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**SEPTEMBER 7, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

New GOP Election Ploy: Challenge

**All**Democratic Victories

There's nothing new about Republicans' voter suppression. Indeed, to
cite just one instance, there's compelling evidence that 60 years ago,
when he was a young lawyer in Arizona, future Chief Justice William
Rehnquist threatened suspicious-looking (i.e., Latino) prospective
voters who'd lined up to cast their ballots at a polling place to
which local Republicans had dispatched him to damp down Democratic
voting. So there's precedent, if not entirely legal, for the current
Republican justices' hostility to just letting Americans vote.

But even as Republicans have tried for decades to suppress vote casting,
it's only in the past year that they've declared war on vote counts
themselves. To be sure, when vote margins were very close, as they were
in Florida in 2000, the Republican majority on the Court (then led by
the same Bill Rehnquist) stopped the count lest Al Gore become
president, but heck-that was really close. This year, though,
Republicans are moving to skew the vote not only going in (i.e.,
restricting access to the polls) but coming out (alleging fraud if their
candidate loses, and giving legislatures the power to overturn the
actual vote).

For this, we have two peculiar psychological conditions to thank. The
first, of course, is Donald Trump's, and the condition in question is
his inability to acknowledge his failures (in this case, his failure to
win the presidency last November), even when that requires denying
reality. The second is his party's, which took Trump's psychological
deficiency and attendant denial of reality and turned it into a
doctrine: When a Republican loses, it's because the vote count was
rigged.

For the past month, the California right has been declaring

that if Gavin Newsom survives next week's all-mail-ballot recall
election (and it's increasingly likely that he will), it will be due
to nefarious vote-fixing by nefarious Democrats. The holes in the return
ballot envelopes, which have been placed on those envelopes for decades
to help visually impaired voters know where to sign, are now alleged to
be a way that ballots marked with a "yes on the recall" vote can be
detected and discarded, though the vote markings actually won't be
visible through the holes.

Another complaint is that ballots arrive in the mail folded in such a
way that some of the candidates to replace the governor have the fold
over their name, and that this is designed to make it harder to vote for
these folded few. Of course, there are 46 such candidates-too many to
put on a ballot that could fit into an envelope without folding (plus
which, the order of the candidates varies from assembly district-there
are 80 of them-to assembly district).

On the right wing's social media, these folds and holes are adduced as
sinister Democratic plots, and even if Newsom wins in a landslide (which
is distinctly possible), Republicans are sure to allege that the vote
was cooked. Moreover, I've already seen Republican cries that this
November's Virginia gubernatorial election, in which Democrat Terry
McAuliffe holds the lead, is being fixed by the Democrats as well.

My fear-an altogether rational fear, alas-is that Republicans will
create such fantastical allegations to challenge a multitude of
Democratic victories in the 2022 midterm elections. The new Republican
normal is that no Democrat can legitimately win. This is not only very
dangerous for democracy; it is also, in magnifying the malformations of
Trump's psyche, very sick.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Infrastructure Summer: Joe Manchin's Symphony of Disingenuousness

He mumbles about inflation to try and stop a bill that's primarily
concerned with reducing inflation. BY DAVID DAYEN

The Vanishing Case for Liberal Inaction

Democrats who believe we should keep the filibuster because they fear a
Republican majority are just worried about the world as it exists today.
BY ALEXANDER SAMMON

A Fintech Fox in the Regulatory Henhouse

Adrienne Harris, an industry-friendly fintech adviser, takes over New
York's powerful financial regulator. BY TIMI IWAYEMI & MAX MORAN

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