The Republican party has truly become an anti-democratic political party that increasingly relies on underhanded tricks and deceit. From voter suppression to political gerrymandering, the party has created a situation in which they continue to control state legislatures while receiving less votes statewide. Election after election Republicans lose more of the popular vote. As the GOP has failed to win voters over with ideas, they have resorted to outright cheating. While all political parties play games, Democrats included, the blatant power grabs by Republican controlled state legislatures are unprecedented.

This past November the Republican Incumbent governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, lost his bid for a third term to Democrat Tony Evers. Next door in Michigan, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer will be replacing the term limited Republican Rick Snyder. The GOP-led legislatures of both states are quickly going to extreme lengths to weaken the powers of the two incoming governors.

Wisconsin and Michigan Republicans are taking a page right out of North Carolina’s playbook. In 2016 the North Carolina state legislature attempted to strip the governor-elect, Roy Cooper of many of his executive powers. Now Wisconsin and Michigan Republicans are aiming to do the same thing.

Due to a heavily gerrymandered political map, the Wisconsin State Assembly will remain under Republican control even though they only received 46 percent of the overall popular vote and lost every major state-wide office in the 2018 midterms. Now, in what is being called a legislative coup, the Republicans are trying to shift power to the themselves while stripping power from the incoming Governor, Tony Evers, and Attorney General, Josh Kaul. Lawmakers are aiming to essentially neuter the Attorney General by requiring legislative approval for decisions usually up to the discretion of the state’s top lawyer. One key component of the campaign, Kaul and Ever’s promise to withdraw the state from a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, will now be prevented from happening. The bill would also allow the legislature to hire its own private lawyers to defend state laws that the Attorney General does not wish to defend. This is very problematic because a private law firm, hired by lawmakers, will not have the same interests and accountability that an elected Attorney General is supposed to have. The state legislature also wants to prevent Evers from disbanding an economic agency that has long been seen as a way to funnel taxpayer funds to large corporations with no real value to state interests. Evers campaigned on eliminating the agency. In more voter suppression efforts, the bill cuts early voting from six weeks to two weeks. The Republican majority remains unabashed by public protests. The state House Speaker even stated, “We are going to have a very liberal governor who is going to enact policies that are in direct contrast to what many of us believe in.” This is not how elections and democracy work. The people of Wisconsin voted, and clearly the state legislature is trying to subvert the will of the people.

In Michigan, Democrats won contests for the Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State. The GOP-led state legislature there is also trying to restrict the powers of the newly elected officials. Jocelyn Benson, the Secretary of State-elect, ran on election and campaign transparency and now lawmakers are trying to take her power of overseeing campaign finance law and shifting it to a commission controlled by the state legislature. Similar to the Wisconsin bill, Michigan Republicans want to weaken the Attorney General’s office by giving lawmakers the ability to intervene in any stage of a legal battle over passed laws. As the state’s top lawyer, this right is granted to the Attorney General. The most appalling part about the actions of Michigan Republicans is their efforts to reverse or scale back ballot initiatives designed to help working class people. Before the election, citizens gathered enough signatures to add initiatives on minimum wage and paid sick time to the ballot. Supporters dropped the initiatives after the legislature agreed to pass bills first. Now Republicans are trying to scale those back. An amendment to the minimum wage bill pushes the timeline for increasing the minimum wage to $12 from 2022 to 2030, and no longer links the minimum wage increases to inflation. Another amendment changes the paid sick time. The old bill allotted an hour of sick time for every 30 hours of work, capped at 72 hours. The new bill changes to an hour of time for every 40 hours, capped at 36 hours. The goal of the legislature is to get all of the changes passed and signed by outgoing governor Snyder, so the new incoming governor won’t be able to veto the new bills.

Back in North Carolina, Republicans once again lost the popular vote but was able to hold on to majorities in the state legislature. Thankfully, the GOPs voting suppression efforts didn’t completely succeed. Republicans lost seats and will no longer hold a ‘supermajority’, preventing them from overriding a veto from Governor Cooper. For all of the GOPs unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud, it is ironic that Republicans are wrapped up in a allegations of election fraud. The details about North Carolinas 9^th congressional district remain unclear, but all fingers seem to point to a coordinated effort to collect absentee ballots in such a way to favor the Republican candidate, Mark Harris. What is known is that a large number of absentee ballots from two counties were requested, but not all of the ballots were returned. It seems that many of these ballots were collected by an operative paid by the Harris campaign. Investigations are underway, and the state board took an unprecedented move of not certifying the election. Now it looks likely that a new election will be held.

The assault on American democracy is real and intensifying. While there are many factors and groups contributing to this threat, the Republican party has completely thrown its support behind efforts to restrict voting and any real democratic input from the American people. The American people will have to be vigilant and contiue to push back.

Dale Seufert-Navarro