If You Can't Win, Cheat

The Republican party, which hasn't been real enthusiastic about real democracy for a while, is pulling out all the stops. First, North Carolina:

The strange tale of election-rigging in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District gets stranger. Courtesy of Judd Legum's newsletter, "Popular Information," the state Board's decision to put on hold certification of the race in which Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes just got stranger:

The decision comes after substantial evidence of improprieties involving absentee ballots. A series of affidavits submitted suggests that a man named Leslie McCrae Dowless, who was hired by the Harris campaign through a contractor, systematically falsified, manipulated, and potentially destroyed absentee ballots -- particularly in Bladen County. Harris won Bladen County by 1,557 votes, more than his margin statewide. [districtwide, TS]

In fact, requests for absentee ballots in Bladen ran at 7.5 percent, while elsewhere in the district it was under 3 percent. Furthermore, the high percentage of the requests that went unreturned in Bladen and Robeson Counties — as many as 3,400 — suggests ballots collected by contractors working with Dowless were falsified or destroyed. Of voters in Bladen requesting absentee ballots, 19 percent were Republicans, yet Harris received 61 percent of the absentee vote.

Can you say "election fraud"?

If that doesn't work, cheat harder:

Following a script written in North Carolina two years ago, Wisconsin's Republican-controlled legislature in a lame-duck session on Friday introduced a package of legislation sharply curtailing the authorities of incoming Democrats elected statewide. During a hearing Monday, state Rep. Katrina Shankland (D) called the effort “a slap in the face of every voter who voted in record turnout in the midterms.”

On November 6, Democrat Tony Evers won the governorship, turning out Republican Scott Walker after two terms. Democrat Josh Kaul defeated Brad Schimel, Wisconsin's incumbent attorney general.

Republicans proposed moving the 2020 presidential primary date in an effort to advantage a conservative state Supreme Court justice. Other proposals would weaken the governor's power to appoint members to the Group Insurance Board and Walker’s scandal-wracked Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Evers has pledged to dissolve. The attorney general's office is also the focus of legislation to minimize its powers by shifting them to the legislature still dominated by the GOP.

The GOP has given up any pretense of wanting to govern. Like their mainstays in the "religious" right, they are only interested in gaining and keeping power, by whatever means necessary. Trump is only the most obvious symptom.

Digby has some historical background.