The Process of Making Elections Irrelevant

Will It Be Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum on the Ballot to Please Our Overlords?

I hate to say this, but reliance on elections as the antidote to MAGA is looking riskier all the time. I’m not sure that people who fundamentally disdain democracy will let themselves be voted out of office as things stand now. Of course, there’s a difference between now and the 2026 midterms: the economy could tank, the president could become (more) incapacitated, or, God forbid, another pandemic.

I am not telling readers to forego voting. The electoral process is as much a cultural phenomenon as it is political. I was reminded of this while attending a happy hour with a crowd consisting of former candidates, a sprinkling of union folk, and campaign workers. Grassroots candidates win even when they lose, as the people attracted to campaigns make new friends and interact with potential voters.

From school boards to president, the processes of voting are being eroded. Cheating has become a hallmark of Republican-like campaigns. Democratic campaigns are all-too-often built around an Overton window that’s been manipulated by those seeking to impose a different version of reality.

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There is a campaign underway to recall four Grossmont Union High School District trustees by parents upset with instances of political retaliation, accusations of financial impropriety, and an attempt to split the votes of more liberal constituents by creating supposedly progressive-sounding “ghost candidates” to run against union-endorsed individuals.

From the Union-Tribune:

• Trustees’ text messages and emails obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune via public record request last month revealed the private plotting by an inner circle of select board trustees and their allies who were often instructed by Jerry Hobbs, an ousted former teacher who briefly became the district’s chief of staff before leaving with a six-figure settlement amid a dispute with trustees.

• The group’s members plotted against staff they considered their political enemies and arranged promotions of their allies. Their messages have spurred outrage among employees, former employees, parents and other community members in the East County high school district of 21,700 students. And they’re now leading employees to challenge the validity of some board decisions that were discussed privately.

The recall effort is aimed at unseating right-leaning office holders. Given the logistical challenges in gathering signatures (only people living in each trustee’s district can sign) to qualify a recall, I am skeptical that they’ll succeed. Odds are good that the County District Attorney won’t be able (if they are even interested) to find enough evidence to prosecute.

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On the State level, State Assembly member Carl Demaio has announced he’s seeking a statewide voter ID ballot initiative for the 2026 ballot. It would require the state to verify proof of citizenship when a person registers to vote, and voters would have to provide identification at the polls.

Running such a campaign provides Demaio the opportunity to question the validity of California’s voting requirements. Now you’d think that he was serious from the solemn press conference announcing the campaign. Demaio launched similar voter ID ballot measure qualifying efforts in 2021 and 2023, turning in a whopping zero number of voter signatures.

Via ABC News:

• The Republican lawmakers said the measure would help restore trust in elections where they said people have complained about outdated voter rolls and an inadequate signature review process, with some also casting doubt on election results. The effort was not new. DeMaio unsuccessfully attempted to place a similar measure requiring voter identification on the ballot the last election.

• While voting by noncitizens has occurred, research and reviews of state cases have shown it to be rare and typically a mistake rather than an intentional effort to sway an election. Voter fraud is also rare.

Politicians and causes across the spectrum now use empty promises about [fill-in-the-blank] to get people to sign petitions. Ask yourself before signing any petition: “How will this petition actually make a difference or change a situation?” If you can’t think of an answer, don’t sign petitions unless you feel like you’re not getting enough spam.

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The Trump administration is engaging in a multipronged effort to gather data on voters and inspect voting equipment. Local and state election officials are expressing concerns about federal interference ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Nine states have been asked by the Department of Justice for copies of their voter rolls; only two have complied thus far. States have also been asked to share information about voters to implement a Trump executive order requiring people to provide documents proving they are citizens when they register to vote.

Key provisions of that executive order have been temporarily blocked by courts, including changing mail ballot deadlines and requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship.

Via the Washington Post:

• More than 350 election officials from at least 33 states joined a conference call Monday to learn more from Becker’s group and Democratic and Republican lawyers about the potential implications of the administration’s moves. Election officials have long bristled at the notion of federal intrusion. In 2017, during Trump’s first term, officials from both parties declined to give a presidential commission detailed information on voters, with Mississippi’s GOP secretary of state telling the task force to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Via Democracy Docket:

• In a survey of local election officials released Thursday by the Brennan Center, 59% of respondents said they worry about political leaders interfering with how election officials do their jobs. Forty-six percent of respondents said they are concerned about politically motivated investigations of election officials.

• But the DOJ’s recent increased scrutiny on how certain states manage their elections and voter registration — along with the added threat of possible criminal charges for not complying with arbitrary standards set by the Trump administration — could make things worse, advocates fear.

• “All that harassment has been fueled by the election denial movement,” Dax Goldstein, the Election Protection Program Director at the States United Democracy Center, told Democracy Docket. “Now the same election lies and conspiracy theories that fueled that movement are coming directly from the DOJ, with the full weight of the federal government behind them. And that is going to be really harmful, both to voters’ trust in our election system, and to our election officials.”

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The big news on the election manipulations front this week was President Trump’s ask for a mid-decade redistricting in Texas he believes will add five seats to its House GOP contingent. He’s also mentioned the possibility of redistricting to add more House Congresscritters from a handful of other states.

Although Texas is having a special legislative session called by Gov. Abbott that would consider redrawing districts, some Republicans are worried that doing so would dilute their edge in other districts.

Via The American Prospect:

• There’s a name for this style of redistricting: a “dummymander,” where maps are drawn to so much partisan advantage that it leaves incumbents of the majority party vulnerable in the event of a major swing.

• Roy has specifically questioned the wisdom of redistricting using 2020 census data, the only data available to properly size districts in a mid-cycle scenario. “We have a whole lot of people [that have] come into the state since then,” Roy told The Texas Tribune.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has talked up the possibility of a fighting fire with fire response, whereby a ballot measure or supermajority vote of the legislature could lead to a redistricting costing the GOP seats in 2026. Starting with the fact that California’s district drawing is done by a voter approved Independent Commission, and ending with the probability that any redistricting could be held off past the 2026 elections by court fights, the Governor’s idea may prove to be impractical.

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Opposition parties in the US typically do well in mid-term elections. Looking at 2028, a lack of enthusiasm for many incumbent Democrats and bitterness toward the party itself has the potential, combined with Republican efforts to cheat the will of the people, to thwart asperations for shifts in control of the House.

The good news here is that 72% of Democratic voters, according to recent polling, say they are extremely motivated to vote in next year’s congressional election. That's 22 points above Republican voters.

If only the Democratic party could bridge the gap between what their likely voters say they want and what’s on the ballot, there could be an earthshaking change in the balance of power. Unfortunately, the party doesn’t want to deal with its ruling over-the-hill gang and the prospect of anything other than a consultant/focus group driven platform is difficult to imagine.

The one fly in the ointment at this time is the mayoral contest in New York City. After years of promising the party’s young whippersnappers that, if they could make it past the primary, the old guard would go all in for them, it turned out they were lying.

Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in the June primary is the basis for my claim, as the crusty elders and financiers of the city are throwing their support behind a hasbeen (or a slime bag) along with giving aid and comfort to a campaign of unrivaled bigotry. Alabama’s George Wallace would have been proud.

Via Aaron Regunberg at The New Republic:

• These skeptics and naysayers will likely have little effect on the actual general election results come November. Mamdani, who earned more votes than any candidate has ever earned in the history of New York City Democratic primaries, has significantly higher favorability ratings among voters than any of his critics.

• But the failure of so many centrist Democrats to rally around the Democratic nominee in a race to lead the biggest and most culturally dominant city in America does effectively illustrate an underrecognized and often misrepresented dynamic in Democratic politics: that it is actually the party’s centrist establishment, not its progressive wing, that’s most likely to violate the maxim of “Vote Blue No Matter Who.”

Two words are the basis of this treachery: socialism and Palestine. And guess what? The representative elements of the electorate that have soured on the party –the younger men and women and minorities– are already ahead of the old guard on those topics.

Going beyond the specifics of Mamdani’s proposals and ideological stances, too much of the Democratic Party is addicted to market capitalism’s worst excesses. As is true with self-destructive habits acknowledging the problem is the first step in the recovery process.

As far as I’m concerned, the NYC election is about whether the Democratic Party (whether or not they agree with Mamdani) can stand for something besides kissing the asses of their financiers and power brokers.

Those rich folks will benefit by the upward redistribution of wealth concocted in Washington DC, and the best we should expect in terms of policy will be window dressing.

I’m not saying the party needs a gillion Zehron clones; there are so many aspects to what’s wrong with the country these days that there’s plenty of room under the tent.

I don’t have a history of getting too worked up about electoral contests outside my homebase, but this is different. I’m even going to send Zohran Mamdani a donation; I just haven’t decided how much I should send.

The Road to MechaHitler by Paul Krugman

• It all goes back to Stephen Colbert’s dictum, almost 20 years ago, that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” What he meant, of course, was that to be a conservative in good standing, you have to deny reality, which was true even then and is far more true now.

• Now, LLMs don’t reveal reality. On issues like climate or economic policy, however, they usually do a pretty good job of summarizing expert, informed views about reality. Since Republicans have staked out positions on these issues that run completely counter to informed views, they consider the answers AI gives on such issues left-wing.

• Hence the Musk/MechaHitler disaster. Musk tried to nudge Grok into being less “politically correct,” but what Musk considers political correctness is often what the rest of us consider just a reasonable description of reality. The only way to move Grok right was, in effect, to get it to buy into conspiracy theories, many of them, as always, involving a hefty dose of antisemitism.

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Trump’s National Guard Troops Are Questioning Their Mission in L.A. by Shawn Hubler at The New York Times

• The New York Times reached out to a broad pool of soldiers seeking interviews about the deployment. While a small sample, the six soldiers’ comments aligned with other signs of poor morale.

• At least 105 members of the deployment sought counseling from behavioral health officers, and at least one company commander and one battalion commander who objected to the mission were reassigned to work unrelated to the mobilization, the Guard officers said. Some troops became so disgruntled that there were several reports of soldiers defecating in Humvees and showers at the Southern California base where the troops are stationed, prompting tightened bathroom security.

• The California National Guard had 72 soldiers whose enlistment was set to expire during the deployment. Of those 72, at least two have now left the Guard and 55 others have indicated that they will not extend their service, according to the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is fighting Mr. Trump’s deployment in court. That number, if troops act on it, would amount to a 21 percent retention rate, far lower than the Guard’s typical 60 percent rate, officials said.

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ACA health insurance will cost the average person 75% more next year, research shows by Selena Simmons-Duffin at NPR

• Of course, Congress could extend the enhanced subsidies, but that would mean President Trump and Republican lawmakers supporting the Affordable Care Act, which is unlikely. The Republican Study Committee's 2025 fiscal budget said the enhanced subsidies "only perpetuate a never-ending cycle of rising premiums and federal bailouts — with taxpayers forced to foot the bill." The chair of the Senate's HELP committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., last year urged Congress to reject an extension, saying the subsidies "hide the unsustainable skyrocketing cost of Obamacare."

• Cox of KFF points out that a big portion of the new people who got covered in the last few years live in Republican strongholds. "A lot of southern states like Texas and Florida and Georgia have seen a tremendous amount of growth in their ACA marketplaces," she says. That growth could be reversed if higher premiums price people out of coverage.

• The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 8.2 million people who get ACA insurance now will become uninsured due to the expiration of the enhanced tax credits along with other changes the Trump administration and Congress have made to the marketplaces through regulations and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.