It’s old hat to say everything is bigger in Texas. True connoisseurs know that things in the Lone Star State are also often wilder and weirder than what you see on the evening news. Every two weeks, Steven Monacelli will explore the dystopic, desperate, and despicable realities of contemporary Texas and channel the sense of absurdity, anger, and anguish that is felt by so many Texans. State politics mirror our already overheated summers, while floods and hard freezes overwhelm our infrastructure, and disinformation erodes our social discourse. But not all is lost. Together, we can navigate this Hell & High Water to get to more stable ground.
Since the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the specter of political violence has loomed over our elections.
While such violence didn’t materialize during 2022’s midterm election, attempts to subvert our democratic processes have nevertheless escalated: In Texas, election workers were inundated with threats, partisan poll watchers harassed voters of color, so-called election fraud experts made specious claims of fraud, voters made thousands of complaints of intimidation, and targeted misinformation campaigns aimed to suppress the vote. In Beaumont, a federal judge even issued an emergency order prohibiting partisan poll watchers from shadowing voters at one site — following a lawsuit that alleged Black voters were being harassed.
If you’re hoping this trend won’t continue into the upcoming election cycle, allow me to temper your optimism. At the national level, former president Donald Trump himself has doubled down on baseless claims he was cheated out of the 2020 election, is preparing to cry foul if he loses this coming November, and has said he doesn’t think violence will happen — unless he loses, then it “depends on the fairness of the election.” At the state level, Republican politicians as high up as Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are fomenting fear about undocumented immigrants voting en masse — something that even the conservative Cato Institute acknowledges is a canard. Meanwhile, extremist groups are responding to these narratives in predictable ways. (More on that later.)
In other words, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.
The Department of Homeland Security’s threat assessment report for 2024 warns that domestic violent extremists mobilized by conspiracy theories and perceptions about the upcoming election cycle may attempt to disrupt civic and democratic processes. Dr. Garen Witnemute, a physician and founder of UC Davis’ Violence Prevention Research Program, believes that political violence at large scales is unlikely — but that some amount is almost certain.
Still, nonviolent forms of disruption are likely to be widespread, like the ones we saw in 2022. Texas is one of several states that recently enacted laws expanding the ability for election observers to access polling sites while constraining election workers’ ability to remove disruptive observers — a particularly concerning development considering that members of the anti-government extremist Three Percenter movement in Texas are preparing to get involved as election observers. And they’re being helped by proponents of unfounded election fraud conspiracy theories.
A recent post in the Texas Three Percenter chat room on Telegram promoted a “poll-watcher training session” hosted by a group called Project Civica. (Project Civica is a New York-based organization led by Kim Hermance, who previously headed a New York election audit group whose deception and voter intimidation drew a stern warning from the New York Attorney General.) Hermance indicated in a social media post that her group is assisting True The Vote, a Texas-based organization known for promoting election fraud claims, with implementation of a new program to support tens of thousands of challenges to voter registration. There are a number of groups in Texas like these, which are actively training poll observers, challenging voter rolls, and sowing conspiratorial narratives across the state.
“No doubt there will be mass election fraud by the democrats,” reads an Aug. 26 message in the Texas Three Percenters chat room. “We need a Red Apocalypse to win this! Take action NOW!”
The Three Percenter chat room also contains election-related conspiracy theories, like the one claiming that undocumented immigrants are being registered to vote, a notion recently encouraged by Abbott when he announced that more than 6,500 “noncitizens” were removed from voter rolls. But there’s reason to be skeptical of that number, which has not been confirmed by independent reviewers. In 2019, Texas identified 98,000 registered voters as non-U.S. citizens, but only 80 were actually determined to be ineligible to vote after a more thorough review. The debacle ended in the Secretary of State resigning from office. The result of this? Many people who have a right to vote are caught up in these partisan purges, far more than are ever actually found to have voted fraudulently.
In recent weeks, our legally troubled attorney general has been busy raiding the homes of volunteers with a Latino voting rights group and suing both Bexar and Travis counties for mailing out voter registration forms. Paxton even launched an investigation in response to a debunked conspiracy theory about a voter registration drive for undocumented migrants that was amplified on Fox News. Meanwhile, the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court is helping foment the false narrative that noncitizens are a threat to our elections. A recent decision by the court allowed last-minute “emergency changes” to Arizona’s voter laws. The Republican National Committee took that opportunity, requesting a new Arizona law go into effect requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote for federal elections — something the court previously rejected in a 7-2 decision over a decade ago.
Together, these events form a bigger picture that should alarm us all.
Certain elements of one political party are preparing their voter base to believe — despite all evidence to the contrary — that Democrats are registering noncitizens to vote en masse in order to steal the election from Trump. Again, to be clear, there is no real evidence that noncitizens vote in our elections.
In response to this narrative, far-right activists, including armed militia groups, are training to become election monitors at a time when new laws empower partisan poll watchers to potentially disruptive effect. (See: 2020 and 2022.) All of this sets the stage for partisan discrimination and voter intimidation against people who are deemed to look or sound like noncitizens — whatever that means — and presents a ready-made excuse to challenge the legitimacy of the election results if Trump does lose.
Whether disruptions and violence around our elections will be flashes in the pan or boil over into widespread chaos is nearly impossible to forecast. What we do know is that Republican elected officials are running the same election fraud playbook they used in the lead-up to the 2020 election — and that the threat from the far-right extremists motivated by election fraud rhetoric is higher than ever before.
We may not be able to predict the future, but we can read the writing on the wall. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
