Republicans Are Setting Off a ‘Doom Loop’ for Democracy

<p>The insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 failed. Donald Trump is not the president. But at the state level, the Republican war on elections is posting startling wins. They are trying to do what Trump failed to do: neuter elections as a check on Republican power.</p><p><a href="https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Democracy-Crisis-Part-II_June-10_Final_v7.pdf">A new report</a> by three voting rights groups found that 24 laws have been passed in 14 states this year that will allow state legislatures to “politicize, criminalize and interfere in election administration.” And<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-may-2021"> a May analysis</a> from the Brennan Center found that Republican-controlled legislatures in 14 states have passed 22 laws that made voting harder, with dozens of others currently moving through the legislative process.</p><p>This is an example of what I’ve sometimes referred to as the “doom loop of democracy”: highly gerrymandered Republican state legislatures in key swing states passing legislation that gives them more power to discourage Democratic-leaning groups from voting, throw out legitimate votes and overturn election results — all of it backed up by Republican-dominated courts.</p><p>Ari Berman is a senior reporter at Mother Jones and the author of<a href="https://bookshop.org/books/give-us-the-ballot-the-modern-struggle-for-voting-rights-in-america/9781250094728"> “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.”</a> He’s done excellent coverage of these state bills. So I wanted to bring him on, in part, to understand these bills on a more detailed level: What do they actually do? What kind of impact will they have?</p><p>But we also discuss the Republican Party’s minoritarian path to power, potential nightmare 2024 election scenarios, how voting rights became a culture war issue, whether the United States is becoming a “competitive authoritarianism” political system, why the biggest scandal in