The Bad Faith Of An Anti-Democracy Ratfuck
“It makes me question whether members of this board are operating in good faith."
They say my heart grows three sizes every time a public official calls out the right’s bad faith.
It’s true. I’ve confirmed it with my doctor, and if you want to see the X-rays, you can subscribe to Bad Faith Times at a special subscription tier that gives you access to my medical records. Such is the life of a writer in the 21st century.
I was equal parts depressed and giddy – such is life in the 21st century – when I read last week about the Georgia State Election Board, now dominated by Trump-aligned appointees, approving a rule to hand count ballots in the 2024 election. The rule, a favorite among fascists – including Elon Musk and other terminally online far-right leaders – would intentionally introduce chaos into the vote tallying in a state that could determine the presidential race. It was one of a dozen rules adopted by the board’s pro-Trump majority – including delaying certification of the race – to stop Kamala Harris from winning Georgia.
Become a BFT subscriber for free or sign up at the $5 monthly level and join our discord channel, where we talk about the 2024 election and other less-serious stuff
Georgia's new hand-counting rule will “require the hand count in addition to the customary machine count in each precinct” and “requires the hand count to take place the night of the November election or the next day.” Dozens of elections officials and experts told the election board members that there was no possible way precinct workers could finish a hand count overnight, or even within weeks of Election Day (electors are due to convene on December 17). This, of course, is the entire point of the exercise. In 2020, when mob boss Donald Trump was shaking down the Georgia secretary of state to “find” votes that would put him over the top, the right did not have the necessary people in place to steal the state from Joe Biden. They had not yet created the necessary pretext for ensuring Georgia does not remain blue.
They tried like hell and they failed. Their solution wasn’t to put forth a more popular candidate or platform, or to take time for self reflection, but to undermine a very basic tenet of democracy: That the candidate with the most votes in a state wins that state. Self reflection, after all, requires shame. And you cannot shame the shameless, who would much rather ratfuck the next election than learn from their mistakes. Ratfucking, engaging in "roguish behind-the-scenes behavior to undermine rivals," is their specialty.
Georgia’s new hand-counting rule was passed in the name of election security, a longtime staple of bad faith among those who seek to ignore the will of voters. Hand counting ballots has nothing to do with “securing elections.” It’s quite the opposite: Charging fallible and potentially corrupt and agenda-driven humans to count ballots is a guaranteed way to fuck up the voting tally in a way that might tip the election to the losing candidate. Again, as you know, this is the point.
It was downright delightful to hear a pro-democracy member of the Georgia state legislature question the motives of the board’s fascist majority, calling them out for refusing to do their jobs in good faith.
“It makes me question whether members of this board are operating in good faith,” Saira Draper, a Democratic member of the state legislature and election lawyer from DeKalb County, told The Washington Post. “Putting 11, maybe 12 new rules into play days before Election Day is a grift. We are setting up our counties to fail. Why do we know they are going to fail? Because they are telling you that.”
Draper sees what you see: A radicalized group that has nothing but hatred for democratic processes and the will of the voting public. Conservatives have for generations sneered at the idea of representative government. These people have been further radicalized by Silicon Valley billionaires who publicly opine about unraveling representative democracy and installing a strongman to cure all the nation’s ills. In this way, conservatives feel compelled to undermine elections and bring about the Era of the Strongman, who will deliver us to our former glory and stop Star Wars from becoming even more woke.
One pro-Trump election board member told the Post that hand-counting Georgia’s roughly 5 million ballots in the days (and weeks) after Election Day would uncover any discrepancies between the hand count and the far more accurate machine count. So the plan is in place: Intentionally create discrepancies and launch a weeks-long investigation into those discrepancies until Trump-aligned election board officials can announce solemnly and with great respect for the democratic process that the Big Boy has in fact won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. Having created the infrastructure for a legitimate election result, these officials could stand tall and say they had done their jobs. And that job was to deliver Georgia to Trump by any means necessary.
I have some hope that this bullshit hand-counting rule will be tossed out before Election Day. Georgia’s Republican attorney general last week released a legal analysis of the rule determining it is illegal since state law doesn’t permit hand counting at the precinct level. Members of Georgia’s GOP-controlled legislature have also made noise about throwing out the rule to avoid weeks of uncertainty around the state’s results. Georgia’s secretary of state said in a statement that the election board’s rule changes would be “simply impossible” to implement for the 2024 election.
President Biden and his administration might want to look into this shit too if he wants to save American democracy for one more election cycle.
As exhausting and demoralizing as this is, I take some comfort in elected officials and elections experts calling out the bad faith that pervades these right-wing ratfuck policy changes. Even five or ten years ago, the assumption was that everyone in public life operates in pristine good faith, and that efforts like this one in Georgia were nothing more than well-meaning people making foolish mistakes that could be corrected once they were made aware of the consequences of their actions. This Leslie Knope approach to politics went nowhere, and further empowered those who had decided the best way to defeat their political opponents and install their preferred candidates was to lie about their intentions.
Hence, we get serious-looking Republicans on cable news, their jaws set, their brows furrowed, speaking in low tones about the dangers of election fraud in the United States. The only election fraud is the carefully-crafted election fraud implemented by the right, but that hasn’t mattered. My vibes-based analysis of bad-faith election policymaking says it’s very much starting to matter. It’s a decidedly good thing if you’re against the ratfucking of American elections.
Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @cdcarter13.bsky.social and on Threads at @CDCarter13.
Comments ()