re: #142 No Malarkey!

The 2022 midterms were a win for democracy. We didn’t see extremists make significant efforts to interfere with voting; election deniers who ran for posts where they would be able to interfere in the certification process in key swing states lost their races and mostly conceded; the election deniers in Arizona lost their court challenges to their electoral defeats; confidence in election results improved, and the Electoral Count Act reforms to try to prevent another legalistic coup such as Trump attempted in 2020 passed.

We of course wanted to succeed in the Democrats’ long-shot bid to retain control of Congress so that more substantive legislation could be passed in the next two years. We failed in that as the GOP won a small majority in the House, however that has always been the nature of American politics; we mostly muddle through with only rare moments of sweeping change, usually brought about by some crisis that upends the political landscape. However, seeing as there have been recent dark times in which a slide into a dystopian, corrupt fascist government seemed likely, muddling through looks good in comparison. In 2022, we lived to fight another day.

Unfortunately, while the outright deniers lost, those who are continuing on the road to disenfranchise as many minorities as possible have seen repeated success in their ventures. Taking them off voting rolls, precise gerrymandering, continuing to disenfranchise ex-felons, not providing sufficient polling places, forcing people to wait in line for hours to discourage them from voting, cutting back on early voting — anything to stop Democrats from voting, as opposed to refusing to count their votes once cast. Kemp and Raffensperger are perfect examples.