This week at Democracy Docket: It’s getting embarrassing for Trump’s DOJ — and Texas voters fight off a GOP suppression scheme

Voters in my home state of New York will start receiving mail ballots for the midterms in less than six weeks. Other states have similar schedules. It may still feel like mid summer — but we’re into the final stretch before a set of contests that could help determine the fate of our democracy. 

So at Democracy Docket, we’re zeroing in on the threats to this fall’s elections.

If you’re worried about those threats and you only have time to read one story this week, make it this one by Jacob Knutson, which laid out five key ways that Trump and his allies could try to rig the vote. 

Among them: Trump’s order aimed at severely restricting mail voting, which the Supreme Court is now set to weigh in on; his administration’s effort to prod states into removing large numbers of voters from the rolls; and even a potential scheme by House Republicans to prevent Democrats who won their races from being seated.

We’ll be drilling down deeper on all these threats in the weeks to come. Because there’s no such thing as being too prepared.

Still, it was another bad week for one major Trump administration anti-voting project: the Department of Justice (DOJ) crusade to obtain state voter rolls. Judges dismissed DOJ’s lawsuits against Colorado and Washington, D.C., bringing the department’s record in these cases to a frankly hilarious zero wins and 21 losses — or 22 if you count an appeals court defeat. 

As Yunior Rivas reported, it’s now at the point where judges are asking in court about the string of setbacks. One unfortunate DOJ lawyer was forced to admit this week in the lawsuit over Washington state’s rolls that nothing distinguishes that case from all the others that have been dismissed. He was reduced to arguing that all those federal courts — 20 at the time — had “misconstrued” U.S law when they ruled that DOJ isn’t entitled to states’ unredacted voter rolls. Only the department, he suggested, is correctly interpreting the statute at issue.

Yunior also noted more bad news for the Trump administration’s bid to purge the rolls. On Wednesday, we entered the “quiet period” — the 90-day window before national elections when states are barred by federal law from conducting systematic removals. No surprise that DOJ is currently arguing in several cases for a far looser reading of the ban. But now that the quiet period has begun, voters should have additional protections against being disenfranchised by removals that come too late for them to learn about and fix in time. 

Still, it’s the states, of course, that have the most direct control over elections. And some key battles are heating up there, too. 

Jen Rice has continued to track events in Missouri, where the ruling GOP will stop at nothing to deny voters a voice. On Tuesday, Missourians overwhelmingly rejected a Republican-backed ballot measure that aimed to make it harder to use referendums to amend the state constitution. Remarkably, it failed in all eight off the state’s congressional districts.

A different anti-democratic scheme in the Show Me State may prove more successful, though. Opponents of the state’s GOP gerrymander, which carved up a majority-Black congressional district in Kansas City, had gathered over 300,000 signatures to put a measure on the November ballot allowing voters to repeal the new map. But Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) this week rejected the measure, claiming that electoral maps can’t be blocked by a popular vote. (By the way, you can watch Democracy Docket’s fantastic, in-depth documentary about that gerrymander and the impact on local residents here.)

In rejecting the repeal campaign, Hoskins embraced a fringe right-wing legal doctrine, the Independent State Legislature Theory, that even the Supreme Court has shot down. And he waited until the last possible day to annouce his decision — part of a GOP strategy to run out the clock before the election and keep the gerrymander in place. 

Organizers of the repeal campaign immediately sued. So now Missouri Republicans are going “judge shopping” — asking for a new judge to oversee the case, in order to delay proceedings further. The GOP strategy is working: Their request for a new judge was granted, meaning a hearing scheduled for Monday was canceled. 

Meanwhile, Matt Cohen has been keeping us updated on events in Michigan, where Trump’s DOJ sent election observers to keep an eye on voting — in several heavily minority areas, wouldn’t you know it? — in this week’s primaries.

Voting went smoothly, we’re glad to report. But there’s reason to think the general election might see more turmoil. 

Michigan hosts a pivotal U.S. Senate race, in which the GOP candidate, Mike Rogers, is an election denier who has mused about putting law enforcement at the polls. The party’s new gubernatorial nominee, John James, is also an election denier — and he’ll be running against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), a staunch defender of voting rights.

But most ominously, Trump and his MAGA backers are already starting to target the Great Lakes State with their lies about illegal voting..

“[D]on’t discount all of those fake mail-in ballots that will ‘surprisingly’ show up at the last moment,” Trump wrote on social media, in reference to the Senate race, the day after the primary. “Get ready for another Rigged Election.”

But let’s end with some good news. Jen was all set to report Tuesday that Tarrant County, Texas — the third-largest county in the state — had approved a GOP suppression scheme to radically reduce the number of polling places available to voters. 

But then something remarkable happened. Outraged voters showed up at the county commissioners meeting in droves, and passionately denounced the plan. One local woman called it “morally reprehensible.” Cowed GOP officials tabled the proposal. 

The fight isn’t over — Republicans are plotting to bring a version of the scheme back next month. But the show of defiance from voters defending their acces to the ballot was an inspiring reminder that, in the end, the most effective way to fight off GOP voter suppression is through the power of ordinary people making their voices heard. 

As the midterms approach, that’s worth keeping in mind.