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We wish we would never again have to write one of these "hates democracy" items. Unfortunately, various red states keep doing undemocratic things, and we certainly don't want to just look the other way.
It's not much of a secret that the board that oversees Georgia elections has been stacked with Trumpers, and that they've been plotting and planning and scheming to find a way to help their boy. Yesterday, by a vote of 3 (the Trumpers) to 2 (the one Democrat and the one independent), the board adopted a new rule that says that election workers must count ballots on Election Day, to make sure that the number of physical ballots matches the number the ballot machines counted.
This is, of course, meant to cause chaos. At best, it's going to take a bunch of extra time, once the polls are closed, to complete the counting. And if the human number and machine number don't match, then they'll have to count again. And again. And again. And if they STILL don't match, then what happens? Nobody knows.
The Elections Board is also considering other ideas, which would also serve to gum up the works and to create chaos. For example, they are thinking about implementing a requirement that provisional/emergency ballots and absentee ballots have distinctive markings, so they can be distinguished from each other. This serves no particular purpose, but if it was wanted nonetheless, it would have been easy to implement a few months ago—before the ballots were printed. Now, the markings would have to be done by hand. To take another example, the Board is considering a requirement that early ballots also be hand-counted. There are an additional nine time-wasters like this on their to-do list.
The broad goal here, which anyone can see, is to cause the counting of Georgia ballots to drag on for countless additional hours and days. That, in turn, will create potential openings for Donald Trump to whine about unfair voting, and/or for his team to file the many lawsuits they already have ready to go. Naturally, these kinds of stunts could not make it clearer that the Republicans don't think their chances of winning a legitimate election are very good, and that they need to turn to unethical and antidemocratic trickery to try to get their candidate over the hump.
And now the good news. Georgia AG Chris Carr (R) has warned the Board that there is no statutory basis for these new rules. He may file suit or, if he does not, someone else will surely do so (say, the ACLU). The Board of Elections will face an uphill battle when that happens, since not only is the law not on their side, but judges generally don't look favorably on changing the rules so close to an election, even if the change is justified (which this one isn't).
As a case in point, consider this bit of good news out of Arizona. Not too long ago, a database error was discovered, which threw into question whether 98,000 immigrants, who have not yet proven their citizenship, would be able to vote in all races on the Arizona ballot. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes insisted that they be given the right to vote, while Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer disagreed. You don't need us to tell you which political party each of those two men belongs to. In any event, yesterday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that it's too close to the election to straighten this out, and that the presumption has to be in favor of the 98,000 people, who had no idea anything was wrong. So, they will get to vote the full ballot in November. (Z)