Republican Party taking a stand against free and fair elections
In Pennsylvania, Republicans who are bent on maintaining the state’s gerrymandered congressional map are once again asking the U.S. rescue.supreme Court to come to their In Washington, D.C., House Speaker Paul Ryan has declined to retain an administrator who had led efforts to protect U.S. elections from hackers.
Throw in Citizens United and President Donald Trump’s refusal to combat the Russians on election meddling and more, and it all raises a question:
What do Republicans have against fair elections?
You’d like to think that American leaders would be loyal to our democracy first and their party second, but it’s increasingly clear that the GOP has flipped that script.
The Pennsylvania situation shows how far Republicans are willing to go tilt the scales.
In February, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered that the congressional map be redrawn. And no wonder, because the map had led to a 13-5 Republican advantage since 2002 even though the state has voted for a Democrat in six of the past eight presidential elections and only narrowly supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Republicans requested that the U.S. Supreme Court intervene, but Justice Samuel Alito Jr. denied them in no uncertain terms — he declined it without comment and without taking it to the full court.
But when the state Supreme Court issued a new map days later, Republicans sought another stay from the U.S. Supreme Court.
So here we go again — almost literally, according to experts. They say the GOP’S new challenge is so similar to the last one, it’s likely the U.S. Supreme Court will react the same way it did last time.
“The biggest tea leaf is probably what Justice Alito did the last time when he denied the stay without even referring it to the whole court,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, in a story
In February, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered that the congressional map be redrawn. And no wonder, because the map had led to a 13-5 Republican advantage since 2002 even though the state has voted for a Democrat in six of the past eight presidential elections and only narrowly supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
by The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Republicans are essentially making a variant of the same argument, so unless Justice Alito has changed his mind, it’s hard to see how you get five votes for a stay — and he may even decide again that this is not something that even needs to go to the whole court.”
As the Pennsylvania Republicans were mounting their new defense of the state’s patently unfair map, Politico reported that Ryan was attacking fair elections from another angle — by freezing out the chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, Matthew Masterson.
Politico quoted people familiar with the situation as saying Ryan would not recommend that Trump give Masterson another term. Masterson’s current term expired in December, but he’s stayed on while Ryan considered whom to nominate.
By appearances, he also stayed on because he’s an increasingly rare Republican who cared about fair elections. Politico said state officials and cyber experts have praised him for going about his work in an objective, nonpartisan way, and one expert called him a “champion of more secure and better elections the entire time he’s been on the EAC.”
Meanwhile, the other Republican on the three-member commission is playing more out of the GOP’S playbook. Politico said she had “expressed skepticism about the urgency of election security and sharply criticized the Department of Homeland Security for labeling elections as ‘critical infrastructure.’ ” She also criticized DHS for a report detailing Russian hacking.
To be clear, securing our elections is a critical priority, given the extent of Russia’s cyberattacks in the 2016 election and warnings from intelligence officials that the Russians will hit us again in full force during the 2018 mid-terms.
Election officials and experts reacted with alarm to Ryan’s move.
“It is clear that Republican congressional leadership and the Trump administration simply aren’t interested in ensuring that our elections are protected from Russian interference,” Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, a Democrat, told Politico.
This is beyond shameful. There’s no greater duty for an American political leader, Republican or Democrat, than to guard our democracy and work to maintain fair elections.
Given that the GOP leadership has thumbed its nose at that duty time and again, it’s time for Americans to take matters into their own hands during this year’s mid-terms by voting overwhelmingly in favor of free and fair elections and against the Russians, their meddling and the politicians who let them get away with it.