Marjorie Taylor Greene: Where Did She Go? - American politics are about two people right now. Vice President Kamala Harris. Former President Donald Trump. The two are locked in a 50-50 race for the White House, with election day less than two weeks away. Understandably, the nation is fixated on the presidential race – which has forced voices that are usually relevant to American politics into the din of the periphery. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example.
MTG is a fire-throwing zealot who has gained traction for her support of outlandish conspiracy theories and headline-grabbing antics. MTG has been a steady presence in the mainstream media, often playing the heel, for a few years now. But lately, neither MTG nor her congressional colleagues are pressingly relevant.
To be fair, even sitting President Joe Biden seems to have faded into background, so one would expect a junior representative to do the same.
MTG did receive some ink recently. But it was mostly a rehash of an old 2020 yarn in which MTG claims election malfeasance. This time around, MTG is claiming that the voting machines, in Georgia’s Whitfield County, are all goofed up, implying that this will taint the election results.
According to MTG, one “voter’s printed ballot had been changed from their selections made on the machine.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refuted MTG’s claims and defended his state’s election process. “Spreading stories like that,” Raffensperger said, would “really hurt our turnout on our side. You know, you can trust the results.”
Raffensperger is suggesting that if MTG keeps casting doubt upon the validity of the election process, then Republicans are going to stay home rather than place their votes. He’s making a practical argument; in the fallout from Trump’s 2020 loss, some pundits suggested that Trump’s constant naysaying about election validity and COVID-era mail-in ballots, discouraged many of his followers (and would be Trump voters) from participating in the election, which of course played into Biden’s advantage.
As The New Republic reported, “according to the Center for Election Innovation and Research, one in six Republicans said they were less likely to vote in the 2022 midterms because no “forensic audits” had been done in the 2020 election results,” suggesting the fallout from 2020 had lasting effects on Republican voter turnout.
Raffensperger offered specific refutes to MTG’s voting machine claims. “What happened with Whitfield County was the lady thought she had pressed a certain, you know, selection, and then when she printed out the ballot, she noted that, she saw that, and so then she made them aware of it, and it got corrected.”
I don’t know what happened with the voting machine in Whitfield County. But I’m inclined to accept Raffensperger’s perspective – especially given MTG’s tendency to embrace full-blown conspiracy theories, i.e. QAnon and hurricane control.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, though I am sure, will be back in the news before we know it.
Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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