I don’t buy that it is a genuine belief. Certainly at the top it is a simple calculation of “I want to make it hard for people who will vote for the other guy to vote”, but even among the rank and file it has the flavour of a pious fiction – a story people get acceptance/prestige from their peers from accepting, but wouldn’t actually rely on being true if its truth or falsehood had a real material impact on them.
That is why republicans are such experts in “political correctness”. It’s because they are immersed in it.
In Canada (or in Quebec, at least) a notary is actually a kind of lawyer who specializes in real estate transactions and wills. The person who puts a seal on things is called a commissioner for oaths. There is someone in my town hall who will do it for free for any resident (and I don’t recall they even check on that). On the other hand, if I (or a house-bound) person cannot mail it in, how are they supposed to deliver it?
The thing about voter suppression is that SCOTUS thinks it all fine and dandy. Even the orange-utan stated publicly that if everyone voted, the Reps would never win an election.
Moreover, how can judges allow these kinds of laws to stand?
The elitist activism of John Roberts, and yes Clarence Thomas, to essentially nullify the federal voting rights laws of 1965 is just hard to ignore. Before the late 1990s and 2000s, one could argue that the process of selecting justices had become hyper-politicized, but I’d argue that since the mid-2000s, the supreme court itself has become a partisan shit-show that has reduced the credibility of the judiciary so badly that I’d actually have no problem with Biden or a progressive outright defying their rulings in certain cases, knowing full well that those tables could be turned.
I agree with the sentiment in the thread that the Republicans have a hard time winning elections where they do not have a basic majority, and have to resort to various voter suppression schemes as is being discussed.
However, another way for Republicans to thwart the will of voters is to run these crazy recall campaigns, such as is happening in California. It looks like they will be successful in recalling Governor Newsom, and forcing an off-cycle election this fall, and spending untold millions of tax dollars on it, where they are most likely NOT going to remove him from office. He’s up for re-election the normal way in 2022 anyway, but this recall is based on ginned-up outrage at the Governor’s heavy-handed pandemic response.
Keep in mind, all but one of California’s last umpteen governors have faced recall campaigns, with only one success (Ah-nold). So, it appears this whole thing is being promulgated by butt-hurt state Republicans seizing on the instability of the pandemic to try and take a short-cut to the Governorship, or just tarnish his potential future political ambitions. I don’t know who they think will do better than Newsom at this point, but any Conservative will have a very steep climb to any state office here, much less a Trumper.
As stated, ISTM they cannot win elections on positions alone in a lot of places without some sort of hijinx or jiggering with the voter rolls, or attempting to remove duly elected officials they disagree with outside of elections.
My guess is that we’ve reached the point where a few of the brainwashed voters have now run for office and won. Probably a very small percentage of the total number of Republican elected officials, but they probably do have some true believers in office now. It was bound to happen. The true believers are no longer content to remain part of the rabble.
ETA: It’s debatable, but Lauren Boebert, MTG, Madison Cawthorn, etc. are probably true believers.
Republican Rep. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills called it “quality votes.” And by that he means votes to keep them in power for the foreseeable future.
“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues," Kavanagh told CNN.
“Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well,” added Kavanagh about the raft of GOP-backed voting bills making it through the Arizona Legislature.
…
In March 2020, Trump told Fox News that he opposed the House’s version of a COVID-19 relief bill because of the money it contained to help elections officials set up mail voting. “The things they had in there were crazy,” he said. “They had things, levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Days later, the Republican speaker of Georgia’s House was even more explicit. “The president said it best: This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia,” David Ralston told the news site FetchYourNews. “Every registered voter is going to get one of these. Now I ask you … what was turnout in the primary back in 2018 or 2016. Was it 100%? No. No. It’s way, way, way lower. This will certainly drive up turnout.”
And just Wednesday, the Arizona state lawmaker who chairs a key elections committee explained that some people really should not be voting to start with.
“We don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote ― but everybody shouldn’t be voting,” John Kavanagh said. “Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues. … Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”
…
Republican votes are clean and shiny and very good quality. Democrat [sic] votes are nasty, stinky, and just plain disgusting. They should all be thrown out.
That’s some real bullshit right there. That’s been one of the things that I’ve been most active in over the years. It’s one of the reasons that I am usually closed on election day, so that I can be available to give a ride to someone who needs one.
