January 6 was not a singular moment.
More than the culmination of Donald Trump’s failed effort to overturn the 2020 election results, it was the launch of the institutionalization of the Big Lie.
- Now, the Big Lie has mutated from a specific claim about 2020 into an outright assault on democracy itself.
- The mutated claim is that the very machinery of our election system cannot be trusted.
- The Alice-in-Wonderland idea is: because it is impossible for Donald Trump and his allies not to win elections, any result to the contrary is, per se, fraudulent.
- And it follows that extreme measures are justified to preempt or offset this fantastical threat to democracy.
It’s up to us to make January 6 into Democracy Day.
Public Citizen and allies are holding vigils — in person and online — around the country to mark this shameful anniversary.
Find a vigil near you and sign up to attend.
A majority of Republican voters say that the 2020 election results were fraudulent and that they cannot trust the 2024 results if their candidate does not prevail.
Even more troublingly, 40% of Republicans say that “patriots” may have to resort to violence because the country has gone so far off track.
These are the beliefs that are driving a fascist-tinged and conspiracist-minded extremist movement in the country.
- That movement is taking action, much of which overlaps with ongoing efforts to deny people their freedom to vote and tilt the electoral map for Republican candidates.
- More than 30 voting restrictive laws have been passed in 19 states.
- States across the nation are rushing to gerrymander their congressional districts for the next decade in ways that overwhelmingly will benefit Republican candidates.
- At least eight states, including Arizona and Georgia, enacted laws in 2021 that changed election laws to give more power to legislatures or partisan entities and strip election duties from secretaries of state.
- Trump-allied extremists, many of whom adhere to the Big Lie, are taking control of election administration officials.
It is no exaggeration to say that the American democratic experiment is under assault.
We face the prospect not just of voter suppression, but outright election sabotage — the prospect that state legislators will overturn the actual vote count and declare as winner someone who did not receive the most votes.
Tomorrow’s vigils will stand against this slow-motion coup and demand that Congress immediately pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Please sign up to join us — in person or online — for one of tomorrow’s vigils.
For democracy,
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
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