The Associated Press (AP) and CNN deserve a round of applause. Not for spreading regime-approved propaganda or advancing conspiracies like the Trump-Russia collusion hoax for years, but for finally discovering how election oversight works.
Both outlets published separate articles earlier this week warning of the looming threat of Republican-controlled legislatures exercising their constitutional authority to oversee and administer elections in their respective states.
“Lawmakers in several Republican-led states have been looking to exert more authority over state and local election offices, claiming new powers that Democrats warn could be used to target left-leaning counties in future elections,” the AP’s Christina Cassidy fervently wrote. CNN’s Fredreka Schouten and Shania Shelton employed the same talking point by referring to “critics” instead of Democrats.
Because as everyone knows, the party that casts its political opponents as existential threats to “democracy” is the most reliable and trustworthy arbiter when it comes to judging election laws.
The articles’ authors directed their fire toward the same GOP-controlled states, namely North Carolina and Texas. Regarding North Carolina — where Republicans hold veto-proof supermajorities in the legislature — both outlets attacked SB 749, a measure that would increase the number of members on the state election board from five to eight and allow General Assembly party leaders to appoint board members instead of the governor. Currently, state law stipulates that the governor must appoint board members from a list of nominees submitted by the heads of each of the two political parties and that no more than three members of the board “shall be members of the same political party.”
For anyone wondering why the AP and CNN appear so concerned about the measure, it’s worth mentioning that North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is a Democrat.
With respect to Texas, both outlets have similarly targeted two recently-signed laws designed to clean up election misadministration in Harris County, an increasingly Democrat bastion that includes the city of Houston. While SB 1750 abolishes the elections administrator position in counties with a population greater than 3.5 million residents, SB 1933 allows the Texas secretary of state to “order administrative oversight” of local election offices if a complaint is filed against certain county officials and if there’s reason to believe there’s a recurring pattern of issues regarding election administration. The latter law only applies to counties with populations greater than 4 million residents.
The AP and CNN also singled out Georgia and Wisconsin Republicans.
For outlets seemingly so concerned about elections “remain[ing] free of partisan manipulation,” the AP and CNN couldn’t be bothered to publish similarly ominous articles warning of Democrat states’ respective election “takeover[s].” Earlier this year, for example, CNN was more than happy to run an article by Schouten classifying Minnesota and Michigan Democrats’ election bills — which included efforts to grant felons the ability to vote and broaden the use of leftist-backed, unsupervised voting practices — as a bid to “expand voting rights.”
The outlets also neglected to mention the many ways in which entities such as the FBI, CIA, Big Tech companies, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and left-wing nonprofits (just to name a few) interfered in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden and the Democrat Party.
At the end of the day, legacy media aren’t worried about “partisan” election oversight. They’re upset that Republican legislators are properly fulfilling their constitutional responsibility to administer and oversee elections within their states. Unless the corporate media’s political allies are the ones managing election administration, any and every attempt to restore integrity to America’s elections must be smeared and destroyed.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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