
The dangers of an autocratic, unaccountable government, rubber-stamped with stage-managed election-rigged elections, are becoming ever more evident as the world watches Russia’s military bombarding Ukraine and police arresting Russian antiwar activists by the thousands.
There’s no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has held the presidency for most of the years between 1999 and today — has shaded into functionally acting as a dictator, despite the fact that he can rightly say he has been reelected several times by the Russian electorateIt was by large margins.
The post-Soviet Russian electoral system is a perfect example of autocracy through the ballot box. People in the U.S. should take careful note of this case study because, to a large degree, it’s a similar model to what Donald Trump, and much of the GOP, appear open to trying to impose within the United States.
Putin has used a state controlled media and a largely compliant political, security, and military elite to consolidate his power. Putin has made every effort to give the impression that he is playing by democratic rules at all times. He is elected and claims legitimacy, even though he has jailed his opposition and shut down the free press. He also has complete control over how votes are counted. He proposes constitutional amendments allowing him to extend his rule, and, when those amendments pass, with the opposition largely silenced in their efforts to speak up against the changes, again claims that his tsar-like reign has the people’s stamp of approval.
With that history in mind, let’s take a look at what Trump has done in the U.S. in the 16 months since he lost the 2020 presidential election. The brooding would-be-strongman helped launch an insurrection; tried in multiple ways to subvert the constitutional process for the peaceful transition of power; appealed to the courts time and time again in a failed effort to neutralize the votes of those who didn’t support him; and finally, after the fact, has begun building a powerful electoral machine to capture the very operating machinery of the electoral process.
In state after state, Trump’s movement is now honing in on passing new legislation aimed at restricting the franchise and giving partisan officials power over the vote counting process. It is also looking to secure control of vital electoral positions — from the secretary of state downward — the capture of which would make it far easier for a determined Republican candidate to overturn the will of the people by limiting who can vote, corrupting the vote count, using the new legislation to remove independent local election officials, and, if all else fails, by empowering state officials to replace electors chosen by the populace with electors hand-picked by legislators. These are nuclear options that are against the very principles behind democracy.
Trump’s hope, it seems, is to do an end-run in 2024 around the various institutional protections that foiled his coup efforts in 2020.
What’s happening in Arizona is a case study in the Trumpite effort to subvert the democratic system. Arizona is one of the five key swing states that went to Joe Biden last time around, and Trump hasn’t forgiven Republican state officials for not intervening on his behalf to somehow erase the Democratic margins there. Now, he’s trying to secure the election, this coming November, of Mark Finchem as secretary of state.
Finchem, a state legislator from the Tucson suburbs, is a far right conspiracist who completely buys into Trump’s lies about a stolen election. He is on record as saying that tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants voted in Arizona,Despite the fact that no evidence has been presented to support these claims. Und trotz der implosion des so-called “audit” of Maricopa County’s election results last year, as recently as last month, Finchem was telling anyone who would listen that he had evidence that would lead to the decertification of the resultsFrom three Arizona counties. He also introduced a resolution into the legislature — shot down as “un-American” by the Republican speaker — to try to decertify the results of those counties.
There’s something almost quixotic in these efforts. Yet Finchem’s antics aren’t just those of an eccentric but harmless legislator. Film footage from last summer proves that Finchem was among the insurgent crowd outside the U.S. Capitol building on January 6.This man swore to uphold Constitution, but he traveled across the country to participate in a mob effort stop the vice president from completing peaceful power transfer from a defeated president into an incoming administration.
Given this history, the notion that Finchem could soon be Arizona’s secretary of state is truly horrific.
And because it’s so horrific, it’s tempting to simply assume that in practice, there’s no way that someone as extreme as Finchem could win statewide office. But Arizona, a purple state whose GOP often swings far to the right, continues to throw political curveballs, and it is naïve to assume he simply has no chance.
In fact, Arizona, which was home to the modern conservative revival via Barry Goldwater has seen a number of far-right extremists win elections over time. The recent appearance of GOP State Senator. Wendy Rogers as a featured speaker at a major white nationalist event,The America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC). AFPAC’s leadership is provided by Nick FuentesRogers, who has been described by various news outlets as a Holocaust denier. Rogers, herself with links to militias such as the Oath Keepers, is on record as calling white nationalists “patriots” and has called for her political enemies to be hanged.
Or witness GOP Gov. Doug Ducey — who is himself deemed by Trump, Finchem and their ilk to be not nearly conservative enough, since he committed the cardinal sin of certifying Arizona’s election result for Biden — saying, in the wake of Rogers’s appearance at the white nationalist event, that she was better than her defeated Democratic opponent; and then doubling down and refusing to apologize for having showered copious amounts of money on her during her election campaign.
All by way of saying that just because Finchem seems to be a long shot, that doesn’t mean he’s inherently unelectable in Arizona.
We see in Putin all the dangers of an autocratic, fully-flowed autocracy that claims popular legitimacy. The vision of a Trump and a Finchem are no different. Trumpite conspiracists could seize control over the levers of the electoral process in 2022 in states like Arizona and use that power ruthlessly in 2024. It’s a prospect that should send anyone concerned about the future of U.S. democracy into overdrive working to ensure that Finchem can’t get anywhere near the position of power that he craves.