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Days after Pennsylvania Republicans subpoenaed Gov. Tom Wolfs administration for millions of voters personal information, including the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, the head of the Senate GOP acknowledged the request was intrusive.

But, Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward said, the subpoena simply demanded the same records the administration had already disclosed to third parties. Not only that, but those outside groups could have compromised the voter rolls, she suggested last month: We dont know what information they could add to the system. We dont know what information they could take from the system.

It was a striking claim. Trump supporters have been pushing similar claims for months, and the Republican senator leading the partys new election review has said lawmakers will be digging into the issue.

But theres no evidence to support it. A top Pennsylvania elections official said in sworn testimony earlier this year that outside groups had no such access. House Republicans investigating the matter accepted his explanation.

Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), House Republicans point person on elections, said hes concluded theres nothing to it: Just because you read it on the internet doesnt mean its true.

The statements from Ward and other Republicans which run contrary to all available evidence show why experts fear the Pennsylvania Senates investigation of the 2020 election wont improve voter confidence, as its proponents argue, but rather sow doubt and spread more misinformation.

Elections experts and nonpartisan pro-democracy groups have condemned Pennsylvanias review, which began 10 months after Donald Trump was defeated, as part of a national movement to discredit Joe Bidens victory. Since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the stop the steal movement has focused on efforts by GOP-led legislatures in swing states to conduct what they call forensic audits of the election.

These kinds of audits are not audits they are partisan efforts to try to delegitimize a past election, said David Becker, head of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Wards office stood by her claims and said the investigation may soon provide proof.

Ward spokesperson Erica Wright said the administrations unwillingness to be forthright and years of mounting public questioning of the electoral system have led us to this point.

There is so much more that is being investigated, she added, and we look forward to sharing as able.

The claims center around the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, commonly known as the SURE system the statewide voter database established two decades ago as part of nationwide modernization efforts after the 2000 election.

Before that, Pennsylvanias 67 counties maintained separate voter rolls. The centralized database is easier to oversee, including processing changes when a voter moves between counties.

Its run by the Department of State, which oversees elections, and officials are in the process of replacing it.

READ MORE: What to know about Pennsylvania Republicans investigation of the 2020 election

In 2016, the Department of State rolled out whats known as an application programming interface, or API. APIs are a way for computers to share information and are widely used by websites and apps across the internet. This API allows other entities, such as political parties and advocacy groups to create custom voter registration apps and websites.

Such groups have long run registration drives using paper applications, and the API allows them to effectively do the same online.

Once sent to the state, applications are held in essentially a digital waiting room in the SURE system and treated the same as those sent directly through the Department of State website: The department checks some information, then sends applications to counties to process. Counties can reject applications if they find problems.

Approved applications are moved into the full database.

Since the Senate began its inquiry in late August, Ward had stayed mostly silent. But on a Sept. 20 call with reporters, Ward said, the Department of State gave outside third party groups access to our SURE system.

We dont have any idea how many third-party vendors or people had access to the system, she said. We do not know how much access they had to the information in the SURE system.

The subpoena asked for the same information she said the state had already given to third-party groups.

Two days later, Wright wrote in an email that the department has already compromised the voter registration system by granting third parties access to individual driver license numbers, last four digits of social security numbers, and signatures.

Asked for evidence, Wright provided three documents.

The first, a manual, describes API usage and how data is sent to the system. It doesnt say third parties can interact with the official database itself, such as to automatically add voters or change existing voters data.

The second, a 2016 statement from a nonprofit using the API, says Pennsylvania allows third parties to directly upload registrations and signatures to its voter registration database. But while third parties can upload applications, they dont immediately enter the database: Theyre first reviewed by elections officials.

The third is a 2019 SURE system audit by then-Auditor General Eugene DePasquale that criticized the administrations lack of cooperation. But that audit doesnt discuss the API and doesnt claim third parties have access to SURE.

READ MORE: She lost big in the Philly suburbs. She went hunting for voter fraud. Now Kathy Barnette is a rising GOP star.

Sen. Cris Dush (R., Jefferson), who chairs the committee that issued the subpoena, said his panel will be digging into the issue of third-party access to the voter database. Everybodys aware already that thats happened, he told a conservative activist in a September interview. Were going to be investigating what impact that had on the process.

A Dush spokesperson acknowledged that the Department of State has previously addressed the issue but said the senator and others in the caucus still do have questions about that.

Following up on that to make sure that information is accurate is an important part of oversight, spokesperson Jason Thompson said.

Testifying before a state House committee earlier this year, Jonathan Marks, deputy secretary for elections and commissions at the Department of State, was asked by multiple lawmakers whether outside groups had access to the voter registry. He was unequivocal.

No, they dont have access to the SURE system, Marks testified under oath.

We upload the data provided by the third party so that the county has that in their workflow, Marks said. But at no point does the third party have access to the SURE system.

A department spokesperson reiterated in a statement: There is no access or opportunity to retrieve or view any voter registration information. Any claims to the contrary are false.

Grove, the chair of the committee, said he was satisfied.

There was a fear that those entities had direct access to the SURE system so they could manipulate data: add names, remove names, change stuff, Grove said. So we asked, in multiple hearings and we did learn that theres not direct access to third parties.

Grove said Senate Republican leaders have not asked him about the issue.

READ MORE: Pa. Republicans wont hire a contractor for 2020 election review until a judge gives the OK

On Sept. 15, the GOP-led Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted along party lines to issue the subpoena.

Senate Democrats filed a lawsuit to block the subpoena, arguing it violated voters privacy. They also asked a judge to order Republicans not to hire a vendor for the review until the litigation concludes.

In response, Republicans noted the Department of State contracts with a vendor to help run the SURE system and that Pennsylvania is a member of a consortium of states that share data including drivers license and last four digits of social security numbers to help maintain accurate voter rolls.

Republicans court filing says nothing about the API.

Dozens of groups have partnered with Rock the Vote, a nonprofit that works to get young people registered to vote.

They include advocacy groups across the political spectrum, including the ACLU, AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters, the Mike Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety, and the National Rifle Association affiliate Trigger the Vote, according to the Department of State.

Republicans have raised concerns about the possibility of third-party groups using the data theyve collected to, for example, falsely submit mail ballot applications or commit other fraud.

But that isnt unique to the API. Consider voter registration drives using paper: After voters fill out the forms, its possible to, say, make photocopies or write the information down somewhere else.

Similarly, a third-party group can hand people tablets to fill out the Department of States online form and if theres keylogging software, it can log the personal information.

So there are ways for a malicious actor to exploit the system, but its not through direct access and its not a new problem.

Continued here:
A top Pa. Republican made a big claim to defend the partys election review. Theres no evidence for it. - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Over the last 10 years, the voters of color in a steadily diversifying Tarrant County have seen their political clout grow.

In 2014, Ramon Romero was elected the countys first Latino state representative. Last December, Mansfield voters elected Michael Evans as the first Black mayor in the citys 130-year history. And in November, Tarrant voters went for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, cementing a major political shift that started when the district chose Beto ORourke over Ted Cruz two years earlier.

In Texas Senate District 10, which is nestled entirely inside of Tarrant and makes up about half of the county population, the districts growing Asian, Black and Hispanic populations regularly band together to pick Democratic candidates, including former state Sen. Wendy Davis in 2012 and the current incumbent, Sen. Beverly Powell, in 2018.

But as lawmakers charge ahead with redrawing district lines, those voters of color could see their voting strength diluted in the Texas Capitol. The proposed Senate map, drafted by Republicans, took aim at the district splitting it up and pairing its voters with those in counties to the south and west that made the district much whiter, more rural and more likely to vote for the GOP.

Powell said Republicans in charge are clearly trying to deny voters of color their voice in elections in an effort to bolster conservative representation.

The proposed map intentionally, unnecessarily and illegally destroys the voting strength of District 10s minority citizens, she said.

Since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Texas has not made it through a single decade without a federal court admonishing it for violating federal protections for voters of color. Ten years ago, a federal court ruled that a similar attempt to redraw District 10 was intentionally discriminatory.

The chambers chief map-drawer this time around, Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, has said the maps were drawn race-blind.

In hearings following the release of the Senates proposed map, Tarrant County elected officials and residents implored lawmakers to leave the district unchanged. But an amended proposal headed for a vote in the full Senate now has the remaining Tarrant County sections of the district tied in with eight rural counties in the new Senate District 10 six more than the original proposal.

Powell said urban voters of color who remain in the district would be drowned out by white, rural voters in Cleburne and Mineral Wells with different needs. She has pleaded with her colleagues not to break apart the existing district.

This is personal to the people of Tarrant County, she said. They want to preserve their ability to have their voices heard in their elections.

But on Monday, longtime state Rep. Phil King, a Republican who lives in Parker County, one of the new counties in the proposed district, announced he would run for the seat if lawmakers approved it. Twenty minutes later, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, endorsed King for the seat.

On Tuesday, the Senate Redistricting Committee approved the map by a vote of 12-2.

Huffman has said she consulted with the attorney generals office to ensure the maps she drafted comply with the Voting Rights Act, which protects racial minorities from discrimination. But she has refused to say what specific parameters she considered in her work.

Huffmans office did not respond to a request for comment.

The proposed changes to Senate District 10s racial makeup are stark.

Under its current configuration, District 10 has an eligible voter population that is 54% white, 20% Hispanic, 21% Black and 3% Asian. Under the proposed changes, the districts voting age population would be 62% white, 17% Hispanic, 17% Black and 2% Asian.

Each of the eight counties newly drawn into the district has a population that is 70% white or higher, and none has a Hispanic population larger than 25% or a Black population larger than 5%.

But more precisely, Powell said the proposed map draws a jagged gash from east to west Tarrant County that splits up traditionally Hispanic neighborhoods in north and south Fort Worth. Those in the south remain in the district, while those in the north are placed in a newly drawn Senate District 9 represented by Republican Sen. Kelly Hancock.

In total, Powell said, 133,000 people more than 70% of them people of color are moved out of Senate District 10 and into Senate District 9, whose eligible voting age population under its new boundaries would be majority white.

Tristeza Ordex, a Latina political activist who helped campaign for Powell in 2018, said moving Hispanics into a majority-white district would harm their ability to elect candidates who push for issues important to them.

The Republican Party is doing everything they can to try to break some of the voters in that district, Ordex said. Thats going to affect us.

She noted that before Powell, Senate District 10 was represented by Konni Burton, a staunchly conservative GOP senator and strong proponent of the sanctuary cities ban passed in 2017.

That hurt so many people, Ordex said, noting that Burtons views were at odds with many of the districts residents. Burton lost her reelection to Powell.

In recent years, Tarrants Latino community has organized around issues like putting an end to a county program that allows the sheriffs office to hold immigrants living in the country illegally for federal immigration authorities, Ordex said. Community activists have sent dozens of people to commissioners court meetings to pressure officials to end the contract, showing the growing influence of voters of color in the county.

If those voters are shifted into safely Republican Senate districts, Ordex fears their concerns would be brushed aside. Ordex, who has worked as a staffer for state lawmakers, said the district could get a senator who supports ending the Texas Dream Act, which guarantees in-state tuition to immigrants in the country without legal permission.

They dilute our vote, and what are they going to do? she said. Theyre going to make decisions for us.

Sergio De Leon, a Tarrant County justice of the peace, said the issues of a major urban area like Tarrant are not aligned with the largely rural counties that the Senates proposal would add to the district.

Inner-city Fort Worth Hispanics do not tend to cattle, they dont cut hay or gather at the feed store, he told lawmakers. We work two or three jobs, meet up at the Fiesta supermarket and taquerias.

In the eastern section of the district, Powell said, the map shoves a crooked billy club north from Senate District 22, represented by Republican Brian Birdwell, that splits the city of Mansfield, a rapidly growing district with a growing and diverse population, into two Senate districts.

Evans, the citys mayor, told lawmakers that more than 41,000 of the citys 72,000 residents were placed in Senate District 22, which runs as far south as Waco.

The remaining 30,056 Mansfield residents are packed into new SD-10 but submerged in a district dominated by Anglo voters in Johnson, Parker and now other rural counties of record, of which our city shares no interest, he said.

Evans said his city deals with urban issues like mass-transportation infrastructure, housing and equity in local public schools and would have no influence in agrarian and rural communities.

Sixty-five percent of the citys Black population is drawn into District 22 while the remaining 35% goes into District 10, even though the city has been entirely contained in District 10 for the last two decades.

It is discriminatory, it is illegal, he said.

Asked by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, how he would change the map, Evans responded:

I would leave it just as it is, and watch it continue to grow, so that the community can come together and vote for and elect the candidate of their choice.

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Historically red Tarrant County diversified in the last decade. Now Republicans are trying to divide up its voters of color. - The Texas Tribune

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In 2020, Democrat Candace Valenzuela,who was running to become the first Black Latina member of Congress, lost the closest congressional race in Texas to Republican Beth Van Duyne.

She was considering running again in 2022 for Texas 24th congressional district, once a stronghold of suburban Republicanism between Dallas and Fort Worth, but when she saw the redistricting maps for the US House released by state Republicans last week, it was viscerally shocking to me, she said.

Biden carried the 24th by five points in 2020, as the population of people of color surged in the suburbs and moderate white voters turned away from Donald Trump, but Republicans had transformed the district into a bastion of white Trumpism.

The DallasFort Worth area has grown faster than any part of Texas, with more Latinos living there than in the entire state of Colorado, notes Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice. Yet instead of creating a new majority-Latino congressional district, Republicans chopped up diverse cities like Carrollton, which is 60 percent nonwhite and where Valenzuela became the first Black woman to win a school board seat in 2017, into five different congressional districts to undermine minority voting power. She used to describe her district as a donut circling DallasFort Worth International Airport. Now she calls it a butterfly shrimp, with its body in suburban red areas by the airport and its tail weaving in and out of the most conservative parts of Dallas.

They werent just trying to extract people of color who are trending Democratic in order to protect Beth Van Duyne or other Republicans, Valenzuela said. They were trying to completely and totally neutralize their voting power. This is something that is happening across the state.

Through the redistricting process, Texas Republicans are building a sea wall against demographic changean early indicator of how the Republican Party nationally is responding to momentous population changes not by reaching out to growing communities of color but by diluting their voting power. At a time when Texas is becoming more diverse and Democratic, the new maps drawn by Republicans for congress and the state legislature would make the states political representation far whiter and more Republican, all but ending competition at the very moment when ascendant Democrats are finally making the state competitive.

White voters have been a minority in Texas since 2004 and over the past decade 95 percent of the states growth came from communities of color, but the GOPs proposed congressional map increases the number of white Republican districts and decreases the number of majority-Latino and majority-Black districts. It packs minority voters into as few urban areas as possible in cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston to limit their representation, while spreading out the rest among deeply red exurban and rural areas to nullify their influence. Despite gaining nearly 2 million Hispanic residents and more than 500,000 Black residents since 2010, Republicans didnt draw a single new majority-Latino or majority-Black congressional district. Instead, the two new House seats the state gained due to population growth were given to majority-white areas in Austin and Houston.

Republican House candidates won 53 percent of the statewide vote in 2020 but would hold a projected 65 percent of seats under the new lines, which were approved by the state Senate redistricting committee on Monday. The number of safe GOP seats would double, from 11 to 22, while the number of competitive districts would fall from 12 to just one. Nine Texas House Republicans, including Van Duyne, currently hold seats in districts won by Biden or where Trump won by five points or less, but theyre all drawn into districts that Trump would have carried by double digits. This will push state and national politics even further to the right, as Republicans worry more about primary challengers than Democratic opponents.

Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country but you wouldnt know it by looking at this map, said Li. It totally tries to kick the can down the road on the growth in the states minority population.

Texas 24th Congressional district in current form vs proposed GOP plan. The GOP map removed diverse Democratic areas and adds in whiter Republican ones.

Mother Jones illustration; District Viewer; Congress.gov

The 2020 race in the 24th was a battle between two candidates representing very different visions of the state: its diverse, Democratic, progressive future against its white, Republican, reactionary present and past. While Valenzuela rallied voters of color and appealed to disaffected Republicans, Van Duyne was best known as a former mayor of Irving who rose to prominence in tea party circles after falsely accusing local Muslim imams of trying to implement Shariah and urging the Texas legislature to pass an anti-Shariah bill. She befriended Michael Flynn in 2016 and joined the Trump administration as an official with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Valenzuela lost by just 4,500 votes, a heartbreaking defeat for Democrats, but said we got closer than we had been in a long time.

Van Duyne called her victory Nancy Pelosis most bitter loss and styled herself as part of a conservative squad to take on progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Once in Congress, she voted against certifying the election results in Pennsylvania, was fined for twice violating the Houses mask mandate, and during a recent debate over abortion held a baby doll in the shape of a fetus while speaking on the House floor. The Atlantic called her the new face of Trumpism in Texas.

Van Duynes extreme voting record should have made her vulnerable in a fast-changing swing district, but Republicans protected her by increasing the percentage of white voters in the district by 15 points, from 59 percent to 74 percent. The district has gone from favoring Biden by 5 points to favoring Trump by 12 points. The partisan lean of the district has shifted to the right by nearly 20 points, more than any district in the state.

Valenzuelas home was drawn out of the district, which she suspects was intentional, as was the home of Democratic state Rep. Michelle Beckley, who announced a challenge to Van Duyne in July. Van Duynes home was narrowly kept in the district, but predominantly Latino communities in Irving that she used to represent were excised to make the seat more Republican.

If I were to run in the current iteration of TX-24, Id be surprised if I made it to the high 40s, Valenzuela said. The way that 24 looks now, I dont think Id want to put my family through it.

The same level of gerrymandering is a defining feature of the maps drawn for the state legislature, where Republicans are desperately trying to insulate themselves from accountability after passing a flurry of extreme laws this year, such as a six-week abortion ban, permission for residents to carry guns without a permit, and a sweeping voter suppression law.

Republicans are in a position to let lines and laws overwhelm demographics and ultimately the will of Texans, Valenzuela said.

Under the GOPs proposed map for the state Senate, 20 of 31 districts would have white majorities, even though white people make up just under 40 percent of the states population. The number of pro-Trump districts increases from 16 to 19.

The proposed state House map, like the congressional map, would also create more white districts and fewer districts where Black and Hispanic people make up a majority of eligible voters. The number of majority white districts would rise from 83 to 89 out of 150, while the number of Latino districts shrinks from 33 to 30, and the number of Black districts falls from seven to four. The map creates 10 more pro-Trump districts, giving the GOP close to 60 percent of seats after Democrats came close to retaking the chamber in recent elections.

Overall, white voters would control a majority in 60 percent of districts for the US House and state legislaturefar above their numbers in the state.

The same strategy could soon be replicated in other Southern battleground states. Republicans need just five seats to take back the House and could accomplish this through gerrymandering in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina.

Similar to Texas, all of Georgias growth in the last decade came from communities of color. The state gained 1 million residentsincluding 350,000 Black residents, 270,000 Latino residents, and 160,000 Asian American residents, while the white population shrankbut redistricting maps released for Congress on September 27 by Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and the chair of the state Senate redistricting committee targets Black political representation.

The draft map takes aim at Rep. Lucy McBath, a Black Democrat who represents Newt Gingrichs former congressional district. McBath, who became a crusader against gun violence after her teenage son Jordan Davis was murdered by a white man in 2012, would see her suburban Atlanta district go from one that Biden carried by 11 points to one Trump won by six. The most diverse and Democratic parts of DeKalb County, which Biden won with 83 percent of the vote, would be removed, and Forsyth County, a hotbed of white Republicanism one hour north of Atlanta where Trump won 66 percent of the vote, would be added in.

Forsyth County has a particularly ugly racial historyin 1912, following the lynching of a Black man, white residents forced all 1,000 Black residents to leave the county. When thousands of civil rights activists led a march in 1987 to expose what had happened, white residents, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, shouted, Nigger, go home! at them and held signs that said Keep Forsyth white.

The proposed congressional map also targets Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop in southwest and middle Georgia. The Black voting age population in his district would drop from 50 percent to 47 percent, which could be enough to defeat him, given how few rural white residents vote for Democrats anymore.

The map released by Duncan, a prominent critic of Trump, could be replaced by a more extreme pro-Republican gerrymander when the Georgia legislature convenes in early November to take up redistricting. Its telling that the moderate plan drawn by an anti-Trump Republican still potentially eliminates two seats held by Black Democrats.

The squabbling on Capitol Hill over the Democrats infrastructure and spending plans has overshadowed how theFreedom to Vote Actintroduced by Senate Democrats last month would ban the kind of racial and partisan gerrymandering pushed by Republicans in states like Texas and Georgia.

If the Freedom to Vote Act was there, this map would be instantly blocked, Li said of the Texas congressional plan.

Yet Democrats are running out of time to pass it or devise a strategy for overcoming a GOP filibusterand could soon be powerless to stop the GOPs takeover of the US House and state Capitols for the next decade.

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Texas Republicans Are Pulling Out All the Stops to Dilute the Voting Power of People of Color Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Adam Kincaid, head of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, joined Bloomberg Governments Kyle Trygstad and Greg Giroux on the latest episode of Downballot Counts to discuss his partys strategy for shaping congressional districts for the next decade.

States have begun drafting and in some cases have finalized their maps in the weeks since the 2020 census results were released.

Kincaids organization helps coordinate GOP data sharing across states and is preparing for what he expects to be an extensive and aggressive stretch of litigation between the two parties over the new maps.

One thing about redistricting that people need to realize is its trench warfare on both sides, Kincaid said.

( Sign up for Ballots & Boundaries, a weekly check-in as states change voting laws and revise political districts.)

Listen to the latest episode of Downballot Counts

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Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg

Republicans are seeking to draw congressional lines that can help them win the House majority next year and hold it in the decade to come.

To contact the hosts: Greg Giroux in Washington at ggiroux@bgov.com; Kyle Trygstad in Washington at ktrygstad@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Loren Duggan at lduggan@bgov.com

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Republican Redistricting Head on His Party's Strategy (Podcast) | Bloomberg Government - Bloomberg Government

The coronavirus pandemic now has a heavy partisan bias.

COVID-19 hasn't disappeared in blue states like California and New York. But places that have managed to surpass 65 percent vaccination are in a better position than red states like West Virginia, Idaho, or Wyoming, where hospitals are overrun with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. (Idaho's COVID death rate last week, for example, was seven times that of New York state.) Even at the county level,as David Leonhardt shows at The New York Times, there's a marked partisan bias: Republican counties in blue states have vastly more cases and deaths on average, while Democratic counties in red states are faring better than their neighbors.

A primary reason for this disparity is how right-wing media has come out hard against COVID vaccines. From pundits on Fox Newsto the gutters of Trumpist Facebook, anti-vaccine misinformation is everywhere. As a result, vaccination rates are starkly partisan. Many Republicans aren't getting vaccinated, and a lot of them are dying. Rejecting the vaccines is costing the GOP votes it can ill afford to lose.

Tucker Carlson may be the worst offender: He's the top-rated cable news host in the country and a prolific source of anti-vaccine lies. Ever since President Biden was elected, Carlson has spread false stories that the vaccines don't work and the government is covering it up or that they're killing thousands of people and the government is covering it up or that there are folk remedies like ivermectin which are better than vaccines for treating COVIDand, yes, the government is covering it up.

Carlson's goal is obvious: to harm Biden and his party. As Brian Beutler writesat Crooked, Republicans always do this kind of thing when a Democrat is in the White House. After the 2008 financial crisis, they deliberately hurt the economy with austerity measures to tank then-President Barack Obama's approval rating then happily promoted and passed job-creating stimulus bills after GOP President Donald Trump took office. Now the conservative movement is exacerbating the pandemic and blaming it on Biden.

This behavior is only semi-intentional. Right-wing media is always prone to "reflexive, oppositional demagoguery," as Beutler writes, and the Republican mindset is always gleefully irresponsible, paranoid, and mulishly resistant to doing anything liberals propose. It's as much paranoia in the GOP base driving this as it is deliberate cynicism. The big tell on the cynicism, though, is how top Fox News hosts, GOP members of Congress, and conservativeSupreme Court justices have largely admitted to being vaccinated (or refused to say, which implies the same thing). Meanwhile, the dimmer regional radio hosts who aren't in on the con are unvaccinated and dropping like flies.

As a political strategy, the anti-vaccine stance seems to be working for Republicans, at least for the moment. Biden's approval rating has been steadily falling for months it's hard to say why exactly, but the depressing persistence of the pandemic after a spring in which many assumed the vaccines would finally end it (as they have in many European countries) is no doubt involved.

But in the long term as in, from Election Day 2022 onwardthe strategy carries quite a political risk. Thus far, pandemic deaths have been fairly evenly spread, because COVID-19 hit blue states like New York and New Jersey early. Now conservative Mississippi has shot to the top of the state death rankings, with Louisiana and Alabama not far behind. Biden's 2020 margin of victory in the three key states of Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia combined was only about 44,000 votes. Something like 53,000 people have already died in those three states and it seems safe to assume the people dying there and in other swing states are disproportionately Republicans.

Suppose the pandemic finally eases off next year thanks to children becoming eligible for vaccination, various employer mandates, and widespread natural immunity. Suppose the economy then picks up, and Democrats run a successful midterm campaign blaming Republicans for worsening the pandemic on purpose. Carlson's anti-vaccine innuendo won't hurt Biden anymore then. But everyone who died of COVID-19 because they bought into anti-vaccine misinformation will still be dead. The GOP might lose the midterms without their votes.

Occasionally, this possibility becomes apparent even to some on the far-right. Breitbart's John Nolte recently advanced a tortured argument that conservative media turned anti-vaccine because of a liberal conspiracy: "The organized left wants unvaccinated Trump voters to remain unvaccinated. That's what they want," he wrote. In another article, he asked: "In a country where elections are decided on razor-thin margins, does it not benefit one side if their opponents simply drop dead?"

Setting aside the birdbrained idea that timid, milquetoast liberals like Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would conspire to massacre people to win an election, the argument here implies an astounding and belligerent stupidity in the Republican base. And while Nolte's conspiracy theory is ridiculous, his picture of the base is not. People who will refuse to take a free, life-saving treatment simply because people they don't like urged them to take it are the final form of a politics with no more substance than "owning the libs."

Nolte deserves kudos for trying an innovative pro-vaccine argument. Itcould actually work. His audiencewon't take the vaccine to save their own lives, but they just might getvaxxed to crush the Democrats in the midterms.

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How right-wing media is killing its own base - The Week Magazine