-gop-enacted-voter-restrictions/ar-AALrC1I

Well, the administration is sueing Georgia, so I guess this will play out in court.

With all the rampant voter suppression moves by the GOP, I figured it would be easy to show a recent law that proved voter suppression. Most of the things removed by the new laws are the partisan policies (ballot harvesting, drop boxes, mail out ballots) that were put in place because of the pandemic (and to make sure Trump was beaten).

You are aware that these “partisan” policies such as more drop boxes and less restrictive vote by mail were enacted pretty much equally in states where Trump won and where he lost aren’t you? They were put in place due to the pandemic. Trump won my state, and we did the same “partisan” policies that you listed. Trump won where more people voted for him and lost where more people voted for Biden.

Ballot harvesting is almost universally illegal and wasn’t legal anywhere this time either, that I am aware of. Rs tend to define anything they don’t like as “illegal” these days though, maybe you could prove that ballot harvesting happened somewhere, anywhere?

 

[bdb13]

The more problematic issue from the Georgia bill is allowing the state legislature to overturn local election officials, and remove them. It seems to be moving elections to a more partisan exercise.

Yep. It's exactly that.

 

[nolaspe]

'king' tangerine wanted to use force to stop protests...

New York Times: Trump White House aides drafted proclamation on Insurrection Act amid Floyd protests | CNN Politics

White House aides prepared a draft proclamation last June to invoke the Insurrection Act as then-President Donald Trump debated deploying active-duty US soldiers in response to protests after the death of George Floyd, The New York Times reported Friday, citing two senior Trump administration...

www.cnn.com

 

[V Chip]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...its-gop-enacted-voter-restrictions/ar-AALrC1I

Well, the administration is sueing Georgia, so I guess this will play out in court.

With all the rampant voter suppression moves by the GOP, I figured it would be easy to show a recent law that proved voter suppression. Most of the things removed by the new laws are the partisan policies (ballot harvesting, drop boxes, mail out ballots) that were put in place because of the pandemic (and to make sure Trump was beaten).

Most of the changes in Georgia were, in fact, promoted by and voted in favor of by the vastly majority Republican party in 2005 (and some parts in 2020). The fact that you assign this to being partisan policies to make sure Trump lost shows how ignorant you are of the actual facts.

 

[Sun Waves]

This seems to be a really weird request. I should think it is self-evident that taking away drop boxes, making it harder to vote by absentee ballot, banning giving water away to those waiting in long lines at the polls makes it harder for someone to vote.

Ie, it should be self-evident that for some people, voting by mail is a lot easier than taking off work and driving to a polling place and waiting in a long line. And just by statistics, every time something gets harder there are those who just won't do it.

So, making it harder to vote suppresses the vote.

Theoretically, everyone should have the same level of difficulty in voting. Ie, a poor person working 12 hour days, with limited day care should be able to vote just as easily as a rich single person with a flexible work hours. Obviously, this is an ideal that is impossible to hit, but that is the goal the government should be working towards.

I think there is a degree of panic over these laws because they seem to be in reaction to a problem that hasn't been proven to exist (voter fraud effecting an election), so it seems the intent is to not correct a problem but to stop people they don't like from voting.

I was going to vote, but someone possibly connected to a politician couldn't give me free water, so I decided not to vote. I was suppressed.

I should be able to drop off my ballot in a box. Maybe I was the person who filled out the ballot, maybe I wasn't. Maybe the ballots will be collected and delivered, maybe they won't. Maybe the person opening and scanning the ballots is honest and does everything correctly, maybe not. Who cares? It's not important.

 

[SaintForLife]

No one ever questioned the authenticity of the 2016 results.

No one said Russia tampered with voting machines.

Russia tampered with small minds. They changed the vote in people's heads, not in the voting machines.

In a 2018 poll 66% of Democrats thought that Russia tampered with the vote tallies in order to get Trump elected.

Russia's impact on the election seen through partisan eyes | YouGov

59% of Democrats are very concerned about improper relations between the Trump campaign and Russia, while 49% of Republicans are “not at all” concerned

today.yougov.com

 

[Paul]

No one ever questioned the authenticity of the 2016 results.

No one said Russia tampered with voting machines.

Russia tampered with small minds. They changed the vote in people's heads, not in the voting machines.

Who has more power in changing the minds of the voters? CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the media or Russia?

 

[brandon]

Who has more power in changing the minds of the voters? CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the media or Russia?

It’s not either/or. Russia can plant stories that 24-hour news then runs with.

 

[Paul]

It’s not either/or. Russia can plant stories that 24-hour news then runs with.

In my opinion the media is a billion times more powerful than Russia in terms of manipulating voters. Just watch FOX, then watch MSNBC. All the others fall in between including NPR. Do you know any media that is neutral?

 

[wardorican]

In my opinion the media is a billion times more powerful than Russia in terms of manipulating voters. Just watch FOX, then watch MSNBC. All the others fall in between including NPR. Do you know any media that is neutral?

How many people watch news on cable vs see online ads or misinformation / memes on Facebook?

 

[Farb]

Why is a strange request to show proof in the laws that up for a vote or voted on favor voter suppression when the laws in questions have been called 'Jim Crow 2.0' or '2021 Jim Crow'? It is only logical that if MLB pulled an allstar game, the DNC and their media arm have been comparing these laws to segregation that there is proof. If there is not proof, isn't that just by definition hyperbole? If it is not, then show me the law or policy that takes someone's right away to vote?

 

[CoolBrees]

Yes there are unbiased news sources.

I will only post one but there are plenty, including the AP.

but if anyone really wants to have unbiased news then Reuter’s is the gold standard.

Reuter’s

 

[JRad]

Just watch FOX, then watch MSNBC.

No thank you

Do you know any media that is neutral?

It depends how you mean it. The cable news networks? Probably not, but I don’t watch cable news to know for sure.

Actual news? Yes, absolutely. The problem is too many people take these cable networks as fact, and that’s just not what they’re about. They exist to discuss fact in a partisan manner. Facts aren’t partisan, it’s the presentation that is. Most of what I read comes from AP/Reuters/BBC/NPR, there’s not really bias in the reporting. However, when I listen to the NPR politics podcast, I can tell the hosts lean left. It’s up to the listener/viewer to cut through that, which is something we sorely lack in this country.

This “MSM”* fantasy has too many people not taking the time to look beyond their own confirmation biases.


*Fox is mainstream despite what they want to tell you

 

[JRad]

Why is a strange request to show proof

I don‘t know, you never seem to offer up any proof for these outlandish claims about ”THE LEFT IS GOING TO”, so you tell us.