Rachel Maddow Sounds The Alarm: GOP Is Attempting To Steal Wisconsin And Georgia Ahead Of 2020

Rachel Maddow sounded the alarm on Monday night about a Republican effort to steal two key swing states ahead of 2020.

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According to the MSNBC host, GOP officials in Wisconsin and Georgia are purging hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, and they’re targeting places regions that have the most Democratic voters.

In the case of Wisconsin, as Maddow pointed out, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers only won the state by 30,000 votes. The decision by a judge in the state to side with a conservative law firm will essentially unregister more than 230,000 voters.

The ruling is enough to swing the state back to Republicans in 2020, particularly since the voter purge will target Milwaukee and Madison – both Democratic strongholds.

“As Wisconsin is springing into action to take more than 230,000 voters off the rolls effective immediately, the great state of Georgia, as of tonight, is doing the same thing,” Maddow said.

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Maddow said:

In a lawsuit brought by a conservative advocacy group, a state judge has just ruled that the state of Wisconsin must immediately deactivate the voter registrations of more than 200,000 people who live in Wisconsin. 200,000. More than 230,000. I mean, for context, the newly elected Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, he’s pointed out in reaction to this ruling that he won the governorship last year in Wisconsin by less than 30,000 votes. This new immediate voting purge ordered by this state judge sort of engineered by this conservative legal group will deactivate, will purge, the voter registrations of more than seven times as many voters as the number that made up the margin that elected the state’s last governor. Yeah, can’t be too careful. Let’s get these voter rolls trimmed. Disproportionately, the voters that are being targeted to have their registrations deactivated are in Milwaukee and Madison, which you can imagine why. They are both bases of the Democratic Party’s support in the state. They’re both home to large college campuses full of students who, again, tend to vote Democratic and so, naturally, those are the places being targeted to have voter registrations deactivated. And as Wisconsin is springing into action to take more than 230,000 voters off the rolls effective immediately, the great state of Georgia, as of tonight, is doing the same thing.

Georgia and Wisconsin are going to be crucial swing states in 2020

It’s no surprise that Republicans are trying to trim the voter rolls in Democratic regions of states like Wisconsin and Georgia. Recent polling shows these two states will be highly competitive in 2020.

According to RealClearPolitics.com, Joe Biden – the current Democratic frontrunner – is leading the president by just four points in Wisconsin. Trump, of course, beat Hillary Clinton by just under a single point in the state in 2016.

One poll of Georgia released last month shows Biden leading in Georgia, too, but only by single digits.

If Trump loses in both Wisconsin and Georgia, his odds of being reelected reduce dramatically as other states he carried in 2016 – like Michigan,  Pennsylvania and even Iowa – have drifted toward the Democrats over the past three years.

Instead of trying to expand their base beyond the foaming-at-the-mouth MAGA mobs that show up at Trump rallies, Republicans are simply trying to reduce the number of voters that can cast a ballot in swing states.

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Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.