Everything About Our Elections Has Been Politicized by the Right
Election officials were reviewing disputed ballots on a Wednesday morning at an unremarkable government building in downtown Miami when hundreds of collared-shirt-wearing Republicans — many of them political staffers — descended upon the building.
It was November 22, 2000, and the men were chanting “Shut it down!” Before long, the demonstration turned violent, and the mob tried to rush the doors to the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections, creating chaos. The rioters trampled, punched, and kicked people in their attempt to storm the building.
That event later became known as the “Brooks Brothers riot,” and it presaged the contemporary politicization of the basic electoral processes that undergird our democracy. The incident was a part of a broader effort to halt a recount in Florida, the key state upon which George W. Bush’s presidential victory hinged — and where his margin was a mere 537 votes. In the end, the deadline for the recount was not met, in part due to the interference of the Brooks Brothers Brigade, and the election was handed to Bush.
This is to say: Every single vote can make a difference. And election disruption, even at the smallest levels, can change history.
Today, as even casual news consumers now know, nearly every aspect of our electoral process is politicized and subject to threats of interference. Most of this comes from the far-right, where the seeds of conspiratorial notions about alleged election fraud have found fertile ground. In Georgia, a network of conservative election officials and election denialists have been strategizing “to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement,” according to reporting in The Guardian. In Wisconsin, a conservative mayor made a big show of removing a ballot drop box, a widespread target of fraud accusations popularized by the widely debunked “2000 Mules” election conspiracy film, which pushed false claims about a Democratic conspiracy to use “mules” to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in swing states. (The conservative company behind the film has since issued an apology and halted distribution.)
Where does that leave us?
In Texas, we have our fair share of election denialism and a baseless belief in widespread electoral fraud — or at least, the pretense of a belief used to justify “investigating” Democratic officials and suppressing Latino votes. These conspiratorial notions have fueled doomed recount attempts that delay election certification and have increasingly moved from the fringes to the mainstream — and even into the official party organs of the GOP.
The background context of all this puts it into perspective. Recent polling showed Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in a virtual tie with his Democratic challenger Colin Allred. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is dumping millions of dollars into advertisements to support Allred. At a time when every vote counts, far-right activists and Republican party officials are sowing doubt about the legitimacy of our electoral processes while seeking to reduce access to the ballot box and impose more costly, error prone forms of counting the ballots.
Under the leadership of Allen West, whom I saw speak at a 2021 QAnon conspiracy convention in Dallas, the Dallas County Republican Party is attempting to stir up controversy about voting machines and software in a bid to get the Secretary of State to decertify the election equipment. In a recent press release, West alleged that Dallas County is using “voting system components that are illegal or were illegally certified by the Texas [Secretary of State],” that the systems produced “tabulation errors,” and that “these issues were discovered after a recent equipment validation test publicly failed.”
The press release does not provide evidence for these claims, which West repeated in an interview with conservative outlet The Texan, but it does recommend that the Secretary of State intervene. West has suggested that primary ballots for the Dallas County GOP should be hand-counted and has argued that early voting should be eliminated because it makes the voting process more vulnerable to “chicanery and fraud.” There is no evidence indicating that early voting leads to election fraud, but there is evidence that hand counting ballots presents higher risk of errors in tabulation. The Dallas County Elections Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Barbed Wire.
An official Dallas GOP post on X (formerly Twitter) promoting the claims was amplified by former journalist Lara Logan, who has promoted unfounded antisemitic conspiracy theories including claiming Jewish people secretly orchestrated the Civil War and control a “one world government.” Logan’s post falsely asserted that “Texas is in real danger from fraud in this election — Tarrant County is trying to send out seven million mail in ballots.” (Logan’s post drew a swift rebuttal from Republican Tarrant County Commissioner Tim O’Hare, who said, “No such thing is happening in Tarrant County.”)
The Dallas GOP’s seemingly technical arguments about “illegal” voting machines echo the sort of conspiratorial language put forward by election fraud activists like Weston Martinez, who has made inroads with mainstream Republican elected officials.
In April 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spoke at a Houston “election integrity” gala along with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow salesman whose election fraud claims have been repeatedly proven false. They addressed an audience of so-called election-fraud activists, including Martinez. That same year, I saw Martinez speak at an event for “patriot poll watchers” in North Texas hosted by a group called Taking Back Texas, which recently sent an email to its supporters urging them to speak at the Oct. 1 meeting of the Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court — where two speakers affiliated with the group subsequently asked the commissioners to reduce the number of polling stations and require voters be only allowed to vote at an assigned polling station, citing potential risks around voter privacy and ballot secrecy and arguing that redaction was not a sufficient solution.
This latest push to restrict access to polling stations in Tarrant County comes after the Tarrant County GOP sought the removal of polling places on college campuses they believed would be disfavorable to their electoral chances in what the Texas Tribune described as an attempt to seek an election advantage.
“Having these locations denied is a serious win for Republicans in Tarrant County,” wrote Tarrant County GOP chairman Bo French days before the emergency session of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, at which the issue was debated.
Ultimately, the Republican majority on the Tarrant County Commissioners Court failed to secure the votes needed to close polling locations on college campuses, and the Tarrant County GOP admonished one Republican commissioner, Manny Ramirez, for voting against the move.
These sorts of attempts — even when unsuccessful — demonstrate the extent to which the right has politicized everything to do with our elections, opening the door for more opportunities to contest the results when things don’t go their way. There may not be another Brooks Brothers riot in our future. But if there is something like it, the participants may be wearing red hats instead of button-downs.
Editor’s note: After this story published, a statement from the Dallas County Elections Administrator swatted down West’s claims, citing “100% accurate” results from a second test held on Oct. 8 with representatives from the Office of the Texas Secretary of State and the Attorney General of Texas, joined by representatives of the Dallas County Democratic and Republican Parties. “With less than 30 days before a major election, our focus should be on mailing ballots, training poll workers, and preparing voting locations, not wasting an entire day combating lies and false claims. Unfortunately, lying about elections has become a way to make both financial and political profit,” said Dallas County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia.
