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Why the Republican War on Democracy Is Moving to the States

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Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.After Georgia Republicans experienced the shocking setback of losing the state’s presidential election, the party descended into bitter internal recriminations. President Trump blamed Republican officials for allowing massive voter fraud to steal the state; many state Republicans blamed Trump’s rhetoric for losing a winnable race.But both Republican factions heartily agree on the proper corrective steps: a sweeping bill curtailing voting and handing new powers to Republican legislators to prevent the unfortunate events of 2020–21 from happening again. After the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, a target of Trump’s rage, signed the measure, the former president offered his hearty congratulations. “They learned from the travesty of the 2020 Presidential Election, which can never be allowed to happen again,” the former President wrote in an official statement. “Too bad these changes could not have been done sooner!”If you want to understand why this is happening, a timely new paper by University of Washington political scientist helps explain. Grumbach surveys the performance of every state government across a broad array of measures of democratic health, such as indices of voting access like wait times and same-day and automatic voter-registration policies, felon disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and civil rights. His paper finds that the states that backslid on democratization over the past 16 years were shared a single characteristic: Republicans gained full control of their state government.In other words, states that are rolling back democratic protections are not responding to demographic change nor to any change internal to their state. They are following the agenda of the national Republican Party. That agenda is spreading throughout the states, which are imposing voter restrictions almost everywhere their party has the power to do so. Restricting the franchise has become perhaps the party’s core policy objective.Some Republicans frame that agenda in explicitly Trumpist terms: They are acting to stop the next stolen election, having failed to prevent the last one. Those GOP officials who are too embarrassed to openly endorse Trump’s election lies instead offer superficially plausible rationales.First, they insist they are acting to protect states’ rights to run their own elections. Overlooking the awkward historical resonance of using the exact same justification once put forward to justify Jim Crow–era restrictions, they insist states’ rights are all about preserving local variation. Elections should be run by those “closest to the people, elected by the people, most responsive to the people,” one leading Republican. “State legislators are the ,” insists another. “States have long experience running elections, and different states have taken different approaches suited to their own locales and populations,” pleads .And yet this mania for geographic proximity in election administration evaporates completely when they move from the state to the local level. Indeed, the most damaging provision in Georgia’s vote-suppression law removes power from local election boards and concentrates it in the hands of the states. If anybody actually does have local knowledge of election administration, it is the nice librarian who has been volunteering to organize the polls for many years.But that form of localism has been crushed — because, of course, the whole point is that the state government is run by Republicans. Democrats control the federal government. They also control many local governments where Democrats live and vote. They don’t control many state governments, though, which are beholden to legislatures whose district maps give Republicans an insurmountable advantage. And so the right-wing intelligentsia has discovered a “principle”: The state is the only level of government neither too big nor too small to administer elections.Second, they claim they seek merely to restore “confidence” in election integrity. And it is true that many Republicans voters lack confidence in the fairness of elections. What is the reason for their lack of confidence? It’s that Democrats won a fair, clean, high-turnout election. (Indeed, they won it in spite of an electoral college system that forced them to beat Trump by four percentage points in order to gain a narrow majority.) It follows that restoring confidence means eliminating the conditions that gave rise to this concern: Democrats winning a clean election.What gives the game away is that Republican vote-suppression maneuvers include a purge of Republican officials who worked in states Trump lost. The Michigan Republican Party removed Republican Aaron Van Langeveldefrom the Board of State Canvassers after he infuriated Trump and his fans by certifying the state’s electoral votes, thwarting Trump’s attempt to override the election and secure an unelected second term.In Georgia, Republicans stripped Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of his authority over state elections. Sterling’s chief operating officer, a Republican, CNN the move was retribution for Raffensperger’s refusal to submit to Trump’s demand to disregard the election results and hand the state’s electoral votes to him.The next time a Republican attempts to subvert an election result, there won’t be any inconvenient law-bound officials standing in the way. The power to act on Trump’s farrago of lies will rest in the hands of elected officials accountable to the party’s constituents. Rather than arresting the Republican party’s long slide into authoritarianism, Trump’s departure has accelerated it.Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Googleandapply.Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy NoticeBy submitting your email, you agree to our and and to receive email correspondence from us.Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.THE FEEDCharles is now officially the kingKing Charles became the monarch after the death of his mother, but a meeting formally confirmed it on Saturday. He also approved the day of the Queen’s funeral&nbsp;, though it is not known what date this will be. Speaking before the Accession Council, the King said his mother’s death had been an “irreparable loss”. Meanwhile, senior MPs in the House of Commons, including Prime Minister Liz Truss, have been swearing allegiance to the new monarch.—Sign In to CommentThis site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Googleandapply.Already a subscriber? Sign InThis email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our and and to receive email correspondence from us.Enter your email:Submit Emailedit emailForgot Password?Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:This password will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our and and to receive email correspondence from us.Sign InCreate AccountAs part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime.Continue ReadingAlready a subscriber? Sign InThis email will be used to sign into all New York sites. 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Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.After Georgia Republicans experienced the shocking setback of losing the state’s presidential election, the party descended into bitter internal recriminations. President Trump blamed Republican officials for allowing massive voter fraud to steal the state; many state Republicans blamed Trump’s rhetoric for losing a winnable race.But both Republican factions heartily agree on the proper corrective steps: a sweeping bill curtailing voting and handing new powers to Republican legislators to prevent the unfortunate events of...

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Jonathan Chait

New York is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite, and established itself as a cradle of New Journalism. Over time, it became more national in scope, publishing many noteworthy articles on American culture by writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Nora Ephron, John Heilemann, Frank Rich, and Rebecca Traister.

Why the Republican War on Democracy Is Moving to the States

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