I Believe That They Will Call It the Voter Protection Squad

Republicans are now proposing election police, for the obvious purpose of intimidating minority voters and voting officials who do not attempt to suppress minority votes.

You could call them, as I noted in the hed, the Voter Protection Squad, but I think that it sounds better in the original German, "Wähler Schutzstaffel," or in English, they could just call it the "Voter ᛋᛋ,"

The Schutzstaffel, of course, are better known to most Americans as the SS, the combat arm of the Nazi Party before and during World War II.

They have already embraced the Confederate flag, so it's not much of a step to embrace this:

Reprising the rigged-election belief that has become a mantra among their supporters, Republican politicians in at least three states are proposing to establish police forces to hunt exclusively for voter fraud and other election crimes, a category of offenses that experts say is tiny at best.

The plans are part of a new wave of initiatives that Republicans say are directed at voter fraud. They are being condemned by voting rights advocates and even some local election supervisors, who call them costly and unnecessary appeasement of the Republican base that will select primary-election winners for this November’s midterms and the 2024 presidential race.

………

Supporters say the added enforcement will root out instances of fraud and assure the public that everything possible is being done to make sure that American elections are accurate and legitimate. Critics say the efforts can easily be abused and used as political cudgels or efforts to intimidate people from registering and voting. And Democrats say the main reason Republican voters have lost faith in the electoral system is because of the incessant Republican focus on almost entirely imagined fraud.

The most concrete proposal is in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the State Legislature last week for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office. The plan, which Mr. DeSantis has been touting since the fall, would include 20 sworn police officers and field offices statewide.

These people are not the opposition, they are an enemy of the Republic, and should be treated as such.