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
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
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
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.
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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
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
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
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
There is something about entrenched bureaucracies that transcend nations and cultures. When bureaucracies are confronted with unanticipated or new challenges, they freeze—like a deer facing headlights. Continue reading
The U.S. news media, taking its cues from fake TV reality shows, has reported that French President Emmanuel Macron’s easy defeat of fascist and pro-Russian candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election is an indication of the French far-right making “gains.” A 59 to 41 percent victory for Emmanuel, while not as strong as his 66 to 33 percent thrashing of Le Pen in the 2017 election, does not show any real “gains” by Le Pen and her National Rally party. Macron’s 2022 campaign strategy of tacking to the right did cost him votes among the French progressive left, but those voters largely decided to abstain from voting in the second round rather than voting for Le Pen. Some 6.8 percent of voters in the second round showed up at polling places to submit “blank” ballots. Continue reading
For the third time in 20 years, the anti-immigrant far right has been blocked from winning the French presidency at the last minute, leaving many breathing a sigh of relief. But with Marine Le Pen scoring the highest total ever for the extreme right—41.5% against incumbent President Emmanuel Macron’s 58.5%—the French Communist Party is warning that “the noose is tightening” on democracy in the country. Continue reading
Florida’s Republican-controlled House voted along party lines Thursday to approve a congressional map drawn by the office of right-wing Gov. Ron DeSantis, a move that came after state Democrats staged a sit-in on the chamber’s floor to condemn the redistricting plan as unconstitutional and racist. Continue reading
In May and June, as 26 states hold primary elections to determine the federal candidates for 2022’s general elections, fewer than one in five voters will likely show up. When broken down by political party, many candidates will be nominated by less than 10 percent of the electorate, a very low turnout that in most states will be dominated by voters who are middle-aged and older. Continue reading
On April 14, the Republican National Committee announced its withdrawal from the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has monopolized “major party” debates since 1988. The RNC, claiming bias on the CPD’s part in selecting moderators, pledged to “find newer, better debate platforms.” Continue reading
In the past half-century since the Iowa caucuses have led off the presidential nominating season, only one Democratic candidate who was not already president—a U.S. senator from the neighboring state of Illinois, Barack Obama—went on to win the White House. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden all lost in Iowa in their first bid for the presidency, even though they went on to win the nomination and the election. Continue reading
As 2022’s primaries approach, an unprecedented wave of public and private efforts are underway to foster trust in election operations and election officials in response to ongoing claims by Donald Trump and his supporters, including many officeholders and candidates, that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Continue reading
Partisan propaganda about the untrustworthiness of elections was worse in 2021 than during the 2020 presidential election, when Donald Trump claimed that he won and incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol to block ratification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to state election directors who fear that 2022’s elections will see deepening disinformation from losing GOP candidates. Continue reading
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling and allowed Alabama’s egregious gerrymandered Congressional map to remain in place. Continue reading
Florida’s recounts have been notorious. The 2000 presidential election was decided when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped a recount, holding, in Bush v. Gore, that different counties were using different procedures, which was unconstitutional. In 2018, three statewide contests, including for the U.S. Senate, triggered simultaneous recounts. Some populous counties did not finish in time, which meant that their initial vote totals were used—nullifying the recount. Continue reading
States that mailed a ballot to every registered voter in 2020’s presidential election saw voter turnout increase by an average of 5.6 percent, and turnout was even higher among infrequent voters, according to the first peer-reviewed academic study of 2020 mail voting. Continue reading
A new front is opening in Michigan’s voting wars that raises fundamental questions about how far defenders of fact-based elections and representative government must go to protect voting rights in an era marked by Republicans who deny results and spread lies about elections. Continue reading
The Latin American and Caribbean electoral calendar for 2022 promises to be no less hectic than that of the previous year. Among the upcoming elections and referendums that are slated for this year—Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, Peru, perhaps Haiti—two contests that are expected to attract the most attention, due to the specific geopolitical weight of these respective countries, are the general elections in Brazil, which are supposed to take place in October, and the Colombian parliamentary and presidential elections, slated for the first half of 2022. Continue reading
A new wave of power grabs by Georgia’s Republican legislators is threatening to wrest control of key local government bodies where Democrats, often people of color, have recently been elected and currently hold governing majorities. Continue reading
During an afternoon of public hearings where the Arizona Senate sent seven new election bills to the next stage of legislative review, Kari Lake, leaned into the podium, and, after introducing herself as “the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor,” told the Government Committee how she felt her 2020 presidential election vote had been stolen. Continue reading
The failure of major federal voting rights legislation in the Senate has left civil rights advocates saying they are determined to keep fighting—including by suing in battleground states. But the little bipartisan consensus that exists on election reform would, at best, lead to much narrower legislation that is unlikely to address state-level GOP efforts now targeting Democratic blocs. Continue reading
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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 →