First an election official erred. Then Trump’s IT squad arrived. Then the false claims, conspiracies, stolen data and denials ensued.
Colorado’s southwestern Mesa County is filled with desert lore. It’s also home to one of 2020’s stranger false stolen election narratives that keeps resounding like echoes in its canyons but offers lessons for 2022’s general election. Continue reading →
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are on a power trip, but we can make them irrelevant after this year’s election. Continue reading →
County officials didn’t properly set up and use their election computers, helping to launch a looming disinformation juggernaut.
Since 2020’s presidential election, two rural counties in Michigan and Colorado that initially reported incorrect results have had outsized roles in spreading Donald Trump’s big lie that his second term was stolen by Democrats colluding with one of the country’s biggest computerized voting systems makers. Continue reading →
US Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) doesn’t like ranked choice voting. It’s “a scam to rig elections,” he tweeted on August 31, after Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican Sarah Palin in a special election for US House in Alaska. “60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat ‘won.’” Continue reading →
Prospects for Democrats winning in November in the House and Senate have picked up recently. Nonetheless, political pundits are still not counting on the Democrats to win the House of Representatives. Candidates have eight weeks to refine their policies, messages, and strategies to energize and mobilize voters. Continue reading →
Former Brazilian President Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) runs about on stage at the Latin America Memorial in São Paulo. He was there on August 22, 2022, speaking at a book launch featuring photographs by Ricardo Stuckert about Lula’s trips around the world when he was the president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. Lula is a man with a great deal of energy. He recounts the story of when he was in Iran with his Foreign Minister Celso Amorim in 2010, trying to mediate and end the conflict imposed by the United States over Iran’s nuclear energy policy. Lula managed to secure a nuclear deal in 2010 that would have prevented the ongoing pressure campaign that Washington is conducting against Tehran. There was relief in the air. Then, Lula said, “Obama pissed outside the pot.” According to Lula, then-U.S. President Barack Obama did not accept the deal and crushed the hard work of the Brazilian leadership in bringing all sides to an agreement. Continue reading →
Because Joe Biden and Democrats act on behalf of the oligarchy instead of the people, they now risk a mid-term election loss. His solution to this political problem is to speak endlessly about Donald Trump and shout the word MAGA at every opportunity.
Anyone paying attention knows that Joe Biden’s accomplishments as president are pretty sparse. The oligarchy allowed his American Rescue Plan stimulus program to go through but then put a stop on Build Back Better or any other legislation that would help the people in a meaningful way. The student loan debt relief plan is a bait and switch scam used against desperate people. Biden brags about allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies but that won’t happen until 2026 and will only be allowed for ten drugs that are to be named later. Continue reading →
The latest Republican plot to sabotage our elections could remove American voters from the process of selecting their president. Continue reading →
In two states that more accurately represent a microcosm of American voters—Florida and New York—candidates generally committed to democracy and the rule of law defeated a Republican hodgepodge of Qanon believers, Adolf Hitler admirers, and, in one case, an admirer of Russia and Vladimir Putin. The election returns also pointed to a collapse in the corporate media’s insistence that the Republicans will score victories at the expense of Democrats in this year’s midterm elections. Continue reading →
KINGSTON, N.Y.—The constitutional right to abortion and democracy itself took center stage and gave Democratic Ulster County, N.Y., Executive Pat Ryan a win in a special congressional election in a swing U.S. House seat in New York’s Hudson Valley. Continue reading →
Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), the co-chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection, faced constant death threats from supporters of Donald Trump and his hand-picked opponent to Cheney, Harriet Hageman. In a state like Wyoming, where handshaking retail campaigning is a key to electoral success, being forced to host small political events in living rooms proved to be an electoral disaster for Ms. Cheney. Death threats against other Republican and Democratic opponents of Trump have been reported from around the country, a fact that led some Republicans in the House to decide not to seek re-election. Continue reading →
An interview with Adrian Fontes, who modernized Phoenix’s election system and helped hundreds of thousands of new voters during 2020’s pandemic and presidential election.
American voters have heard plenty about Republicans seeking high office in 2022 who still deny that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected. They have heard less about the Democratic candidates running against the election deniers, especially in battleground states. Continue reading →
Using ballot measures and careful, nonpartisan messaging that appeals to fairness, progressives can achieve victories on economic justice and expanded health care access.
Progressive activists and organizers are eyeing lessons from the resounding victory for abortion access in Kansas where nearly 60 percent of voters recently defeated a ban on the politicized medical procedure. Now, the Fairness Project hopes that state-by-state ballot measures can restore the reproductive right to an abortion that the Supreme Court stripped away earlier this year. Such measures can also achieve economic justice victories like increasing the minimum wage and expanding access to paid sick and family leave. Continue reading →
In an under-the-radar move to boost the GOP’s chances in November, the right-wing Supreme Court has told four states where lower courts found Republican legislators illegally drew congressional boundaries to exclude both Black and Democratic voters that they can go ahead and use those illegal maps in the November election. Continue reading →
Momentum is gaining to prosecute Trump, but scores of copycat election-denying candidates who want to interfere with fair elections are on the fall ballot.
Three months before the 2022 general election, momentum is tangibly growing for holding Donald Trump and Trump Republicans legally accountable for a range of criminal activities tied to their ultimately violent effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Continue reading →
Near the end of July, Andrew Yang—whose previous political projects include an unsuccessful run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, an unsuccessful run for the 2021 Democratic mayoral nomination in New York City, and what initially looked likely to be an unsuccessful new “third party,” the Forward Party—announced a re-launch of that last effort. Continue reading →
"Prominent election deniers have attracted large donations—often the legal maximum—from donors who are active in multiple states," warns a new report.
A new analysis out Monday reveals that far-right dark money groups and donors are pouring millions into secretary of state races across the U.S. this election cycle, far outpacing such giving in previous years and a worrying sign that Trump’s 2020 “Big Lie” has grotesquely altered races for powerful state-level posts that could control the fate of the nation’s democratic future. Continue reading →
Florida governor and rising GOP star Ron DeSantis has made a favorite hobby of censoring speech and thought.
Although we haven’t even gotten through this year’s midterm congressional elections, it’s still not too early to start examining some of the characters who hope you’ll make them president in 2024. Continue reading →
Democrats, the Cato Institute’s Andy Craig points out at The Daily Beast, are trafficking in panic over an upcoming Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper. Continue reading →
Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke said the law "constitutes a textbook violation of the National Voter Registration Act."
The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday sued Arizona in a bid to block a recently enacted law forcing residents to show proof of citizenship in order to vote in federal elections. Continue reading →
A June 29 Associated Press/NORC finds that 85% of Americans—including 92% of self-identified Republicans and 78% of self-identified Democrats—say “things in this country are headed in the wrong direction.” Continue reading →
The world’s biggest spam email operation currently in operation is that of the Trump political campaign and all of its offshoots and affiliates. Not a day goes by when two dozen or more campaign solicitation emails from a host of the vilest people to ever run for office or be involved in politics inundate mailboxes with messages that begin with the salutation of “Patriot.” This term, which has been hijacked by the Republicans, is no different than the ubiquitous use of “comrade” in the old Communist bloc. For Trump World, greeting one another with the term “patriot” is the new “Heil Hitler.” Continue reading →
As the ongoing January 6 congressional hearings further confirm the threat posed by former President Donald Trump’s coup attempt last year, watchdog groups emphasized following Tuesday’s testimony that the GOP’s election subversion efforts across the United States are continuing—and intensifying—in the present. Continue reading →
Trump-directed mobs threaten officials who wouldn’t cheat for him.
The scope of Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election widened in the congressional testimony on June 21 as Republican state legislators, state election officials and local election workers described Trump’s pressure campaigns and bullying that targeted them and led to them facing severe harassment for doing their jobs. Continue reading →
“Elections have consequences,” then-president Barack Obama reminded House Minority Whip Eric Cantor in 2009. Obama was correct. Elections do have consequences. Continue reading →
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz, the quack medical doctor whose television career was advanced by Oprah Winfrey, is not so much interested in representing Pennsylvania in the Senate as he is in helping to deliver to his friend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey, the ultimate prize of Turkish opposition leader Fethullah Gulen. Gulen is wanted by Erdogan as a “terrorist,” a term the Turkish dictator tosses around to describe anyone who opposes his regime. Oz, who would become the first Muslim in the Senate should he be elected, has been silent on what he thinks about Erdogan’s policy of scrapping Turkey’s secular constitution and way-of-life in favor of an Islamist society.
Continue reading →
Pro-Trump Republicans are building new paths to subvert future election results, numerous analyses find.
The language of the voting rights movement is changing. For decades, it had been centered around overcoming voter suppression and Jim Crow, which is shorthand for intentional barriers to stymie voters at the starting line—affecting their voter registration, their voting options, and whether or not their ballots are accepted. But today, thanks to Donald Trump’s 2020 election-denying loyalists, the focus is shifting to the finish line in elections, where counting votes is what matters. Election subversion is the new political buzz phrase. Continue reading →
Still, fringe candidates are luring GOP voters and winning key races.
The Republican Party’s radical right flank is making inroads among voters and winning key primaries east of the Mississippi. But out West, among the five states that held their 2022 primary elections on May 17, a string of GOP candidates for office who deny the 2020’s presidential election results and have embraced various conspiracies were rejected by Republicans who voted for more mainstream conservatives. Continue reading →
A principled conservative who rejected demands in 2020 to “find votes” is now singing a very different tune.
Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who in November 2020 refused Donald Trump’s demand to “find” the votes for the ex-president to win the state and vigorously defended the accuracy of Georgia’s results and recounts, is “being bent to the will” of 2020 election deniers as his May 24 primary approaches, civil rights advocates say. Continue reading →
Victories by them this year could position the extreme right to select the next president, regardless of what the electoral college or the popular vote says.
LAS VEGAS—Several months ago, Jim Marchant, a Nevada businessman and Trumpite conspiracy theorist, spilled the beans about how that wing of the Republican Party plans to control all U.S. elections in the future. Continue reading →
The blind alleys of European politics
The crises are running, faster and faster, well beyond the abilities of EU rigid structures and mindsets to respond.
Posted on May 3, 2022 by Alastair Crooke
The French election result has again demonstrated the hard-edged rigidities of European society which make the prospect of strong purposeful (i.e. transformative) government, of the ilk of say a de Gaulle, almost impossible to emerge today at national level. However, when such national rigidities are taken in combination with the European supra-national, ‘once size fits none’ institutional EU incapacity to respond to the specifics of complex situations, we get ‘full on’ immobilism—the impossibility to change policy in any way meaningfully, in the majority of EU states. Continue reading →