In partnership with
You know what keeps me up at night: What happens when the keepers of justice become the architects of oppression?
The air in Maine’s State House smells like old wood and newer fear. It’s the kind of cold that seeps through double-paned windows, the kind that makes your joints ache with something beyond weather. On September 17th—National Voter Registration fucking Day—Secretary of State Shenna Bellows opened an envelope that tasted like ash.
The Department of Justice wants Maine’s complete voter rolls. Not the public stuff. The everything stuff: Social Security numbers, driver’s license details, voting history, party affiliation, physical characteristics. Every vulnerable data point on every Maine voter, handed over to a government increasingly run by the same election-denying shitstains who used to file these lawsuits from wingnut think tanks. Bellows—who grew up in a goddamn log cabin without running water, who understands what it means to fight for basic dignity—is being sued by her own federal government for the crime of protecting her constituents’ privacy.
“The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed themselves.” — Simone de Beauvoir
But what happens when the oppressor doesn’t need accomplices because he is the fucking government?
When the Wolves Run the Henhouse
Let me paint you a picture of how thoroughly we’re fucked. The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department—that crown jewel of federal power that once fought to protect voting rights—has been gutted like a fish on a dock. Seventy percent of career attorneys have fled. <1> What remains is a skeleton crew of three career lawyers in the voting section, surrounded by MAGA zealots who’ve turned the division’s mandate inside-fucking-out.
Meet Maureen Riordan and Harmeet Dhillon. These aren’t random Trump appointees stumbling through orientation. Riordan worked for groups pushing debunked voter fraud conspiracies. Dhillon represented the Republican National Committee in election lawsuits. They’re not learning on the job—they’re executing a plan they drafted years ago from the outside, and now they’ve got the power to investigate, prosecute, and throw people in jail for it.
THE PLAYBOOK: • Bush-era operatives once tried to “gerrymander all those crazy libs” out of the voting section—this is that strategy on steroids
Fourteen states sued so far, mostly blue, because this is absolutely about retribution
The goal isn’t election integrity; it’s building the first-ever national voter database to weaponize against political enemies
The claim is simple: they’re hunting noncitizen voters. The reality? Studies show maybe 30 cases out of 24 million votes cast. That’s statistically fucking zero—less than your chance of getting struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark.
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell
And these fools are absolutely certain, because certainty is the point. Facts are irrelevant when you’re building a narrative.
The Data Trap That Snaps on Innocents
Here’s where this shitshow goes from bad to fucking catastrophic. They’ll run these voter rolls through citizenship verification systems guaranteed to flag naturalized citizens, newly married people who changed names, anyone whose paperwork doesn’t perfectly align across databases that were never designed to talk to each other. The system is built to generate false positives.
Then watch what happens:
• Republican secretaries of state will use these bogus matches to justify massive voter purges before elections • Media outlets will trumpet “thousands of noncitizens registered” without context that the data is garbage • By the time anyone can prove the flags were wrong, the election is over and eligible voters were turned away
Translation: They’re manufacturing the crisis they claim to be solving, and eligible American voters—especially naturalized citizens, especially people of color—will pay the price with their disenfranchisement.
Here’s where my stomach turns itself inside-fucking-out: This data consolidation creates the single juiciest target for hackers and bad actors that American democracy has ever dangled. Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, voting patterns for tens of millions of people in one vulnerable database. It’s a buffet for identity thieves, a weapon for authoritarian regimes looking to identify dissidents, a cudgel for any future administration that wants to know exactly who voted against them.
The fear tastes metallic and thick. It coats your throat like you’ve been sucking on pennies, that biological alarm that screams danger, danger, danger when your body knows something is fundamentally fucking wrong before your brain catches up.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire
They’re making us believe the absurdity that noncitizen voting is rampant. The atrocity is what comes next.
The Specific Lie That Deserves an Autopsy
Donald Shitsniffer and his cronies claim voter fraud is everywhere. Already proven. Mission fucking accomplished. They’ve been screeching about it since 2016, when Donaldo Fartfisted couldn’t accept that he lost the popular vote by three million.
Except—and I cannot stress this clusterfuck enough—the evidence proves the opposite. Every study, every audit, every serious investigation has concluded that in-person voter fraud is essentially nonexistent and noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare.
THE RECEIPTS:
The Brennan Center analyzed elections and found voter fraud rates between 0.0003% and 0.0025%—so rare it’s more likely to be clerical errors than intentional fraud. <1> Georgia’s 2022 audit of citizenship status found 1,634 potential noncitizens flagged—and upon investigation, almost all were eligible voters whose records didn’t match due to name changes, data entry errors, or timing issues with naturalization.
This isn’t about finding fraud. This is about creating the perception of fraud to justify suppression mechanisms that target communities these fuckers want to silence. It requires either breathtaking contempt for evidence or deliberate bad faith—and with these shitheads, it’s both.
The worst part? They’re now considering sharing this data with outside groups like EagleAI, which flagged over 50% of registrations in one county as “problems.” Fifty fucking percent. That’s not a detection system; that’s a harassment engine designed to create enough smoke that the dipshits watching Fox News will swear there’s fire.
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” — Edward R. Murrow
They’ve murdered loyal opposition and are dancing on its corpse.
What We’ve Chosen
The synthesis is fuck-all clear: We have allowed a political party so fucking paranoid about losing power that they’ve weaponized federal law enforcement to build lists of their enemies and strip voting rights from anyone who might oppose them.
Not “election security concerns.” Not “ensuring integrity.” A coordinated assault on democratic participation that uses the language of protection to justify the mechanisms of oppression.
These same shitstains who scream about government overreach and tyranny are the ones demanding:
• Complete voter records with Social Security numbers consolidated into federal databases • Citizenship verification systems that assume guilt and require voters to prove innocence • Sharing private voter data with partisan outside groups
“Justice is what love looks like in public.” — Cornel West
What does it say that we’ve chosen to call this justice—this vengeful, paranoid surveillance state masquerading as election integrity?
The Stain We’ll Leave
The cold in Maine’s State House isn’t going anywhere. It’s the permanent chill of institutions betrayed, of protections perverted, of justice twisted into a cudgel.
Tomorrow, Donald ProlapsedAsshole will rage about nonexistent fraud. Mike DonnySucker will genuflect and pray for guidance while enabling theocratic authoritarianism. The DOJ will continue demanding data, building lists, preparing the infrastructure of a surveillance state that knows exactly who voted against them and exactly how to make sure fewer people can do it next time.
But that’s not how it has to be. That’s just how it is when we’ve decided that the paranoid fever dreams of wannabe authoritarians matter more than the actual right of citizens to vote without the government tracking their every political choice.
The question isn’t whether this is legal—they’ll find judges to rubber-stamp anything. The question isn’t whether this will stop fraud—there’s no fraud to stop.
The question is how much we’re willing to give up—privacy, dignity, the secret ballot itself—to appease the bottomless insecurity of people who can’t fucking accept that not everyone wants what they’re selling.
Free, private email that puts your privacy first
A private inbox doesn’t have to come with a price tag—or a catch. Proton Mail’s free plan gives you the privacy and security you expect, without selling your data or showing you ads.
Built by scientists and privacy advocates, Proton Mail uses end-to-end encryption to keep your conversations secure. No scanning. No targeting. No creepy promotions.
With Proton, you’re not the product — you’re in control.
Start for free. Upgrade anytime. Stay private always.