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.
By the time Election Day gets underway on Tuesday, far-right extremists will have already spent weeks attempting to disrupt our elections. As of Monday afternoon, at least 13 confirmed incidents of election violence had already taken place, as compiled by WIRED. Militia groups have been organizing “stakeouts” of ballot drop boxes on social media. In Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, ballot drop boxes and a USPS mailbox (containing ballots) were set aflame in apparent attempts to destroy uncounted votes. And while we don’t have ballot drop boxes in Texas, we have our own problems.
One man was arrested for allegedly assaulting an election volunteer in Bexar County after he was asked to remove his Make America Great Again hat, which is a banned item at polling locations. (Laws prohibit people from wearing clothing with partisan affiliations at the ballot box.) Right wing media and political influencers in Texas have also amplified unfounded claims of electronic voting machines switching votes in attempts to discredit the electoral process, only for those claims to be swatted down by local authorities — and the lieutenant governor. And voters have been purged from voter rolls in Texas by the state’s election denier Attorney General Ken Paxton under the guise of removing non-citizens, only for journalists to uncover that several citizens were caught up in the purges — including at least one Trump voter in Texas. On Monday, Paxton said he “deployed an Election Day Rapid Response Legal Team in major counties throughout the State to monitor day-of election activity.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Jane Nelson said last week that her office would not allow federal election monitors inside polling locations in eight Texas counties that the Department of Justice had announced it intends to monitor for compliance with federal voting rights rules, citing state law.
Late Monday, Paxton took it a step further, filing a lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking to bar their monitoring efforts, which Paxton described in a press release as a “lawless intimidation campaign.” In the filing, Paxton argues that “the presence of staff from the Department of Justice or the Office of Personnel Management at Texas polling places on Election Day violates Texas law” and that “no federal law preempts Texas law.” (Editor’s note: Early Tuesday morning, the feds reached an agreement with the Justice Department, with the latter announcing that its election monitors would “remain outside of polling and central count locations, would be subject to Texas election law within 100 feet of those locations and would not interfere with voters attempting to cast their ballots,” according to The Hill. The judge denied the request for a restraining order, but Texas withdrew its motion anyway.)
As early voting continued last week, police in San Marcos said there were five reports of threatening letters attached to yard signs for Vice President Kamala Harris, all of which invoked the Ku Klux Klan — the first report of “voter intimidation” the department has investigated during the 2024 election cycle, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The flyers claimed that a federal tax audit would target Harris supporters “once the magnificent Donald Trump assumes the presidency again” — in lieu of “the hangman’s noose.”
Extremists with grievances rooted in election-related conspiracy theories, including beliefs in widespread voter fraud, are the most likely threat of violence in the coming election, NBC News has reported. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning that “some domestic violent extremists are reacting to the 2024 election season and prominent policy issues by engaging in illegal preparatory or violent activity that they link to the narrative of an impending civil war, raising the risk of violence against government targets and ideological opponents.”
The FBI has flagged that state and local law enforcement agencies should be on high alert for extremists who could interfere with the election and subsequent inauguration — or perpetrate violence against candidates, poll workers, elected officials, journalists, or judges.
Despite these incidents, our electoral processes thankfully seem to be operating reliably and as expected. But that doesn’t mean we are out of the woods: Regardless of the general lack of evidence to support it, the message coming from former President Donald Trump and the right-wing media sphere is clear: Democrats are playing dirty tricks to steal the election. Trump said at a debate in June that he will only accept the 2024 results “if it’s a fair and legal and good election.” He’s also asserted numerous times that Harris can only win “because they cheat. That’s the only way we’re gonna lose, because they cheat.” And he’s convinced many of his supporters that election fraud — and resultant violent unrest — is inevitable. But how many people would act on those beliefs?
So-called “election integrity” groups have created a digital infrastructure to collect allegations of election fraud that experts warn are likely to spread false information and undermine the legitimacy of our election. MAGA activists are reportedly preparing to undermine the election results and circulating plans for how state legislators could award electoral votes how they see fit.
If Trump wins handily, we can reliably expect there to be few claims of fraud, even if there is outrage. But if Harris ekes out a narrow victory, as her team predicts based on early voting, there will likely be a crisis.
If the 2020 election serves as a lesson, it is possible that the worst is yet to come. On the one hand, pro-democracy forces have put new safeguards in place, such as the 2022 bill Congress passed in an effort to make it harder to overturn a certified presidential election. On the other hand, the tactics of election deniers have evolved.
“Those looking to overturn the election are way ahead of where they were in 2020,” Marc Harris, who served as an investigator for the House select committee that investigated January 6, 2021, recently told CNN. “But on the flip side, the pro-democracy defenders are also more prepared. How that shakes out is not clear to me.”
Such hypothetical scenarios should not be taken as predictions, even if they seem plausible. Most predictions turn out to be wrong. None of us have a window into the future. But the threats are serious enough for 51 attorneys general to sign a letter condemning possible political violence and urging a peaceful transfer of power. Texas Attorney General Paxton was not among them.
For those of us who care about preserving our democratic institutions and our ability as a society to conduct peaceful transitions of power, we cannot allow ourselves to be consumed with anxiety over what might happen. Plan for the worst, and hope for the best.
And don’t forget to vote.
