The slow-motion coup

Not a week goes by now without some new revelation coming out of the special bi-partisan Congressional committee investigating the origins of the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building by Trump supporters on January 6 last year. It should be crystal clear to everyone now that this attack was aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 Presidential election, provoked and instigated by former President Trump himself by his continual promotion of the Big Lie that he actually won the election. Trump’s partisan supporters, believing this lie, resorted to violence on January 6 last year because all attempts prior to that date to change the vote results non-violently had failed.

Even though last year’s violent insurrection failed in its purpose, the crisis for American democracy is not over. On the contrary: there is a slow-motion coup underway right now, aimed at assuring that, however the vote actually turns out in November 2024, Donald Trump, as the likely Republican Presidential candidate, will be declared the winner. There are at least three ways this is happening.

First, in last year’s legislative sessions, 19 states passed 34 new voting laws that restrict voting in ways that disproportionally affect largely Democratic constituencies (according to a report published by the Brennan Center for Justice). These laws variously include provisions that restrict or eliminate vote-by-mail; make it harder to get an absentee ballot; cut the number of voting locations (especially in minority neighborhoods); eliminate ballot drop boxes; cut back on early voting; make voter registration difficult; and selectively purge voter registration rolls. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the state legislatures passed restrictive voting laws that were vetoed by the Democratic Governors, but all three states have gubernatorial elections this year. Thirty voter suppression bills in Pennsylvania have been carried over to this year’s legislative session.

These vote suppression tactics have a very long and ugly history in the United States, but they exploded in the wake of Trump’s Big Lie after the 2020 election as one central element of the slow-motion coup. Further, all attempts to pass legislation in the Congress that would ban some of these voter suppression tactics and establish minimum standards for voting access for all citizens have been blocked by Senate Republicans.

Second, former President Trump has been solidifying his control over the Republican Party by purging it of those Republican office holders who have refused to pledge loyalty to him; Trump has been busy remaking the Party into one in which denial of the 2020 election results has become a necessary requirement for any candidate for any office, from U.S. Congress to local school board, to receive Party backing and endorsement. Most alarmingly, Trump has targeted the officials who oversee elections at the state and local levels.

The Republican official on the Michigan State Board of Canvassers who cast the deciding vote to certify the vote count in Michigan for Biden has been purged from the Board. Trump has also endorsed a primary opponent against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, so that when he calls that office next time to “find 11,780 votes” for him, it won’t be Raffensberger answering the phone. These are just two of the most publicized examples of how Trump partisans are working to turn over the nation’s election infrastructure to partisan hacks; this is happening all over the country, including right here in Adams County Pennsylvania.

If the first two tactics fail to work to put Trump back in the White House in 2024, then the third tactic is designed to do the trick. The plan is to get state legislatures to certify a slate of Trump Electors to be submitted to the Electoral College, regardless of how the vote comes out in the state. Yes, as bizarre as this sounds, the U.S. Constitution leaves it to the individual states to decide how Presidential Electors are chosen. It is the Electoral College, not the popular vote, that chooses the President. Some Republican-majority states have now advanced legislation that puts the selection of Electors in the hands of the partisan state legislature.

Indeed, we now know, thanks to the work of the January 6 Committee, that the trigger for the insurrection was former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with the Trump campaign’s scheme to subvert the Electoral vote count. The plan was for Congress to refuse to accept the certified Slate of Electors from the seven so-called “battleground” states that Biden carried in 2020, which included Pennsylvania, and substitute in their place a slate of Trump Electors. A subpoena recently issued by the January 6 Committee to our own State Senator, Doug Mastriano (who was present at the Capitol on January 6), reveals that he was the principal person pushing this scheme for Pennsylvania. He and other Trump partisans are working hard to guarantee that, next time, this fundamentally undemocratic substitution scheme will work for their coup to succeed.

But if it does not succeed, they will not be averse to again engaging in a violent coup. The Republican National Committee, at their February meeting, declared that the January 6 insurrection was “legitimate political discourse.” No more evidence is needed to conclude that the Grand Old Party has been taken over by anti-democratic extremists, and that they are bent on seizing power by any means necessary.

Jeff Colvin is a research physicist and resident of Gettysburg. He is co-chair of Gettysburg DFA and chair of its Government Accountability Task Force.

This post originally appeared in the Gettysburg Times.