— Republican elected officials from the state level all the way up to the U.S. Senate are refusing to say that they’ll accept or certify the result of the election this fall if Donald Trump doesn’t win. Multiple Republican members of Congress have asserted that only the House of Representatives should decide the presidential election this year (which would throw the election to Trump regardless of who the voters or Electoral College choose).
— In multiple states, Republicans have passed laws allowing them to manipulate and change the location of polling places, criminalize voter registration drives, replace Democratic and nonpartisan election officials with partisan GOP hacks, and in Georgia and Arizona throw out ballots from entire precincts. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt noted for The Atlantic: “Throwing out thousands of ballots in rival strongholds may be profoundly antidemocratic, but it is technically legal, and Republicans in several states now have a powerful stick with which to enforce such practices.”
— Typically, when politicians engage in nakedly deceptive politicking or election theft they’re outed in the press and punished at the polls. Since 2020, however, Republicans have rewarded their politicians who tell lies and engage in underhanded tactics, suggesting there will be no limits to what the Trump campaign might do or say in the weeks leading up to the election, including the use of deepfakes and AI.
This article was originally published by a newrepublic.com . Read the Original article here. .