Most authoritarian Republican Party in America considers nullifying another election

The people have spoken, and nobody is better at ignoring that voice than Robin Vos and his cronies:

Wisconsin Republicans, after a string of losses in hotly contested statewide races, are taking steps toward sidelining the state’s nonpartisan elections chief and undercutting the new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court.

Their actions – an escalation of bitter, partisan feuds that have rankled the state government in one of the nation’s most important swing states for years – raise questions about how the 2024 election will be run there and who will set the rules.

“This is clearly uncharted territory,” said David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

With a new supermajority, Republicans in the state Senate are moving to fire Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission who continues to be the target of false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Democrats say Republicans don’t have the power to remove Wolfe. Their battle could land in state courts – where the GOP is considering an unprecedented power grab and further partisan battles are brewing.

Just months after liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz won a 10-year Wisconsin Supreme Court term in a race that focused largely on abortion rights and gerrymandering, handing liberals a 4-3 majority on the bench after 15 years of conservative control, state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and other influential Republicans have floated the prospect of impeaching Protasiewicz. It would be a move that has only happened once in Wisconsin history – in 1853, when the Assembly voted to impeach a state judge accused of corruption, who was later acquitted by the Senate.

Further complicating the situation: Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, a Republican, has said the chamber would not consider acting on Protasiewicz. If the Assembly votes to impeach the justice and the Senate were to convict and remove her from office, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would appoint her replacement. But if the Senate takes no action at all, she would be suspended from all official duties – leaving the court deadlocked, 3-3.

Canon described that potential course of action as “an even more diabolical twist.”

To prevent the popularly elected Protasiewicz from voting with a completely frivolous impeachment vote and prevent the governor who is also accountable to the people from even nominating a replacement would be the most egregious attack on democracy in Wisconsin by the state’s degenerate Republican Party yet, and it very much could happen.

One reason Rucho is one of the very worst decisions in the long and mostly ignominious history of the Supreme court is that elmininting democratic elections for the legislature tends to lead to escalating cycles of authoritarianism. A party that believes it has the right to permanently enconse itself in power is unlikely to be bound by other democratic norms, and it leaves the state’s voters with no exit.