GOP message in Texas: No Abuela Who Is Willing to Help Register Voters Is Safe
GOP embraces replacement theory in all-out assault on American democracy
Top Republicans and their right-wing allies have been peddling bigoted conspiracies about a supposed plot by elites to use non-white immigrants to undermine our democracy with masses of fraudulent votes and dilute the voting power of “real” Americans. This conspiracy is a version of great replacement theory – a lie rooted in white nationalism and antisemitism that has inspired multiple deadly terrorist attacks in recent years.
The bigoted conspiracy about noncitizens' fraudulent votes threatening the integrity of elections has been repeatedly and resoundingly debunked. But within the past several days alone, there’s been a reinvigoration of this noncitizen voting fiction that’s had dire – and in some cases frightening, like in the case of a great-grandmother and community volunteer in Texas – consequences on voting communities.
These events over the last few weeks are a stark reminder that a significant segment of the American public is encased in the surround sound of this lie as Republicans create a self-reinforcing loop to convince them to distrust American democracy and blame a nonexistent mass of fraudulent immigrant votes for any GOP loss. They are also a reminder that American democracy is not under threat from one single blow, but a death by a hundred cuts. And it is critical to note the broader, connected strategy of these attacks and see the throughline of how immigrants are falsely being painted as the villain in a conspiratorial story that is weaponized to popularize this assault on American democracy.
CORRUPT TEXAS AG USES NONCITIZEN VOTER LIE TO HARASS AND INTIMIDATE LATINO VOTERS
In Texas, impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton is using the noncitizen voter lie to harass Latino residents ahead of a critical election, including raiding the home of an 87-year-old great-grandmother who has spent years educating seniors and veterans in her community on voting registration. The New York Times reported that Lidia Martinez, a retired educator in Austin, heard someone at the door and thought maybe a neighbor needed to borrow some eggs for breakfast. It turned out to be armed agents, who “pushed open the door and marched past a living room wall decorated with crucifixes, she said.”
The raid was carried out under Paxton’s so-called election integrity unit, but might be more accurately described as a white nationalist conspiracy brigade wasting millions of working people's tax dollars on a hunt that would be better served on locating a chupacabra. Paxton created his band of conspiracy hunters in response to Trump’s baseless lie that undocumented immigrants committed widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. It’s a lie that he’s continued to promote should he lose the 2024 election. The New York Times:
Ms. Martinez said that the officers told her they came because she had filled out a report saying that older residents were not getting mail ballots. “Yes, I did,” she told them. For 35 years, Ms. Martinez has been a member of LULAC, the civil rights group, helping Latino residents stay engaged in politics. Much of her work has included instructing older residents and veterans on how to fill out voter registration cards.
“I go to a lot of senior events; I explain to them what they have to do,” she said. “I’ve been involved in politics all of my life.”
The officers said they were looking for voter cards that residents had filled out, she said.
“I told them, I don’t have them here,” she said.
The great-grandmother told The New York Times that the officers handed her a warrant and then searched through her belongings, riffling through her underwear and nightgowns, for evidence of wrongdoing. “The ‘probable cause’ for the raids, according to the warrants, was that a whining loser GOP candidate thought that some handwriting on different ballots looked similar,” Wonkette reported. “Seriously, that’s it.”
Subjecting Ms. Martinez to the indignity and frightening experience of a raid at her home was, of course, not about protecting American democracy but about Paxton sending a powerful threat to communities across the state of the kind of scrutiny you could face if you are not the “right type” of voter. Ms. Martinez does the often thankless work that keeps American democracy humming – and Paxton is looking to put a screeching halt to that sort of good American citizenry.
In response to these intimidation tactics targeting largely voters of color, LULAC has urged the U.S. Department of Justice to open a probe into Paxton’s actions. During a press conference hosted by the civil rights organization on Monday, Ms. Martinez decried the Texas GOP’s tactics as that of an authoritarian government. “I asked them why they were there and they said because of voter fraud,” she said. “And I said I’m not guilty of that.”
Paxton just happens to be harassing voters of color as state polling has shown that critical races in the state, particularly the race between U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Rep. Colin Allred, may be closer than expected.
In 2021, Paxton actually bragged to incarcerated white nationalist Steve Bannon that if it hadn’t been for his voter suppression tactics, namely blocking mail-in ballots from being mailed out to more than two million eligible voters in Harris County, Trump would have lost the state in 2020. Said another way: Paxton knows exactly what and why he is doing it.
Democrats are again experiencing a wave of enthusiasm heading into Election Day 2024 – and Paxton knows it. So do his allies. Fox News propagandist Maria Bartiromo recently spread an unhinged, thirdhand lie “about a ‘Democrat operation’ to register ‘massive lines of illegals’ to vote at Texas government offices,” Media Matters reported. The lie was so wild that it was debunked by the state GOP in addition to being called “kind of racist” by a spokesperson with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
But this isn’t just about one election or one racist raid, Paxton is pushing the boundaries of how he can use the power and resources of the Attorney General’s office to slowly erode American democracy.
REPUBLICANS USED THE VOTER FRAUD LIE TO TRY TO THROW TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ARIZONANS OFF THE ROLLS
But as America’s Voice Senior Research Director Zachary Mueller noted in his Bluesky thread, Paxton isn’t weaponizing his office in a vacuum. In Arizona, the pernicious lie that we can’t trust the results of a secure election because of some secret plot by non-whites to pollute the ballot box has gotten a major assist from another player on the GOP team: the right wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fresh off printing up thousands of “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” signs for their convention last month, the Republican National Committee filed an emergency order on August 9 seeking to block as many as 40,000 registered voters in Arizona. The “emergency” here wasn’t the unfounded claim of voter fraud – after all, noncitizen voting is very rare and very illegal – but rather a rapidly approaching Election Day in a critical swing state that President Biden won by just over 10,000 votes in 2020 and where Vice President Harris now maintains a lead in the 2024 race, as well as a critical Senate race that could help determine which party holds the majority in the chamber.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling last week declined to take action on the 40,000 voters but did allow parts of a GOP-led voter suppression law based on the noncitizen voting lie to partially go forward. Under the law, officials would require eligible Arizonans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote for local, state, and federal elections.
“Voters who were registered using the federal registration form will still be able to vote in the presidential election and by mail this November,” Democracy Docket explained. “However the court granted their request to allow Arizona to reject state voter registration applications submitted without documentary proof of citizenship.” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said his office would honor the changes but expressed worry “that changes to the process should not occur this close to an election, it creates confusion for voters.”
While the decision was not as bad as it could have been, the court's decision to allow any of the provisions to stand helped to reinforce the replacement theory myth that there is a problem that needs to be corrected. There isn’t.
A third of the court, apparently fully enthralled by conspiracy theory, would have gone all the way to block as many eligible voters as possible, as NBC News reported. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch “said they would have allowed all three provisions to be enforced.” An extremely troubling signal, these far-right judges are sending to Republican-controlled state legislatures and to Congress about their eagerness to affirm voter suppression efforts backed by the bigoted lie of mass voter fraud.
“There is no evidence of fraud and undocumented voting,” as Fontes said last month. “The 2024 election is weeks away and acting now to restrict the voting rights of a large group of Arizona’s voters is undemocratic.” He noted that many of those who Republicans sought to throw off the voting rolls were “service members, students and Native Americans who did not have birth certificates while registering.” Many of these voters were credited with helping flip Arizona to blue in 2020 for the first time in nearly 25 years. “The perniciousness of this case is not limited to those who it will disenfranchise – and it will disenfranchise some in AZ – but it is the United States Supreme Court lending its legitimacy to the white nationalist replacement theory lie,” Mueller continued.
REPUBLICANS FROM THE TOP DOWN ARE USING BASELESS AND BIGOTED CONSPIRACY TO HOLD ONTO POWER
Let’s say it one more time for the folks in the back: noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal and “vanishingly rare.” Still, you wouldn’t know that from the hysterics of top Republicans, including convicted felon Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance, who has embraced the GOP’s most extreme views in order to burnish his radical-right credentials after years of being a public face opposing his own running mate. This has included making the noncitizen voting lie and racist conspiracy theory about a non-existent immigrant “invasion” a core part of his campaigns, as The New York Times details:
Mr. Vance has made the conspiracy claim a staple of his stump speech, and in interviews has gone so far as to suggest that Democrats believe they can altogether “replace” native-born Americans, language that has been used by perpetrators of several mass shootings. At recent rallies in Arizona and Nevada, he said Ms. Harris would give every undocumented immigrant the right to vote and “destroy” Americans’ say in their own country. “When she let in millions of illegal aliens, it made our communities less safe — but it did give the Democrats a lot of voters,” he said Wednesday in Byron Center, Mich.
At a rally in North Carolina last week, Vance claimed Kamala Harris’ “Party wants more power, and the way they are going to do it is she wants to give all those illegal aliens the right to vote.” He went on with the white nationalist replacement theory, saying, “Harris has allowed a literal invasion of this country.”
But of course, it’s not just Trump and Weird JD. Despite being unable to show the receipts when pressed for proof of widespread noncitizen voting, a shameless Speaker Mike Johnson has used voter fraud fiction to push federal legislation purporting to tackle this non-existent issue. In June, House Republicans passed the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill purporting to ensure election integrity when in reality, it is nothing more than a figleaf to provide further legitimacy to election denial conspiracies and create new barriers that would actually make it harder for eligible Americans to vote.
While it is a deeply unserious and time-wasting endeavor, it’s unfortunately one that’s trickling down through to statehouses, where noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in statewide elections. And as we saw in Arizona, these lies are bearing some bitter fruit. It is a coordinated effort to undermine confidence in our elections, evidenced by the slew of ballots that will contain noncitizen voter amendments.
In Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, noncitizen voter amendments will appear on their respective ballots in just a matter of weeks, meaning the GOP’s baseless panic on this nonexistent issue could now be enshrined in their state’s constitution by the voters. The futility of this made-up issue is perhaps best highlighted in North Carolina, where Republicans have filed a constitutional amendment despite the state constitution already explicitly stating that only citizens can vote.
Wonkette notes that back in Texas, Paxton is continuing his brazen noncitizen voter lie push despite past litigation against his claims. “In 2022, the State Bar of Texas even sued Paxton for misrepresenting claims of voter fraud. Did it slow him down, heck no! Over the past three years he’s still spent about $3.3 million of taxpayer dollars fruitlessly looking for the fraud that he well knows is not there.” The question now is, how successful he’ll be this time around ahead of another critical race. His targets are making it clear they won’t be bossed around. “They wanted to intimidate me,” Lidia Martinez said. “But this is important work.”