Wednesday, March 31, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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In the Sun’s March 16 editorial criticizing Republican state legislators in Idaho for defunding the state’s attorney general, we pondered how far GOP leaders in other states might go in attacking democracy and effective governance.
“Would they eliminate a secretary of state’s office and farm out elections to private-sector operators they could directly control?” we asked.
We should have known that somewhere, Republicans were taking a step toward that very scenario.
It happened in Georgia, where just 12 days after our editorial was published, the Legislature approved a sweeping voter suppression law that, among other things, removes the secretary of state as chair of Georgia’s election board and instead makes the position elected by the state General Assembly.
“This, effectively, turns the five-person board over to the state legislature, with the chair elected by both chambers and one member each appointed by each chamber. The law also gives the state election board the ability to suspend county election officials, who are replaced by an individual picked by the board,” Politico explained.
OK, so the law doesn’t eliminate the secretary of state’s office. But it does give the Legislature a remarkable level of control over election certification and validation. With control of the chair position, lawmakers now have the power to intervene in up to four counties at a time and install temporary officials with hiring and firing authority over elections directors, poll officers and other personnel. The provision is largely seen as a tool for GOP leaders to gain control over the election process in largely Democratic Fulton County.
As was the case in Idaho, the Georgia GOP’s action was part of a larger Republican movement to dismantle or seriously weaken solid governmental systems and gain single-party, minority control.
Also as in Idaho, Georgia’s attack on the secretary of state was partly a reaction to an independently elected state official refusing to promote the “stop the steal” lies from the 2020 election. In Georgia’s case, lawmakers were punishing Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for refusing to overturn President Joe Biden’s legitimate win in the state. (In Idaho, the Republican had declined to sign the state onto Texas’ bogus lawsuit challenging the results.)
Let’s be clear: The need to protect democracy and good governance doesn’t apply only to Republicans. A case in point is playing out in the U.S. House, where the majority Democrats have been asked to overturn the results of an Iowa congressional race that the Democratic candidate lost by just six votes. But given that the results were certified, it’s imperative for the House not to step in — the people of the district have spoken. Handing the seat to the Democratic candidate would be an unpardonable affront to the democratic process, not to mention a gross display of hypocrisy given the Democrats’ rightful opposition to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Without a doubt, though, Republicans pose the biggest threat on this front. They’re showing it with their assault on democracy in numerous states, where they’ve collectively filed more than 250 bills to suppress the vote in an effort to overturn all aspects of the 1964 Voting Rights Act. As has become abundantly clear, they want to disenfranchise voters of color in every state they can.
That’s certainly the case in Georgia, where the undercutting of Raffensperger was hardly the ugly part of the voting bill. Its elements included severe limits on drop boxes, new voter identification requirements and criminalization of the act of giving food or water to someone waiting in line to vote. As lawmakers voted on the bill, protesters outside carried signs calling it “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Certainly, it’s scary to think of what might have happened last November if the law had been in place. The idea of GOP lawmakers having direct control over local elections brings to mind all sorts of scenarios — imposing bogus emergency voting restrictions, throwing out huge numbers of ballots over bogus technical violations, overturning outcomes based on false claims of voter fraud, you name it.
And there would be little that voters could do about it, compared to the traditional governance setup in Nevada and elsewhere in which elections are overseen by an elected secretary of state. If an elected secretary of state were to usurp the system, voters could mount a recall campaign or vote that person out of office. It’s much, much harder to change a legislative majority through recall or election.
GOP actions like this reveal the party as a threat to democracy, and dial up the importance for voters to scrutinize candidates very closely and oppose Republican extremists.
We don’t want to imagine where the GOP might go from here in undermining governance. The last time we did, we got an unpleasant surprise.
