Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Back in the late 1990s, a teammate on my recreational soccer team told me about all the “illegals” who were voting in Arizona.
It was the first time I heard this claim, but certainly would not be the last. At the time, I found it interesting if suspicious.
After all these years, I look back and see the belief as sinister. It’s one of the long roots of a GOP belief system that was expressed vividly, if not convincingly, in the review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election that concluded last month.
That so-called audit springs from a worldview that has long tried to limit who can claim the mantle of “real American.” Anybody who doesn’t fit the preferred mold — conservative in politics, traditional in social and religious views — is discarded as illegitimate, “illegal,” a globalist, a fake American.
By logical extension, their votes should not count. And if their votes are counted, democracy itself is the problem.
That’s one of the reasons it is a mistake to put any stock in what the Cyber Ninjas announced after their monthslong review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election. The review was biased from the beginning, based on the stated pre-judgment by lead Ninja Doug Logan that election systems were corrupted in a way to hurt Trump.
It was also carried out by people with no experience in audits and elections and who ad-libbed their methods. The fact that their count found Biden won anyway is irrelevant.
And it was an outgrowth of a constricted understanding of the state and country as they really are.
We live in a big, bustling United States of America, and an Arizona bursting with growth and energy. Both state and country are full of people with diverse backgrounds, political views and social practices. It’s not the comparatively homogeneous 1950s anymore, and it won’t ever be again, even if some politicians keep yearning to resurrect that era.
The country as it exists today is only a threat if you let it be. And the Republican Party has chosen to let it be.
That’s why, for decades, you may have heard increasing numbers of conservatives argue in various ways against the democratic principle of majority rule, or against democracy in general.
You probably have heard the argument that “This is a republic, not a democracy.” The claim is based on a narrow reading of the Constitution and the Framers’ thinking. It relies on a strict definition of democracy as direct democracy, where the people make all the decisions through votes and majority rule.
Over the years, I grew quick to dismiss these arguments as pointless. The truth is, a country like ours is both a constitutional republic and a representative democracy, with elements in states like Arizona of direct democracy. There’s no contradiction.
What I didn’t understand is the sinister worldview that produced the argument. It came from a conservative movement that is suspicious of majority rule, by the people, as the electorate in states like Arizona has gradually diversified, evolving away from allegiance to the GOP.
The Legislature’s GOP majority has repeatedly tried to limit, and partially succeeded at limiting, the people’s initiative powers in Arizona. After we passed an initiative establishing a higher minimum wage in 2016, they put strict requirements into place for initiative petitions, making it harder to put proposals on the ballot.
Still, we passed Prop. 208 in 2020, levying a surcharge on family incomes over $500,000 for public education. The GOP majority in the Legislature immediately tried to nullify the effects of the surcharge through new tax cuts.
The hostility to majority rule goes on. This year Rep. Tim Dunn, a Republican, introduced a bill that would ask Arizona voters to require a supermajority of 60% in order for initiatives to become law. It did not pass.
So, this idea of limiting who gets a say in our political system to preserve their party’s power goes way back in Arizona Republican circles. I mean, former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist got his start in politics by trying to stop Black and Latino voters from voting in Phoenix in the 1960s. Way back.
Then came Trump. His slogan alone, “Make America Great Again,” referenced a nonspecific heyday of America, presumably the 1950s, when he was a child and the country wasn’t as complicated and colorful.
He railed against foreigners, and his administration slashed the levels of legal immigration along with illegal border crossings.
And he redefined his political opposition as an alien threat to the country itself. Democrats weren’t just the opposition party but “far-left radicals” and “communists.”
His political action committee is called the “Save America PAC” as if the country itself were at risk if we don’t subvert our elections to keep him in office. In a typical mass email sent Aug. 11, Trump said, “Good morning, America! While you were all sleeping, the Radical Democrats advanced a plan that will be known as the $3.5 trillion Communist Plan to Destroy America.”
Trump’s hyperbole and demonization are ridiculous, but they ring true for a significant minority of society. So, when he claimed electoral fraud would occur before, during and after the November 2020 election, his avid supporters believed him. Of course.
If you believe your political opposition is foreign globalist communists bent on destroying America, then of course you can believe they don’t deserve to vote, or to have their votes count.
For the state Senate’s president, Karen Fann, the conviction of Trump supporters that Arizona could not possibly have voted for a Democrat became a calling. And that calling became a so-called audit, by a firm with no experience but plenty of belief that the state and country could not actually have voted against Trump.
This has been coming, for decades, since my teammate asserted that “illegals” were voting, and before. It’s based in an unwillingness to accept and embrace the state and country as they really are.
Until the GOP does, we can expect them to continue rejecting election results that actually reflect us.
Tim Steller is a columnist for The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson.
