As America slouches towards the midterms, diehard Trump supporters—“folks who not just believe the Big Lie but were actually involved in trying to subvert the 2020 election”—are vying to get on ballots for positions that could allow them to influence the next presidential race.
This week on Fever Dreams, hosts Will Sommer and Sam Brodey talk to Jessica Huseman, editorial director for Votebeat, on the hyper-local battles in Nevada, Colorado, Michigan and elsewhere that could end up being critical for swing states in 2024. And although some Stop the Steal nutsos were weeded out in recent primaries, “just because these people didn’t win for these roles doesn’t mean they won’t continue to have influence in the Republican party in their states,” Huseman says.
“There are just so many—I mean, hundreds of county-level officials with a lot of power,” Brodey adds. “I guess the worst-case scenario for a lot of people is, come 2024, whether it’s, like, a governor or even, like, a county-election clerk and a key county, if we’re looking at the sort of margins we saw in 2020—10,000 votes in Georgia, or however many in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania… all it takes is one county-level official to cast doubt on the results… and all of a sudden you have a huge crisis.”
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Huseman points out that already in places like Otero County, New Mexico, and in neighboring Arizona, MAGA obstructionism over certifying the results of the 2020 election has led to “crazy town.”
“There is a bill that’s sort of like, flitting around, and they’re doing a pilot test on making sure that ballots are secure. And they’re printed by a company that, like, inserts what they call ‘holograms’ into ballots for security. And, like, this company has no experience printing ballots and, like, no business doing that job…
“They tried to do Cyber Ninjas. That was wild and it failed so hard. A lot of these bills are not passing, but they are inching them forward, right? Even if the bill doesn’t pass, they then put it in the budget to study it as a pilot project, just to keep that idea alive for a little bit longer.”
Elsewhere on the podcast, Sommer and Brodey discuss the “kerfuffle at the GOP convention in Houston over the weekend” in which a “YouTube prankster” staged a dramatic confrontation with Congressman Dan Crenshaw—presumably over his “perceived support for red-flag laws on guns,” but also mainly just for the attention. The hosts also discuss how the Jan. 6 committee is “turning out to be this, like, actually really potent vehicle for exposing the depth of what Trump did and the abuses of his power [but] is also doubling as this lionization of” Mike Pence in a way that “so many Donald Trump critics really don’t like.” (Side note: Did the Trump White House let any old documentarian take behind-the-scenes footage during critical hours of the 45th presidency? Sure seems like it. “Who else was granted extensive access?” Brodey ponders. “Are more British documentarians going to come out of the woodwork with reams of footage?”)
And finally, the hosts note how a drag queen named Barbra Seville busted apart Kari Lake’s anti-LGBTQ hypocrisy (turns out, despite her attacks on drag, Lake is apparently a huge fan—Seville posted, “I’ve performed for Kari’s birthday. I’ve performed in her home (with children present), and I’ve performed for her at some of the seediest bars in Phoenix,”)—and they discuss how Texas Republicans are terrified that the woke are now coming for the Alamo.
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