Doom roundup - Sometimes it's also funny
Despite the seriousness of threats to democracy by election deniers, sometimes you just have to laugh.
I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff in recent months as I’ve dug into the online musings of the men and women who are, astoundingly, local election officials in places like Arkansas and Mississippi. They’re part of a broader movement of Americans who not only believe in election lies but appear to be clamoring for authoritarianism. The officials I’ve exposed are supported up by everyday Americans who also believe election lies. In Mississippi, some of those everyday Americans voted to elect election deniers to the position of county election commissioners. That makes the election denial officials I’ve discovered in Mississippi a relative rarity — unlike most states with local election administration, the election deniers in Mississippi I’ve found were elected by their fellow citizens to office.
I talk a lot about the seriousness of this work and the threats to democracy that I’ve uncovered over the last four years, and while all of that remains true, there is an element of the funny and absurd that doesn’t always shine through in my stories about election deniers. Yes, some of these people are unhinged, some are probably a little dangerous, and all represent a disastrous threat to the free and prosperous future for our country that at least some of us want. Some are disgusting people, sharing racist and homophobic content for cheap laughs. But some are just goofy people who just can’t stop themselves from posting — in some cases, constantly.
Over in Arkansas, I found a lot to chuckle about from the election deniers I discovered there. Up first: nothing says ringing in the joyous holiday season like Trump’s greasy grimace staring back at you through YouTube, at least according to Carol Beavers, an election official in Van Buren County, Arkansas.
Brandon Barrington, a county election official in Hempstead County, Arkansas, provided the inadvertently funny juxtaposition of a goofy Memoji and support for the people who tried to violently overthrow the government. Thank you, Brandon.
A little known historical fact is that right after crossing the Delaware River, Trump had his supporters threaten to hang Mike Pence with the flag he’s seen holding here, although Charles Cooper, an election official in Miller County, Arkansas who shared this image, probably doesn’t know that.
Freddie Harris, an election official in Pope County, Arkansas, reminds us that apples and oranges can still be compared.
Probably not a good thing when someone like Jeff McDonald, an election official in Woodruff County, Arkansas, doesn’t consider himself to be a reliable source of information on elections.
Mississippi election officials gave us a lot to laugh about, too. “Just saying,” laughing-crying+demuring-eyebrows-up emoji faces, “that the platform on which I’m currently sharing what I believe to be a profound piece of art representing the oppression of political descent is also somehow currently stifling my freedom of speech.” Or so intimates Debra Breland Grayson, an election commissioner in Warren County, Mississippi.
SHARE if before Facebook, you were the regular recipient of emails that began FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: and eventually led back to a link to Rush Limbaugh’s website. Dolores Wooten, an election commissioner in Tate County, Mississippi, can share that subtext with us.
Not content with simply being wrong about the 2020 election, millions of Americans like Pontotoc County election commissioner Donna Shumaker also must now insist that they actually like the cheap, bad products being hawked by the con-artists at the top of Trump’s political pyramid scheme.
If I ever had this dream I’d hope I wouldn’t wake up.
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P.S. The photo at the top of this post is from Lester Bacon, an election commissioner in Lawrence County, Mississippi. Thank you, Lester! That’s definitely how all this works! American Doom is the only outlet exposing election denial officials in places like Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and elsewhere in the South. Soon, we’ll be rolling out the findings of our election denier investigations in six swing states crucial to determining November’s election. If you’d like to support that work, you can take advantage of a 20 percent discount off all American Doom subscriptions, and help fund our investigations of election deniers for as little as $4 per month. But this discount only last until the end of May, so take advantage while you can. Finally, you can also now follow us on Instagram for updates and posts about the officials we’ve come across.