Zeldin, Finchem, and the State of the Art: A Two-Year Election Campaign to Probe the Practice of Democracy in the United States

On the day of the U.S Capitol being emptied, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York walked into the Rotunda holding up a shaky camera and went live on Fox News.

Republican leaders started to distance the party from the actions of President Donald J. Trump, who encouraged the violence that took place during his campaign. Mr. Zeldin was ready to exonerate him that evening.

He said that this wasn’t just about the president of the United States, but what prompted the riot. “This is about people on the left and their double standards.”

Members of Congress have also been targeted, with one Democratic Congressman reporting that a caller to his office threatened to use a firearm to assassinate him. I have received threats as well. The home of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, was invaded last week by an armed man with right-wing conspiracy theories.

While troubling indicators — such as growing support for political violence, a rise in threats against elected officials and election workers, and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — have clearly signaled the path of the country’s political environment over the past two years, many see the current election cycle as a crucial test of how much those factors will affect the practice of democracy in the United States.

While the internal bulletin warned federal agencies of a heightened threat period, it identified “lone offenders” as the most likely to commit violence, rather than organized extremist groups. It laid out a number of grievances that may motivate those actors, including the notion of widespread election fraud and the social topics such as abortion and LGBTQ rights.

She said there was very little violence around Election Day in 2020. “There was lots of preparation and has been even more preparation by government, non-government groups to ensure that that’s the case this year again.”

Still, early voting in some places has been fraught. In Arizona, armed civilians in tactical gear showed up at ballot drop boxes, ostensibly to monitor voters. The activities caused claims of voter intimidation, and Republicans across the country encouraged them.

One of them is Mark Finchem, the GOP nominee for Arizona secretary of state who has spread baseless claims of election fraud and who has encouraged his followers to monitor vote operations in their communities.

“You are responsible for maintaining your election — not me, you!” Those in attendance at the rally pledged their loyalty to a flag that was at the U.S. Capitol. You need to be at the polls. You can’t leave it to someone else.

The RNC trained over 30,000 poll watchers ahead of this year’s congressional elections, according to the chair of the Republican National Committee.

The Weld County Clerk told Colorado Public Radio that 35 poll watchers she approved for the state’s June primary had ties to election denial groups.

That can present a complicated situation. On one hand, having conspiracy-minded volunteers involved in the process can be a valuable chance to educate them on the way elections actually work.

If people are set in their beliefs about widespread fraud and they need to uncover it, it can be a powder keg, says an voting expert at George Washington University.

“It’s not about service and it’s not about volunteering; it’s about political activism and vindicating an election from a couple years ago,” Overton said. “That can result in real conflict.”

Researchers say the days following the election may pose a greater risk of violence than Election Day itself, particularly in locations where vote counting drags on.

“What happens when people don’t have their preferred candidate win?” said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Denying is a way to create a community of conspiracy around that. I think violence is close to being done.

They have seen that denial is a way forward, that you’re able to create a community of conspiracy around that. I think violence isn’t that far away.

Creating Evidence During the 2018 Midterms: The Case of the New Mexico Capitol Attack and the 2020 Democratic Presidential Election as a Dry Run

There are people on the right who say they’re readying for litigation if races don’t favor Republican candidates.

A tape of a former Trump lawyer trying to change the 2020 election has become the focus of the Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation into the attack on the Capitol, encouraging New Mexico voters to scrutinize their election officials and take detailed notes.

“You are allowed to record anything that doesn’t work correctly”, according to audio obtained by the group Documented. “That’s called creating evidence.”

Hiller expects the field of places where threats of violence are the most dangerous to narrow quickly. Her team is specifically keeping an eye on races in the swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, where false claims of past election fraud have been embraced not just by many voters, but by some political leaders as well.

“They’re [states] where there are senior leaders, specifically in the Republican Party, that are already calling into question the results of the election or have a history of advocating for violence or condoning violence around it,” she said.

Nonetheless, Hiller is optimistic that institutions that have preserved the democratic process in the past will have the resources they need in the face of these threats.

“One of the stories of 2020 for me is that many of the fail-safes worked. The court systems were effective. Many of the recounts were very effective. And folks were able to surge resources to those locations,” she said. “So we’re in for another election that’s going to test those resources and that resolve.”

What this cycle may teach us about the next presidential election is what many are watching closely. Whether or not former President Donald Trump runs again, experts say the efforts around undermining democracy during the midterms could drastically affect what many perceive to be the even-higher-stakes race for the White House, calling it a “dry run” for 2024.

“What are people going to be allowed to get away with in terms of how they confront people at voting booths or polling stations, etc.?” Segal asked what he was talking about. “Maybe that’s what people mean by a dry run.”

Additionally, the midterms will test whether local organizing of far-right groups around challenging voter rolls and vote counting, and increased presence as election workers, will bear fruit. If it happens, those efforts would ramp up to the presidential election.

“Groups have been preparing day in and day out,” she said. If someone in a polling place is trying to create issues, I think the vast majority of polling places are well prepared for that. There’s been more thought into how to support folks with de-escalation skills.

Segal said that it’s critical that institutions and leaders show how they’ll handle the political event.

The enigmatic attack on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021: Trump’s response to the attack and the FBI investigation

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is chaired by Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi. The views he is expressing are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

A recent survey says that half of the country believes civil war will break out in the United States in the next few years and more than one in 10 Americans are willing to commit political violence.

In January 2021, hours before the tragic January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Trump declared to his followers on the National Mall, “[I]f you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” In his speech to the crowd, Mo Brooks said that the day would be when American patriots would start taking down names and kicking ass. And no one will forget GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri pumping his fist in solidarity as rioters assembled at the Capitol demanding the election be overturned.

In the aftermath of the attack, insurrectionists testified in court that they were only “following presidential orders,” when they breached the Capitol and threatened the lives of all who work there.

According to experts at the University of Chicago, an estimated 13 million Americans believe force would be justified to restore Trump to the White House, and an estimated 15 million Americans would support using force to prevent the former president from being prosecuted. These startling numbers again underline that our safety and security – as well as the rule of law – are under attack.

The FBI execution of a lawful search warrant for highly classified documents apparently kept illegally at the Former President’s beach club has caused a backlash from the crowd of MAGA Republicans. According to the wide breadth of public reporting, the Department of Justice followed the law and all normal procedures after attempting to obtain the classified documents voluntarily. Although no one is above the law in this country, Trump and MAGA extremist politicians’ immediate reaction was to attack the rule of law and dog-whistle at violence.

What ensued has been all too predictable. Within hours of the search, posts about “Civil war” rose by nearly 3000%. Federal law enforcement saw an increase in threats against their officers. A week later, an armed man attempted to breach an FBI office in Ohio before engaging in an hours-long standoff with police. The incident ended when the man pointed his firearm at police and was shot and killed.

Authoritarian Politics vs. Politics in the US: What do authoritarians really want in politics? The challenge of confronting Donald Trump

The US Republican Party is not likely to moderate its extreme behavior in the foreseeable future. The GOP was criticized for running candidates that the public thought were too extreme but decided to elevate and empower far-right lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.

Books have been removed from school shelves in Florida as the governor attempts to change the education system in his own image. Republicans in the US have passed legislation that puts pregnant women’s lives in danger. There is an attack on the rights of trans people.

According to a September poll, over half of Republicans say they would prefer strong, unelected leaders over weak elected ones, while a majority think it’s necessary to defend the traditional way of life by force. The results of the election are not believed by 61 percent of Republicans.

“To call a party democratic—committed to democracy—they’ve got to do three basic things: They have to unambiguously accept election results, they have to unambiguously renounce violence, and they have to consistently and unambiguously break with extremists or antidemocratic forces,” says Steve Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University. “I think the Republican Party now fails these three basic tests.”

Levitsky says far too many Republican leaders have flirted with using violence to achieve their political goals and spread lies about the most recent presidential election. He believes that if a politician successfully runs for president, an authoritarian way of governing in their own states could be applied at the national level.

It’s difficult to find an apt comparison between the Republican Party and authoritarian movements that have risen elsewhere for a variety of reasons. One possibility is that Donald Trump made the party more authoritarian because he took over a party that has existed for over 170 years. Historically, authoritarians tend to start their own parties. A few people were able to wield such power under Trump.

There is a group of people that are fairly authoritarian in most of the Western democracies. “The question is, how are they channeled into politics? 25 percent or so of the US is able to wield national power. Far-right parties in Europe might be similar to MAGA. Yeah. In Greece, Golden Dawn is probably more openly authoritarian.

The US governmental system and political parties present particular hurdles and openings to opportunity, but they are similar to the characteristics of authoritarian movements of the past.