 So on the show, I have tried repeatedly to sound the alarms about the voter suppression bills that are being passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country, because this is a threat to democracy. Anything that they saw, any electoral strategy that was implemented during the pandemic, such as mail-in voting, that increased turnout or drive-through voting, they're specifically targeting that. So this is very clearly an authoritarian power grab attempt. But there's even more nefarious laws possibly, which allow some state legislatures, some powers, to straight up just subvert the results of elections. Now it's not like they're saying we can unilaterally overthrow the will of the people, but they're moving closer and closer towards being able to control elections in a way that's not democratic to say the least. And in new report details, the 11 states that have passed these sorts of laws. So as Frederica Chauvin of CNN explains, nearly a dozen states have enacted laws this year that paved the way for election subversion and additional proposals are gaining momentum in other states, according to a new tally by a nonpartisan group that tracks election-related bills. The Voting Rights Lab analysis identified several categories of election subversion legislation ranging from laws that usurp the authority of election officials or threaten them with criminal sanctions to the moves in several Republican-led states to undertake partisan reviews of the 2020 election results. Enough states are starting to move these policies that we are in fact at a tipping point, Megan Lewis, the executive director of the Voting Rights Lab told CNN. These lawmakers need to stop these efforts or you really run the risk of eroding the fabric of our democracy. The report comes as the former president and his allies, as they continue to push the false narrative of widespread fraud, are demanding more so-called audits of election results even after a partisan review of ballots in Arizona released last week reaffirmed President Joe Biden's 2020 win in the state's most populous county. Similar Republican-led reviews of last year's election results are moving forward in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Two other swing states Biden flipped from red to blue last year. The Voting Lab identified 17 new laws in 11 states that could undermine how elections are run. So keep in mind that this isn't talking about voter suppression, this is specifically referring to laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures where they give themselves the power to possibly overturn elections in the event there's another Republican presidential candidate who cries foul, as Donald Trump did. And the Atlantic had a great article where they detailed the variety of ways that Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the election through the courts by pressuring state attorneys general. But one of the ways was through state legislatures. So it's not like they're giving themselves the power to unilaterally undermine the will of voters, as I stated earlier before we read this, but they're moving closer to be able to have more authority in the event this does come of it. I think it's going to be highly likely. Now there's a few examples that the report provides us with that show you how draconian and authoritarian, quite frankly, these laws are. So one of them is a law from Arizona which threatens election officials with felony prosecution if they send out a mail-in ballot to a voter that doesn't specifically request it. Now let me just remind you that in my state of Oregon, we all automatically get our ballots mailed to us. We vote by mail every single election. It's very popular, not just among Democrats, but independence and Republicans do. So we've been doing this here for a very long time, but because they know that mail-in voting increases turnout, they're making it a criminal felony if election officials mail out a ballot to people that haven't requested it. That is truly insane. On top of that, there's a law in Montana that requires consent of the legislature to change voting procedures. Now this might not necessarily seem like that big of a deal. It may seem relatively innocuous, but you have to understand that election procedures are usually handled at the local level. State legislatures don't really do much in that regard, but what they're saying is actually we're going to be the ones to you're going to have to ask or you're going to have to consent with if you want to change voting procedures. Their way of basically greenlighting anything that either further suppresses votes and gives their party an advantage. It's just they're so blatant with it. They're not even hiding their agenda. On top of that, there's a bill in Texas to let candidates trigger election audits. Now, this doesn't seem ominous at face value. In fact, I've argued previously that we should automatically audit election results every single time. I don't think there's any harm in that, but you have to think through how Republicans are going to use this. It's going to allow candidates at the local level to do what Donald Trump did. They themselves can trigger a recount or an election audit if they just cry foul. They don't have to have evidence, but they can just say, I think this election was stolen. Let's have an audit further delegitimizing our democracy overall. So they're not basing the election audit off of evidence of fraud or mistakes. They're just basing it off of what a candidate prefers. And that's really nefarious. It's going to be used in deeply undemocratic ways. And these laws in total, they pose a threat to democracy. And as the article pointed out, there was an audit just last week in Maricopa County, Arizona. And guess what? That was fruitless again, predictably so for Donald Trump. But what are they doing? Well, they're continuing to investigate the election. So I think that this is going to be the GOP strategy going forward. They're trying to push the legal limits as to what is and isn't constitutionally permissible. And they're basically jeopardizing democracy. It's it's truly disgusting. But when you have no policy prescriptions, when you're not offering voters anything, this is what you have to do. You cry foul, you do voter suppression. You cheat, you gerrymander. This is the modern GOP party. There's no policy differences between the Democratic Party and Republican Party. We're seeing what we usually see in developing countries and new democracies where parties are formed on the basis of whether or not they support democracy. Literally, like this is a real thing that happens. And we're starting to functionally see that play out here in the United States where you have one party that is explicitly undemocratic and another party. The Democratic Party, where they actually support democracy on a national level. But when it comes to primaries, we know how dirty they play as well. So overall, democracy is at risk. And it's not just that Republican lawmakers around the country are doing things like this. It's just that there's widespread sentiment now among the GOP's base to just have an authoritarian regime. I mean, we saw the applaud that Mike Flynn got when he said that there should be a Myanmar style coup in the United States. You see reporters going across the country to Trump rallies and QAnon events. And people will say, yeah, you know, I would love if the military stepped in. And, you know, it's it's not. A representative sample of the average Republican. But the problem is that once that seat is planted, it begins to grow and you can't unring that bell. Once people lose faith in democracy, it's really hard to restore their faith in democracy and the process. It takes decades to centuries to cultivate and everything that we've built up this socialization supporting democracy that's embedded culturally. It's all been undermined in the span of one single election cycle. And again, it's not like our democracy is perfect. There's a lot of flaws with our democracy. And I would argue that we never had a fully functioning democracy. But democracy is an ongoing project. You're supposed to further consolidate democracy, improve it, expand suffrage to more and more people, make it better. But we're actually going backwards, which is a horrible, horrible sign for the long term health of our country's democracy. What's left of it anyways?