Elie Mystal: The GOP Campaign to Sow Chaos at the Ballot Box Has Already Begun [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/nevada-mail-in-ballot-lawsuit-trump/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/oOfxC


The Republican National Committee along with the Nevada Republican Party and the Donald Trump campaign continued their relentless assault on voting rights Friday with a new lawsuit filed against the state of Nevada. The authoritarians are challenging Nevada’s vote-by-mail rules, which allow mail-in ballots to be counted up to four days after Election Day.

The lawsuit is one of several Trump and his cultists have brought—and one of many more they intend to bring—either attacking mail-in voting or trying to get voters kicked off of registration rolls. The lawsuits are their attempt to do everything they can to prevent people from voting, because, as January 6 reminded them, suppressing the vote is easier than stealing votes after the fact.

This particular lawsuit stirred panic over the weekend when RNC cochair Lara Trump went on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show to try to explain the complaint. Unfortunately, Chairwoman Trump seemed to lack a basic understanding of both the suit in question and our electoral process. During the conversation, Bartiromo suggested that the RNC and its coplaintiffs were asking battleground states to “stop counting ballots past election day” (yes, shut down the whole vote-counting operation when the clock strikes midnight). Trump responded: “Yeah, that’s exactly right, you can’t have ballots counted after elections are over.” Trump went on to say, “We want, on Election Day, for that to be the last day that mail-in ballots can be counted.”

I’m sure Trump and her father-in-law want that. I’m sure they think that timely and legally cast votes should be discarded if the election officials aren’t able to tabulate them all by midnight on Election Day. Instead of counting all the votes, the Trump clan just wants enough votes to be counted for Trump to win, then have everybody go home.

*snip*