It Isn't Inconceivable that Republicans Use Project 2025 to Redefine the Words "Voter Fraud."
Project 2025, page 562
Reassigning Responsibility for Prosecuting Election-Related Offenses from the Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division. The Attorney General in the next conservative Administration should reassign responsibility for prosecuting violations of 18 U.S. Code § 24176 from the Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division where it belongs. Otherwise, voter registration fraud and unlawful ballot correction will remain federal election offenses that are never appropriately investigated and prosecuted.
Republicans what to criminalize anyone they accuse of voting unlawfully. In autocratic regimes, voting for a party other than the dictator’s party is voting unlawfully, for example. This policy recommendation is the first step toward prosecuting those who vote against the conservative regime.
The state of Florida formed an Office of Election Crimes and Security in 2022. It has arrested people who voted and registered to vote legally; and it has harassed and intimidated citizens for signing petitions.
The state of Texas has aggressively used state police to intimidate citizens who work to get out the vote or register people to vote legally, most notably by raiding the home of a Hispanic grandmother in the middle of the night.
The state of Georgia’s Republican legislature also created a Voter Fraud Taskforce in 2020.
On page 563, Project 2025’s writers include a lot of gobbledygook and legalese about their near-constant cries of voter fraud. I’ll save readers’ eyeballs those three paragraphs. Take migraine meds or make a stiff drink first.
Project 2025, page 563
The Department of Justice has formalized the Civil Rights Division’s (as opposed to the Criminal Division’s) jurisdiction over 18 U.S. Code § 241 investigations and prosecutions. The Criminal Division is no longer involved in consultation or review of 18 U.S. Code § 241 investigations. The Criminal Division has accordingly advised states that “[i]n the case of a crime of violence or intimidation,” they should “call 911 immediately and before contacting federal authorities” because “[s]tate and local police have primary jurisdiction over polling places,” despite clearly applicable federal law.
This is a mistake. With respect to the 2020 presidential election, there were no DOJ investigations of the appropriateness or lawfulness of state election guidance. Consider the state of Pennsylvania…
The text devotes several more deranged paragraphs to alleged voter fraud in Pennsylvania that was never investigated because the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IS INDEPENDENT OF THE PRESIDENT AND HIS AGENDA. (Project 2025, pages 563 - 564 MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THAT DRINK and give your terrors a break with a scene from My Favorite Movie of All Time.)
Project 2025, page 864
The President should direct the attorney general to defend the FEC in all litigation when there is a failure of the commissioners to authorize the general counsel of the agency to defend it. No legislation would be needed to accomplish this; the DOJ has the general authority to defend the government and its agencies in all litigation.
Project 2025, page 865
As a legislative matter and given this abuse, the President should seriously consider recommending that Congress amend FECA to remove the agency’s independent litigating authority and rely on the Department of Justice to handle all litigation involving the FEC.
Removing the FEC’s independent litigating authority and assigning it to the Department of Justice strips the FEC of much of its independence. In the fascist world of Project 2025, the Department of Justice is NOT an independent agency in our executive branch. It is required to follow the President’s agenda.
If the President’s agenda is to decree that anyone who votes for candidates other than himself and his party are committing voter fraud, that is what the DOJ will criminalize and prosecute.
Say the President decides too many women hate him for robbing us of our personhood. He decrees that women can no longer vote (yes, I know about the 19th Amendment…but I also used to believe that no man was above the law, and the US Supreme Court laid waste to that nicety.). Millions of women still register and vote in protest. They are all prosecuted as criminals by the DOJ as part of carrying out the President’s agenda.
Or the President institutes another Muslim ban. Part of that ban is aggressively suppressing Muslims’ (and suspected Muslims’) right to register and vote. The DOJ arrests thousands of Arab Americans and charges them with the federal crime of voter fraud.
Republicans have continued their 2021 coup attempt in broad daylight. Their policy recommendations and red state actions point the way toward an aggressive criminalization of dissent and opposition. We cannot let them win. Vote blue up-and-down the ballot on 5 November.
