THE NUTJOB WHO SUPPRESSED SOME DEMOCRATIC VOTES IN TEXAS, INCOMPETENTLY

There was chaos in Dallas County, Texas, in yesterday's primary, and it's understandable that many people think it was part of a targeted long-term effort to prevent Democratic victories in November. But I don't think that's what happened.

We know what happened. First,

Confusion over new voting rules in Texas’s Dallas and Williamson counties caused Democratic voters to be turned away from polling sites Tuesday as the state’s primary election unfolded.

The confusion prompted a judge in Dallas to extend poll hours for the Democratic primary — but that judge’s order was quickly put on hold by the Texas Supreme Court following a request from Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

And we know why it happened:

According to Texas procedure, if a county’s primary is not held jointly — meaning, if Republicans and Democrats do not agree to hold the election together — then the county’s residents are required to vote in their assigned precincts. Last year, Republicans in Dallas County said they would not hold their primary jointly with Democrats. But many voters, accustomed to joint primaries, assumed they could vote at alternate voting sites and were turned away.

The standard procedure is that voters can vote in any precinct in their county. They could do this during early voting -- but not yesterday in those two counties.

Dallas County is a stronghold for Jasmine Crockett, who was trailing last night and said she wouldn't accept the results until provisional ballots cast in those counties were counted. She has since conceded the race because there don't appear to be enough outstanding ballots for her to make up James Talarico's statewide lead, which currently exceeds 150,000 votes.

One alarmed Substacker writes:

This Was the Point

I need you to think about why you’d do this in a Democratic primary.

You don’t suppress votes in a primary to win the primary. Republicans aren’t on the Democratic ballot....

But here’s what you do gain: you weaken whoever comes out of it. You damage the eventual nominee. You shape the field. You get a test run for your playbook.

But why would Republicans want to "shape the field" this way? The conventional wisdom is that Talarico -- white, religious, and genial -- is a stronger general election candidate than Crockett, a Black woman who's an outspoken progressive. Why would Republicans want to suppress her votes if they think he's a stronger candidate?

There's another explanation for what happened that makes more sense:

In Dallas County, propelled by election conspiracy theories about the security of ballot-counting machines, Republicans made the change in hope of hand-counting their ballots — a process that election experts want can lead to errors and delayed results. Dallas Republicans ultimately abandoned their plans to count ballots by hand because of the high costs. But the plan for people to vote at the precinct level went forward.

Maybe Republicans wanted to sow chaos, particularly among Black voters, in the hope that those voters would resent Talarico and refuse to rally around him in the general election. But that seems like a risky move when some polling suggested that Crockett might win the primary, and when the GOP assumed that she'd be easier to beat. Also, it was clear that this was done by Texas Republicans, not Talarico. (In his victory speech last night, Talarico called for all the votes to be counted and described what took place as "voter suppression.")

The person responsible for the decision to separate the primaries in Dallas County was the chair of the county Republican Party, Allen West. I used to write about him frequently. He's been a nutjob culture warrior longer than Donald Trump.

West had a checkered military career:

West served in the U.S. Army but was “stripped of his command” in 2003 after he pleaded “guilty to assaulting an Iraqi detainee during interrogation,” according to The Boston Globe. Gen. James Mattis, President Donald Trump’s former secretary of defense, reportedly criticized West as a “commander who has lost his moral balance or has watched too many Hollywood movies.”

West became a right-wing commentator, then won a House seat in Florida in 2010, as part of the Tea Party backlash to Barack Obama's presidency. He served one term. He became much better known for his rhetoric:

West ... became a YouTube sensation by criticizing “this tyrannical government” and crying out: “if you’re here to stand up to get your musket, to fix your bayonet, and to charge into the ranks, you are my brother and sister in this fight.” He said that the country was engaging in “class warfare” between “a producing class and an entitlement class,” which is composed of Obama supporters....

West encouraged his supporters to use violence in suppressing the votes of opponents, saying, “You've got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house.”

He maintains that it is “unfortunate” that gays and lesbians are serving in the military, and compares homosexuality to adultery....

On immigration, he claims that ... Muslim terrorists are coming through the border with Mexico. West’s first decision as Representative-elect was to choose as his chief of staff right-wing radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman, who called for illegal immigrants to be “hung on the central square.”

KIaufman also said:

I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave me a Second Amendment.

And if ballots don't work, bullets will.

She stepped aside before West was sworn in.

More:

West ... called President Barack Obama an “Islamist” and “disgusting racist"; said the “Democrat Party is an anti-Semitic party”; and falsely accused dozens of congressional Democrats of being “members of the Communist Party.” He claimed that Islam “is not a religion” and “we need to have individuals stand up and say that,” and his Facebook page posted (and later removed) an image that claimed [President Donald] Trump had chosen [General James] Mattis as his defense secretary to “exterminate Muslims.” He also questioned the “loyalties” of Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a Purple Heart recipient, and said feminists are “neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness.”

And there was this in 2013:

In a June 5 fundraising email, West claimed that Attorney General Holder was a “bigger threat to our Republic” than terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, a former deputy of Osama bin Laden, who took control of al Qaeda after bin Laden's death. West also used a quote from the ancient philosopher Cicero to imply that Holder was guilty of treason.

The June 7 edition of Fox & Friends gave West a platform to expand on his smear. West answered co-host Brian Kilmeade's question about why he claimed Holder was as dangerous as al-Zawahiri by pointing to Cicero's claim that a nation “cannot survive treason from within” and "[a] murderer is less to fear, the traitor is the plague." West charged Holder with having “the arrogance of officialdom,” and claimed that “When the rule makers are not adhering to the rule of law, then the very foundations of this great nation will start to crumble.”

So, yeah, that paranoid nutjob made the decision in Dallas County. It might have been a carefully designed ratfuck, but to me it just seems like chaos born of paranoia.