Each Step Was So Small, So Inconsequential . . . June 21, 2021June 20, 2021 How Republicans Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections: . . . Previously, election board members were selected by both political parties, county commissioners and the three biggest municipalities in Troup County. Now, the G.O.P.-controlled county commission has the sole authority to restructure the board and appoint all the new members. . . . . . . Republicans have introduced at least 216 bills in 41 states to give legislatures more power over elections officials . . . . . . “It’s a thinly veiled attempt to wrest control from officials who oversaw one of the most secure elections in our history and put it in the hands of bad actors,” said Jena Griswold, the chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and the current Colorado secretary of state. “The risk is the destruction of democracy.” . . . Worth reading in its entirety. It was a Founding Principle that only white men with property could vote. We had come a long way from that narrow view until, in 2013, John Roberts opened the floodgates by gutting the Voting Rights Act. Since then we’ve begun slipping back, much to the delight of Trump Republicans and the Klan, among others. One could make the argument that only college-educated people should be entrusted with the vote. Or perhaps only those with graduate degrees. That would be a boon for the blue team. Yet . . . don’t most of us by now agree that every adult should have the right to vote? Even women? Even people of color? Even people without property? Dr. Gerald M.: “Apropos the threat to democracy, you may have already seen these two articles in The New York Review: It Can Happen Here by Cass Sunstein and The Suffocation of Democracy by Christopher Browning, both from 2018. I admit to being very afraid.” Sunstein: . . . [E]ach step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, “regretted,” that people could no more see it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head. . . . Browning: As a historian specializing in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and Europe in the era of the world wars, I have been repeatedly asked about the degree to which the current situation in the United States resembles the interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe. I would note several troubling similarities and one important but equally troubling difference. . . . Browning goes on to say: “If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.” Want to help? Click here. Like Streisand, Chenoweth, Whoopi, Andy Cohen — and Kamala, among others? Click here. Have a great week!