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- Mar 13, 2025
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Once again, we are reminded that the greatest threat to American democracy is not from without, but from within--from those who wrap themselves in the flag while dismantling the Republic stitch by stitch.
The Republican Party, faced with the disquieting reality that free and fair elections no longer favor their dwindling coalition, has turned from persuasion to subversion. Their latest campaign is as brazen as it is predictable: a legal assault on mail-in ballots, designed not to protect the integrity of elections, but to ensure their own survival by diminishing yours.
In a move of breathtaking cynicism, the Republican Party, ever vigilant in its quest to disenfranchise the American electorate, has concocted a new stratagem: an attempt to invalidate mail-in ballots that are cast legally but received after Election Day. There is no confusion here; the ballots are postmarked properly and indisputably legitimate. The offense, according to our Republican friends, lies not in when the citizen voted but when the beleaguered postal system, for reasons beyond the voter's control, delivered the sacred piece of paper.
Failing to outlaw mail-in ballots outright--a measure too brazen even for their increasingly authoritarian tastes--they now seek a subtler coup. They have launched a lawsuit in Mississippi, that florid museum piece of Old Confederacy sentiment, hoping that its reliable conservatism will allow the matter to slither upward through the Fifth Circuit and into the eager arms of the Supreme Court's right-wing majority. The plan is naked in its cunning: create a "vehicle" case, innocuously born in the hinterlands, which can deliver a national precedent that would neuter mail-in voting altogether.
Naturally, they would exempt military ballots--those still being the last reliable bastion of Republican loyalty--thus ensuring that only their voters remain enfranchised by mail, while disqualifying vast swaths of urban, young, and minority voters who prefer or depend on the mail-in system.
This is not about "voter integrity," a phrase that has become, in Republican hands, as meaningful as "peace with honor" was during the Vietnam War. It is about one thing and one thing only: ensuring that the demographics that do not favor the modern Republican Party are kept from the polls by any legal fiction necessary. Donald Trump, that witless Caligula of American politics, has even issued an executive order using this very Mississippi case as justification for a broader power grab--another brick in his creaky, flammable edifice of electoral subversion.
Were the Court to sanctify this outrage, it would open the door to an America where early voting, mail-in voting, and perhaps even counting after midnight--all normal practices in a functioning democracy--are abolished, leaving only a single day, a single method, and a single Party to reign.
Why are Republicans doing this?
The answer is as simple as it is disingenuous: because mail-in ballots disproportionately favor Democrats. Unable to ban mail-in voting outright without inviting public outrage and judicial scrutiny, Republicans have instead chosen the artful dodge--arguing not over who votes, but over when their votes arrive by mail. By attacking the mechanics, they hope to achieve by judicial decree what they cannot win at the ballot box. They seek to discard mail-in votes that arrive after Election Day, regardless of the fact that the postmark clearly proves they were cast on time. Yet is not the postmark the fair and just delineator of what constitutes a qualified ballot--aside from other, unrelated eligibility factors?
Since there is no legitimate reason to disenfranchise these voters--other than partisan advantage--it becomes clear: Republicans would ban mail-in voting in its entirety, excluding only military ballots, if they believed they could get away with it. I therefore posit that the inescapable conclusion is this: the modern Republican Party does not merely distrust democracy; it despises it. This is further buttressed by the recent phenomenon of Republican figures propagating the contemptible falsehood that America "is not a democracy," as if "Republic" and "Democracy" were mutually exclusive terms--which they most certainly are not.
Mississippi was chosen not by accident, but by design: a deep-red state to serve as a pliant courier to the Supreme Court, where a conservative majority awaits, sympathetic not to democracy but to its constriction. And military ballots? Of course, they shall remain sacrosanct, for the uniformed services trend Republican, and exceptions are made readily when they benefit the right electorate.
In short, the Republican Party has abandoned even the pretense of winning the argument of ideas; it has embraced winning the game by changing the rules. It is not voter fraud they fear. It is voting itself.
The Republican Party, faced with the disquieting reality that free and fair elections no longer favor their dwindling coalition, has turned from persuasion to subversion. Their latest campaign is as brazen as it is predictable: a legal assault on mail-in ballots, designed not to protect the integrity of elections, but to ensure their own survival by diminishing yours.
In a move of breathtaking cynicism, the Republican Party, ever vigilant in its quest to disenfranchise the American electorate, has concocted a new stratagem: an attempt to invalidate mail-in ballots that are cast legally but received after Election Day. There is no confusion here; the ballots are postmarked properly and indisputably legitimate. The offense, according to our Republican friends, lies not in when the citizen voted but when the beleaguered postal system, for reasons beyond the voter's control, delivered the sacred piece of paper.
Failing to outlaw mail-in ballots outright--a measure too brazen even for their increasingly authoritarian tastes--they now seek a subtler coup. They have launched a lawsuit in Mississippi, that florid museum piece of Old Confederacy sentiment, hoping that its reliable conservatism will allow the matter to slither upward through the Fifth Circuit and into the eager arms of the Supreme Court's right-wing majority. The plan is naked in its cunning: create a "vehicle" case, innocuously born in the hinterlands, which can deliver a national precedent that would neuter mail-in voting altogether.
Naturally, they would exempt military ballots--those still being the last reliable bastion of Republican loyalty--thus ensuring that only their voters remain enfranchised by mail, while disqualifying vast swaths of urban, young, and minority voters who prefer or depend on the mail-in system.
This is not about "voter integrity," a phrase that has become, in Republican hands, as meaningful as "peace with honor" was during the Vietnam War. It is about one thing and one thing only: ensuring that the demographics that do not favor the modern Republican Party are kept from the polls by any legal fiction necessary. Donald Trump, that witless Caligula of American politics, has even issued an executive order using this very Mississippi case as justification for a broader power grab--another brick in his creaky, flammable edifice of electoral subversion.
Were the Court to sanctify this outrage, it would open the door to an America where early voting, mail-in voting, and perhaps even counting after midnight--all normal practices in a functioning democracy--are abolished, leaving only a single day, a single method, and a single Party to reign.
Why are Republicans doing this?
The answer is as simple as it is disingenuous: because mail-in ballots disproportionately favor Democrats. Unable to ban mail-in voting outright without inviting public outrage and judicial scrutiny, Republicans have instead chosen the artful dodge--arguing not over who votes, but over when their votes arrive by mail. By attacking the mechanics, they hope to achieve by judicial decree what they cannot win at the ballot box. They seek to discard mail-in votes that arrive after Election Day, regardless of the fact that the postmark clearly proves they were cast on time. Yet is not the postmark the fair and just delineator of what constitutes a qualified ballot--aside from other, unrelated eligibility factors?
Since there is no legitimate reason to disenfranchise these voters--other than partisan advantage--it becomes clear: Republicans would ban mail-in voting in its entirety, excluding only military ballots, if they believed they could get away with it. I therefore posit that the inescapable conclusion is this: the modern Republican Party does not merely distrust democracy; it despises it. This is further buttressed by the recent phenomenon of Republican figures propagating the contemptible falsehood that America "is not a democracy," as if "Republic" and "Democracy" were mutually exclusive terms--which they most certainly are not.
Mississippi was chosen not by accident, but by design: a deep-red state to serve as a pliant courier to the Supreme Court, where a conservative majority awaits, sympathetic not to democracy but to its constriction. And military ballots? Of course, they shall remain sacrosanct, for the uniformed services trend Republican, and exceptions are made readily when they benefit the right electorate.
In short, the Republican Party has abandoned even the pretense of winning the argument of ideas; it has embraced winning the game by changing the rules. It is not voter fraud they fear. It is voting itself.
