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On May 14, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) signed three new bills into law. Two of the bills established new restrictions on voting, including a provision that could make it a crime to collect and submit ballots on behalf of another voter. The third bill made it illegal to protest near oil and gas pipelines, with a potential punishment of up to 18 months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

The new laws appear to have a clear target: the members of Montanas various Native American tribes, who rely heavily on mass ballot collection drives in order to vote, and who in recent years have led protests against major oil and gas pipeline projects that posed a threat to their lands.

The GOP has sought for years to limit the right to protest and curb access to the vote. But both efforts have intensified across the country in 2021. So far this year, eight states, including Montana, have passed laws that create new criminal penalties related to protesting, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks such legislation. At the same time, Republicans have enacted new laws that create or strengthen criminal penalties related to voting or election practices in at least half a dozen states. Many of these laws, like Montanas, have explicitly criminalized or strengthened criminal penalties on the practice of returning ballots on behalf of voters.

And as is the apparent case in Montana, the wave of anti-voting and anti-protest laws a wave that civil rights groups say is unprecedented since the civil rights movement of the 1960s is not just broadly anti-democratic. It is also a specific assault on the rights of Black, brown and Native Americans.

They are responding to people who are trying to use fundamental rights in American society, whether its the right to vote or the right to protest, not by enabling people to tell legislators what they want and what they care about, but by seeking to cast them as criminals and silence them, both at the ballot and on the streets, said Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty ImagesTribe-led protests against pipeline projects in North Dakota, Montana and other states -- along with mass racial justice demonstrations across the country -- have led Republicans to pass a wave of new laws restricting protest rights.

The new laws are both obviously unconstitutional and largely unnecessary, Eidelman said, becausethey ostensibly seek to remedy problems that existing criminal statutes already cover. But they are part of a Republican turn against the basic tenets of democracy that only appears to be accelerating.

The GOP is working to criminalize voting, and theyre working to criminalize protesting, said Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, which opposed a sweeping new Georgia law that created multiple new crimes related to voting. So we cant protest, and you cant vote, because theyve created five new crimes and injected so much confusion into the system. What does that mean for the society that we will live in?

Targeting Third-Party Ballot Collection

Montanas HB 530 which Gianforte signed into law in May after Republican majorities in the state legislature passed it without a single Democratic vote prohibits anyone from submitting another voters absentee ballot if they receive a pecuniary benefit for doing so. Republican proponents of this provision argue it will help limit fraud associated with mail-in ballots.

Third-party ballot collection has become a primary focus of Republican efforts to create new criminal penalties related to voting especially in 2021, after former President Donald Trump spent last years election railing against the practices supposed potential to allow fraud. (Twenty-six states and Washington, D.C., allow the practice, although specifics vary: Some states only allow family members to return a voters ballot, and others limit how many ballots a single person can return.)

In reality, there is no evidence that ballot collection drives lead to fraud, and fraud itself is extremely rare no matter how Americans choose to vote. A legal challenge over a similar Arizona law that places heavy restrictions on the practice is currently under consideration at the Supreme Court, in a case proponents of the practice point to as evidence that the GOP crackdown on ballot collection is a partisan exercise to restrict votes. An attorney defending the law admitted in an appeals court that Republicans wanted it in place because third-party ballot collection puts the GOP at a competitive disadvantage in elections.

Republicans taking their cues from Trump have enacted new limits or bans on the practice in Iowa, Kentucky,Florida, Kansas and Arkansas. The new laws, some of which still allow voters to designate a family member to return a ballot on their behalf, almost universally create or increase criminal penalties for violating the stricter limits put in place.

Nonpartisan election officials typically view third-party ballot collection as a useful way to bolster democratic engagement among underserved populations. In Montana, Native Americans who live on reservations often lack access to daily U.S. Postal Service pickup, and many do not own cars that would allow them to make the drive which can be as long as 120 miles round-trip to the nearest in-person polling location. So tribal reservations have typically relied heavily on paid ballot collectors to pick up ballots from residents and transport them to county election offices en masse a practice that is now illegal. (Last year, a federal judge invalidated a similar Montana effort to ban third-party ballot collection on grounds that it disproportionately targeted Native American voters.)

This latest ban on ballot collection is intentional discrimination on behalf of the Republican legislature, said Jacqueline De Len, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, which alongside the ACLU of Montana filed a legal challenge against the new law last month.

Ullstein Bild via Getty ImagesResidents of Montana's reservations, where mail service is poor and unreliable, often rely on mass ballot collection drives to vote. But a new law signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) would heavily restrict the practice.

In the face of very significant structural barriers that keep Native Americans from casting their ballots, ballot collection is the logical solution, she said. Pooling collected resources is the way that you overcome how difficult it is to vote, and having third party ballot collectors do that type of collective work just makes sense.

The Iowa ban on third-party ballot collection, voting rights groups have said, is likely to have disproportionate effects on the states Latino population. In those and other states, putting new limits on who can submit ballots on behalf of other voters is likely to present fresh obstacles for elderly and poorer voters, voters with disabilities and even college students all constituencies that are already more likely to report difficulties casting ballots.

Criminalizing Voting Mistakes

Other new laws have targeted election officials. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed a law this year making it a crime for local election officials to mail out absentee ballots unless voters specifically requested them, a practice that became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic. A voting restrictions bill that narrowly failed in Texas included a similar provision, which could be revived when lawmakers reconsider the package in a fall special session.

The new laws could lead to a rash of additional charges for minor voting issues, like those that plagued Crystal Mason, a Texas woman who receiveda five-year prison sentencefor trying to vote without realizing she was ineligible.

And the laws will likely have a chilling effect on voters, election officials and organizations that seek to assist voters, all of whom may become more wary of committing crimes while trying to engage in a basic democratic practice.

The new Montana law has generated concern that many organizations that engage in third-party ballot collection will stop, out of fear that they might accidentally commit crimes.

It has both the actual effect of subjecting people to prosecution, and then the very real chilling effect that will discourage people from providing and getting the assistance thats needed to exercise their right to vote, said Eliza Sweren-Becker, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. Its one more thing to make voting harder, and one more thing to make people a little more scared to vote.

Limiting The Right To Assemble

Frightening people away from exercising a democratic right also seems to be the point of the various anti-protest bills that Republican legislators have sought to enact in recent years, in response to Native-led demonstrations against major pipeline projects and the racial justice protests that have taken place across the country.

Montanas new law, which has been characterized as one of the most extreme anti-protest measures in the country, would make trespassing near a critical infrastructure facility a misdemeanor punishable by up to four months in prison and $1,500 in fines. Larger crimes related to protesting oil and gas pipelines, or other facilities deemed critical, could result in felony charges punishable by 18 months in prison or $4,500 in fines. Organizations deemed conspirators could suffer even harsher criminal penalties.

Native groups in Montana, where tribes led protests against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, view the law as a deliberate attack on their right to demonstrate against threats to their lands and livelihoods.

Along with Montana, seven other states Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee have passed anti-protest laws in 2021. Some, like Montanas, explicitly target anti-pipeline protests. Others expand criminal penalties for protests that target monuments or block public streets, or create new penalties related to expanded definitions of rioting that would inevitably include peaceful protests.

The Republican push to curb protest rights has escalated since last summer, after mass protests erupted in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Between June 1, 2020, and March 15, 2021, lawmakers in 33 states proposed at least 100 bills aimed at restricting protest and imposing harsh penalties on demonstrators convicted under the new legislation, according to a recent report by the free speech advocacy group PEN America. In Utah, a bill that ultimately died in committee sought to bar anyone convicted of felony riot from holding a government job or running for elected office. Similar legislation is pending in Alabama.

Photo by Adam DelGiudice/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesFollowing months of mass racial justice protests, Republican lawmakers in multiple states are trying to place new limits on demonstrating and expand the definition of "rioting" in a way that could criminalize peaceful protests.

This is about deterring folks from going to these protests, having them think twice about even going, said Bruce Franks Jr., a civil rights activist who won a seat in the Missouri state legislature after protesting at Ferguson in 2014. Struggling with mental health issues and facing a fine for a campaign finance violation, he resigned from his seat in 2019 and moved to Arizona.

The bills, he said, are meant to keep marginalized people down.

At least 11 other proposals, including a pending bill in Arizona, threatened to deny access to state benefits for anyone convicted or, in some cases, simply indicted after an arrest at a protest. Such benefits could include health care, unemployment insurance, school scholarships and other forms of government assistance.

If Im hit with felony charges for protesting, at this point in time I couldnt receive any public benefits like tuition waivers and financial aid, said Rich Villa, 28, a criminal justice undergraduate at Phoenix College in Arizona who was arrested last year during a protest against police brutality. Thats damaging in itself.

The threat of potentially losing other public benefits, he said, kept his fiance, who depends on food stamps to help feed their young child, away from the demonstrations last year.

This is a real-life depiction of how exercising your First Amendment right to speak out about injustices people are facing in this country means you can face real, real consequences, Villa said. Your life can be detrimentally impacted for speaking out against the injustices by the system you are in turn protesting... Its like David against Goliath.

Many of the bills have not made it through state legislatures this year, but legislation that would make it easier to classify protesters as terrorists is still pending in Ohio, and the proposals are an indication of what state legislators are likely to pursue in future sessions.

While Republicans have advanced bills targeting protesters, they have also reduced potential criminal liabilities for ordinary citizens who deliberately target demonstrators. Legislatures in Oklahoma and Florida have approved laws that would grant civil immunity to people who run over protesters with cars; the Oklahoma law also shields anyone who uses a vehicle to target protesters from criminal liability. The Iowa state House passed a similar bill, which hasnt come up for a vote in the state Senate yet.

Wielding cars as a weapon against protesters is a far-right fantasy that has increasingly become a reality. In 2017, James Alex Fields drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Since then, the practice has become more common. Last summer, as racial justice demonstrations erupted nationwide, people drove their cars into crowds of protesters at least 72 times over a two-month span, according to researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Many of the new laws targeting protesters and voters are likely unconstitutional, Eidelman, the ACLU attorney, argued. But they are still likely to reduce participation in protests and elections among Americans who dont have the will or the means to wage a legal fight against them. The laws are poised to have drastic effects on American democracy, but for their Republican backers, that seems to be the point.

Part of the intended effect, Sweren-Becker said, is to scare people away from the democratic process.

Alexander C. Kaufman contributed reporting.

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U.S. Rep. Ken Buck found himself in an unusual place this week, defending his work with Democrats to rein in some of the wealthiest corporations in world history and standing opposite many friends and fellow conservatives in Congress.

The House Judiciary Committee spent much of the week debating and passing a suite of legislation that, taken together, constitutes the largest anti-monopoly effort by Congress in a generation. The legislation is aimed at breaking up four tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon worth $6 trillion.

This legislation represents a scalpel, not a chainsaw, to deal with the most important aspects of antitrust reform, Buck told the committee Wednesday. Were giving the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission the tools they need to restore the free market, incentivize innovation and give small businesses a fair shot against oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

No Republican in Congress has done more this year to label Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon monopolies and to construct a roadmap for breaking them up a crackdown on big businesses more commonly favored by liberals. Buck, who represents the Eastern Plains, has had mixed success convincing his fellow conservatives that helping the government crack down on corporations is best.

Do I like not getting sleep? No. Do I like arguing with my friends? No, Buck said in an interview after two long days of Judiciary Committee hearings, which ended with his bills passing. But do I think this is the right way to do it and do I think that this is really important legislation? I do.

The Houses subcommittee on antitrust (the area of law focused on monopolies) is chaired by Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Buck is the panels top Republican. After a 16-month investigation by the subcommittee found the four tech giants act like monopolies, to the detriment of small businesses and consumers, Cicilline and Buck introduced six bills to push back.

You cant find two people who are more different than David Cicilline and Ken Buck. If you look at our voting records, I bet we have a similar vote maybe 10% of the time, Buck said.

TheMerger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which Buck is cosponsoring, was introduced in tandem with a fellow Coloradan, Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Lafayette. It would force large corporations to pay higher fees when they merge or acquire new companies. That would mean more money forthe Justice Departments Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission.

An earlier version of the bill passed the Senate unanimously, so its the likeliest of the six bills to become law. Its also the least impactful providing more funding without changing the rules of antitrust.

This bill is a clarion call to our regulators, to our enforcement agencies mainly the FTC to step up and do what is necessary to protect our small businesses, to protect innovation, to protect consumers and ultimately, to protect our economy, Neguse said during a House hearing Wednesday.

Some of the other bills go much farther and will require more legislative finesse to turn into law. The Ending Platform Monopolies Act would allow the Justice Department and FTC to break up tech companies that sell their products on platforms they operate, such as Amazon, which sells its products on Amazons marketplace. Another controversial bill, the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, would prevent the tech giants from acquiring some top competitors.

Another bill would allow users to keep the data they generate on a website, such as Facebook, and take it with them when they close their account, similar to how cell phone numbers are transferable.

By working with Democrats and against big businesses, Buck has found himself on an island with few Republican friends. The loudest critic of the anti-monopoly bills is Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and conservative stalwart that Buck calls a political hero of his. The two cofounded the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and have campaigned together but dont see eye to eye on tech.

Big Tech censors conservatives. These bills dont fix that problem, they make it worse. They dont break up Big Tech. They dont stop censorship, Jordan told the committee Wednesday.

As the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Jordan holds considerable sway among conservatives and has been putting tremendous pressure on Republicans to oppose the six bills, according to Mike Davis, founder of the Internet Accountability Project, a conservative group critical of Big Tech.

Buck was one of only three Republicans to vote for the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, making it illegal for tech companies to highlight their products over others online, such as Google placing its own websites over competitors when people search on Google.

Buck was one of only two Republicans joined by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to support the Ending Platform Monopolies Act on Thursday. The bill passed by the narrowest of margins, 21-20.

Several Republicans said they dont want to give the government more power over businesses. Others defended the Big Tech giants, saying they deserve to dominate their respective marketplaces.

Amazon is gargantuan because consumers have voted, with their dollars every day, that the services provided by Amazon are better than the other alternatives that they have in the marketplace, Rep. Tom McClintock of California said. The moment they decide otherwise, Amazon will shrink and competitors will begin to emerge to fill those gaps. No business can survive by displeasing consumers.

When you have products and services, said Rep. Darrell Issa, also of California, that are becoming less expensive, more pervasive, without government intervention, the market at least is working. We often talk about competition as though competition is inherently good. The consumer getting a better product and a better service and a better deal is the reason we promote competition.

Bucks Republican colleagues in Colorado, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Doug Lamborn, did not respond to requests for comment asking whether they support his bills. They are not members of the Judiciary Committee, so they have not voted on the bills yet.

The legislation will undergo changes over the summer before going to the full House for a vote, which Buck anticipates will occur in September. From there, the bills that have not yet been passed by the Senate will be considered in the upper chamber. Buck and Davis are optimistic.

The era of antitrust amnesty is over, Davis said, and Congressman Ken Buck is the driving force.

Originally posted here:
Ken Buck is staring down Big Tech companies. And powerful people in his political party - The Denver Post

Former Georgia state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File

Trump said that the GOP "might have been better" with Democrat Stacey Abrams as Georgia's governor.

The former president continues to take digs at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

Last year, Kemp rejected Trump's entreaties to overturn President Biden's win in Georgia.

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Former President Donald Trump still has Georgia on his mind.

After Joe Biden narrowly won the state in last year's presidential race, Trump prodded Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to convene the conservative-led state legislature in order to overturn the results and pressured GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" additional votes to ensure a statewide win.

Trump's entreaties were rejected, but he has continued to attack both men for what he says was an unfair election process in the state, withholding an endorsement of Kemp in his 2022 reelection campaign and backing Rep. Jody Hice in a Republican secretary of state primary over Raffensperger.

Read more: How Trump could use his relationship with Putin and Russia to skirt prosecution back in the USA

In 2018, Kemp's Democratic opponent was former state House Minority Leader and voting-rights activist Stacey Abrams.

The race was highly competitive, with Kemp edging out Abrams, by 1.4 percentage points, 50.2%-48.8%, the smallest margin in a Georgia governor's race since 1966.

Trump was a staunch supporter of Kemp in his first race, but that goodwill has since dried up.

During his first post-presidential rally in Ohio on Saturday, the former president suggested that Abrams might have been a more preferable choice for the GOP than Kemp.

"By the way, we might have been better if she did win for governor of Georgia, if you want to know the truth," Trump said. "We might have had a better governor if she did win."

Trump has not endorsed any of the lesser-known candidates running against Kemp in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but the former president could play a decisive role in the immediate future of the state party.

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So I was reading along through Andy Shers Times-Free Press story about the ACLU helping a couple of Tennessee business owners sue to stop the implementation of the anti-trans bathroom law (which we also covered on Friday). I was thinking, Oh hey, nice, Bob Bernstein is in on this, and, Yep, thats some bigoted stuff coming from the state, when I get to this part:

Rep. Tim Rudd, R-Murfreesboro, the House sponsor, said in a statement, "The law also does not alter, limit or affect a business or a person's free speech. The law does not require property owners to guard the entrance to a restroom, ascertain whether or not someone is transgender, nor prohibit anyone from entering or using restroom facilities. The law is in fact very limited in scope. It simply requires a warning sign to be placed at the entrance of a restroom that allows the opposite biological sex to enter that has multiple stalls and allows multiple people in at the same time. Nothing more than that. Women and parents of a female child have a right to know if a man could be waiting on them in a restroom. They also have a right to know if a property owner's policies could give cover to sexual predators waiting to pray upon women and children."

What the hell kind of men does Tim Rudd know? Seriously. As the daughter of a man and the sister of some men and the aunt of some men and boys, and as someone who has peed in the same bathroom at the same time as cis men, trans men and drag queens, I have never once observed them or their friends waiting in the bathroom to sexually assault anyone. Maybe the real issue here is that Tim Rudd needs better friends.

Im sure someone somewhere once did wait in a restroom to try to assault a stranger, but its very, very rare. Most people are sexually assaulted by someone they know perhaps a trusted basketball coach, or a teacher, or a minister, or their dads friend, or their friend or their dad. And Im not sure what sign is going to fix that problem.

And if men's bathrooms are such a danger if rapists just skulk around bathrooms waiting to assault people why arent there more bathroom rapes in mens bathrooms? Men are so horny and daring that theyll prey on women and children in a public restroom, but not so dangerous that other men have to be concerned? I find that very hard to believe.

These signs are just about forcing bigoted speech on business owners and not actually about protecting women and children. Its easy to see if you just swap out the wording. Imagine this:

I have no doubt people would have liked signs like this being posted in public restrooms at the end of segregation. Its still wrong. People are different than you. Its fine. Literally no one is being hurt by transgender people peeing in Fidos.

Heres who is being hurt. Say youre a father traveling with your small daughter. She has to pee. Its an emergency. You pull into a rest area. Which bathroom do you take her into? Or say that youre the female caregiver of a man with multiple sclerosis. Can you not go into the mens bathroom with him without causing a Republican scandal in this state? The men I have most often seen in womens bathrooms are of an age where I feel very confident that their prostates had decided they couldnt wait for the mens room to open up. Judging by the age of a lot of our legislators, this is a problem they will face. And we could choose to just be compassionate and mind our own business.

If you need to be warned before you pee in public that people who are different than you exist and sometimes also need to pee, maybe you should just stay home instead of making the rest of us wish you had.

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Tennessee Republicans' Ongoing Bathroom Bigotry | Pith in the Wind | nashvillescene.com - Nashville Scene

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Just a few days after the polls closed in Floridas 2018 general election, Rick Scott, then the states governor, held a press conference outside the governors mansion and made a stunning accusation.

Scott was running for a US Senate seat, and as more votes were counted, his lead was dwindling. Targeting two of the states most Democratic-leaning counties, Scott said there was rampant fraud.

Every person in Florida knows exactly what is happening. Their goal is to mysteriously keep finding more votes until the election turns out the way they want, he said, directing the states law enforcement agency to investigate. I will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election from the great people of Florida.

Scott eventually won the election, and his comments eventually faded. But the episode offered an alarming glimpse of the direction the Republican party was turning.

A little over two years later, fanned repeatedly by Donald Trump throughout 2020, the myth of a stolen American election has shifted from a fringe idea to one being embraced by the Republican party. The so-called big lie the idea that the election was stolen from Trump - has transformed from a tactical strategy to a guiding ideology.

For years, civil rights groups and academics have raised alarm at the way Republican officials have deployed false claims of voter fraud as a political strategy to justify laws that restrict access to the ballot. But the way Republicans have embraced the myth of a stolen election since Trumps loss in November, is new, they say, marking a dangerous turn from generalized allegations of fraud to refusing to accept the legitimacy of elections.

Supporting the idea of a stolen election has become a new kind of litmus test for Republican officeholders.

Republican election officials in Georgia and Nevada who have stood up for the integrity of the 2020 election results have been denounced by fellow Republicans. Republican lawmakers across the US have made pilgrimages to visit and champion an unprecedented inquiry into ballots in Arizona, which experts see as a thinly veiled effort to undermine confidence in the election. One hundred and forty-seven Republicans in the US House voted to overturn the results of the November election absent any evidence of voter fraud and after government officials said the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.

Voter suppression is not new, the battle lines have been drawn over that for quite some time. But this new concern about election subversion is really worrisome, said Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies election rules.

The willingness to deny election results comes amid heightened concern that Republicans are maneuvering to take over offices that would empower them to block the winners of elections from being seated. Several Republicans who have embraced the idea that the election was stolen are running to serve as secretaries of state, the chief election official in many places, a perch from which they would exert enormous power over elections, including the power to hold up certifying races.

I do think its a relatively new phenomenon, unfortunately, and disturbing, said Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University who has written extensively about the history of contested elections in the US. Weve had disputed elections in the past, but weve never had the denial of the basic mathematical reality of counting votes.

The effort to undermine the election results appears to be working. A majority of Republicans, and a quarter of all Americans, believe Trump is the true president, according to a May Reuters/Ipsos poll. Sixty-one per cent of Republicans believe the election was stolen from Trump, the same poll showed.

Rohn Bishop, the chairman of the local Republican party in Fond du Lac county in Wisconsin, said it was damaging to have such widespread uncertainty about the results of elections and was generally supportive of efforts to restore confidence. But he noted his dismay that Republicans continued to push lies about the election. He noted that the Republican party of Waukesha county, a bastion of GOP voters, recently hosted a screening of a film backed by Mike Lindell, a Trump ally and prominent election conspiracist, that pushed false claims of fraud.

We need to win back those suburban Republican voters that Waukesha county used to turn out, not keep poking them in the eye by forcing down their throat more of this election stuff, Trump stuff they dont want to hear, he said. I dont know why its so hard for Republican elected officials to tell the base the truth. That would help.

Alexander Keyssar, a Harvard historian who studies elections, noted that there was a long history in America of using fraud as an excuse to push back on gains in enfranchisement among Black and other minority voters. White voters are becoming a smaller share of the US electorate, data shows. There are definitely echoes of this now, he said. There has always been an inclination to see new voters of different ethnicities or appearance as agents, or unwitting agents of fraud.

Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican operative in Florida who is now retired, said the lies about the election provided a kind of cover for those unable to concede they were a shrinking minority in the population.

In the past, party elders, party leaders exploited the crazies in order to win elections and then largely ignored them after the elections, he said. What has happened since then is that Trump opened Pandoras box and let them out. He not only let them out, he affirmed them and provoked them. And so now theyre running wild and they are legitimatizing these delusions.

While there have been other nastily contested elections in US history President Rutherford B Hayes was labeled Rutherfraud and His Fraudulency after the contested election in 1876 both Keyssar and Foley said it was difficult to find a comparison to what was happening now.

Weve never had that. Weve never had McCarthyism-style fabrication of a conspiracy theory applied to the process of counting votes I would say its especially dangerous when its the electoral process, Foley said. Because its the electoral process that ultimately allows for self-government. When the mechanisms of self-government kind of get taken over by a kind of McCarthyism, thats very troubling.

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How Republicans came to embrace the big lie of a stolen election - The Guardian