Thread by @benwikler

COUNTDOWN: In 2022, the fate of American democracy hinges on one critical state—Wisconsin. It’s under attack. You can save it. This thread maps the top 5 threats. Help us hit our goal of 200 new monthly donors before the new year—share & chip in!
secure.actblue.com/donate/eo21?re…

Before the countdown begins, as the drum roll ramps up in the background—WHY does it all hang on Wisconsin? How is it even possible that a state of 5.8 million shapes the destiny of a country of 332 million? It’s a ridiculous situation, but it’s real.

The presidency of the United States is won not by majority, but by Electoral College. Add up the states Trump won in 2020. He was three states short of victory. The 3 closest: AZ, GA, and WI.

Republicans have both the state legislature and the governorship of Georgia and Arizona. They’ve passed anti-democracy bills in those two states already. If 2024 is a 2020 rerun, but those suppression bills cut 0.5% off the D vote share in those two states, they turn red.

Moreover, the GOP plan is to have right-wing state legislatures and election administrators simply overturn the results of elections they don’t like. Again, Republicans are in control of AZ and GA.

If the GOP retains control in ‘22 but lose in ‘24, it’s getting hard to imagine they’ll accept the results as legitimate.
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

(Side note: this is one of many reasons why we should absolutely, positively elect @StaceyAbrams governor of Georgia.)

So if the GOP’s control of AZ and GA moves those states to Trump’s column in 2024, that leaves just one state needed for a Trump Electoral College victory—or in the darker timeline, for an Electoral College coup. And that closest state? Wisconsin.

https://twitter.com/benwikler/status/1456312676875964419

This is the reason why political scientists called Wisconsin the “tipping point” state in both 2020 and 2016: because in both years, it was the state that put the winner over the top in the Electoral College.

We absolutely need a federal voting rights bill. We should do everything we can to get a real, powerful federal voting rights bill. But if we don’t have a federal voting rights bill, the only way to stop the brewing coup is to intercept it. And the most decisive state is WI.

The difference between Wisconsin and Georgia/Arizona/Texas/Florida is that here, we’ve got a Democratic governor. He’s vetoed all the GOP’s attempts to shred our democracy. He’s up in 2022. So what happens here next year has enormous national implications.

This is why no matter where you live in this country, if you care about the fate of American democracy, the Constitution, government by, of, & for the people—you’ve got to focus on the fight in WI. Thus this list. And this fundraiser. (Be a monthly donor?)
wisdems.org/2021

None of this is lost on the GOP. And that’s part of why the Wisconsin GOP is taking its assault on democracy to lengths that—even in a moment of shocking attacks—go beyond what, arguably, we’ve seen anywhere else.

It’s not just one attack. It is instead, as @jamandell said, a whole bunch of “brush fires” in enough places “that they could feed into each other and form a real conflagration.”
washingtonpost.com/politics/wisco…

Okay: let’s do this.

The #5 threat to democracy in Wisconsin is…

[DRUM ROLL]

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos—and his sham “investigation” into the 2020 election!

Republican Speaker Robin Vos is Wisconsin’s most powerful legislator. His power comes not from democracy but from maps gerrymandered in 2011 to guarantee Republican control of the Assembly and state Senate.

The voters in Robin Vos’s rigged district gave him 19,919 votes out of 34,087, and he was elected Speaker by a caucus similarly empowered by gerrymandering. Governor Evers won 1,324,307 votes statewide. But Vos likes to act like he's a tinpot dictator-for-life.

In 2021, Vos came under attack from Donald Trump for not doing enough to overturn the last election. So he met Trump on a plane and kissed his ring. And then he launched a sham “investigation” that has made national headlines for its shamelessness.
wisconsinexaminer.com/brief/vos-kiss…

This taxpayer-funded investigation was a disgrace from the beginning—when Robin Vos announced at the Wisconsin GOP state party convention that Michael Gableman, extremist conspiracy-mongering GOP former jurist, would lead the probe.

https://twitter.com/rossacrosswi/status/1408814036628742147

The announcement of this taxpayer-funded witch hunt at a Republican party convention came the day after Trump sent an email criticizing Vos and other Wisconsin GOP leaders for not doing more to advance his Big Lie cause.
wpr.org/following-warn…

The Gableman investigation has been a rolling disaster from the start. This is not a surprise: Gableman publicly said, mid-probe, that “Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work.”

https://twitter.com/WisDems/status/1448300019782664194

Gableman has now been called out by the GOP state Senator who chairs the state Elections Committee, Kathy Bernier, herself a former county clerk who oversaw elections for 12 years. She calls Gableman’s show a “charade.”
jsonline.com/story/opinion/…

Gableman is saying mayors who don’t agree to private interrogation—which he doesn’t have the legal power to compel—should be jailed. (They’ve offered to testify publicly.)

Gableman’s lied about using taxpayer dollars to visit Arizona’s audit. He’s a menace, and his “investigation” is a mess.
cnn.com/2021/12/09/pol…

But as distressing as the Gableman clown show might be, the real villain in this situation is Robin Vos. Vos pulls the strings here, including the purse strings. He’s the one who has poured nearly $700k of public funds into Gableman’s coffers.

Vos isn’t content to muse about jailing appointed members of the elections commission that he himself helped set up six years ago. He also thinks their lead staffer should resign—to build “faith” in election results. (Fortunately, she’s refusing.)
jsonline.com/story/news/pol…

Vos’s relentless attacks exact real harm on the human beings—thousands of local clerks and poll workers—who work day and night to make sure that voters’ voices are heard and that elections are safe and secure. That’s a price he’s willing to have others pay.

Vos throws around threats and funds conspiracy theorists wielding baseless subpoenas not to uncover something about the past, but to seize power in the future. Just like the Big Lie nationally, Vos’s crusade is about rigging the system so the GOP can never lose again.

Vos keeps passing voter suppression bills through the Assembly—only to see them fall to Governor Evers’s veto. He pushes fake investigations. He demands extreme gerrymandering. He files lawsuits. It’s all an expression of the same force: his will to power.

Vos wants to gin up base energy in 2022 to win the governorship—so that he can ensure that a Republican governor signs his bills into law. Then he can suppress the vote, put himself in charge of election administration, and overturn election results he doesn’t like.

If Vos gets this power, he’ll pick up where he left off under Scott Walker—ransacking public schools and public goods in order to enrich those at the very top. It’s a scam, in pursuit of plutocracy. And then he’ll seek to hand Wisconsin to Trump in ‘24.

Someone has to stop Robin Vos. And that someone is you, dear reader. You, reading this right now, can join the extraordinary team of thousands of folks building a juggernaut of democracy to ensure that Robin Vos can’t get his way. Become a monthly donor. secure.actblue.com/donate/eo21?re…

Your monthly support helps @WisDems hire organizers, voter protection staff, researchers—all the folks who empower an extraordinary network of volunteers to smash turnout records, inform the public, and make sure every vote counts.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission members & staff aren’t quitting. Poll workers & municipal clerks aren’t quitting. The people getting flooded with death threats aren’t quitting. So it’s up to us to have their backs. It’s our job to make Vos’s greatest fear—democracy—come true.

Chip in. Quote-tweet this thread. And stay tuned for tomorrow, when we lay out the #4 threat to democracy—which might not be one you’re expecting. secure.actblue.com/donate/eo21?re…

Looking for Threat #4 of the Top 5 Threats to Democracy? Find it here:

https://twitter.com/benwikler/status/1476260858766446594