R. Nesbitt | Red Phoenix correspondent | Maryland–

There are now Republicans in the United States who have cancelled elections. In Miami, Florida, county commissioners have postponed city elections until November of 2026, without any presentation to the people, without any consultation of constituents or referenda. These Republican bureaucrats have claimed that this decision was made to spur voter turnout as they would align with the federal midterm elections for Congress and other offices. If this argument is taken at face value, who in their right mind would believe that the Republican party benefits at all from a higher voter turnout, from more democratic participation? This argument falls completely on its face. Florida has voter ID laws, which have been proven to reduce voter turnout, and Florida like every other state in this country does not maintain a voting holiday or election dates on the weekend, and so these elections will be held in the middle of the work week which have always served to reduce turnout among working-class people.

The Republicans have made this move strategically, they have made this move to establish a precedent for the benefit of the oligarchic weeds that are choking out any trace of democracy in this country. New voter rolls have shown that over 35,000 registered Republicans in Florida have left the party as of 2025, and with the Trump administration’s new assaults on the Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Cuban migrant communities, many conservative representatives of these communities have voiced their sentiment of betrayal at the hands of Trump. At the same time, the reactionary policies of Florida’s state government against education, the LGBTQ+ community, the press, and the right to free speech and assembly have driven thousands of individuals and families out of the state, to the benefit of an increasingly conservative state serving as the premier retirement destination for all manner of Republican voters all over the country. The GOP have postponed elections in Miami in order to “balance the scales” of their electorate, to keep themselves in power, as they continue to drive working and young people out of their state to the benefit of the petty bourgeois mob that enable their reactionary descent.

Even more harrowing, is that the Republicans have done this to show that they can get away with it. The Nazis were not simply elected into power at one fell swoop, freely and democratically, they used what they called the “Salami strategy” slicing away, piece by piece whatever protections, checks and balances, and democratic accountability stood in their way until the conditions were viable, their opposition so reduced, that they could seize power from their coalition. The Republicans are rightly confident that the conservative judiciary of Florida will affirm their power to postpone this year’s elections, and if that is appealed, all the way up to the Supreme Court, what greater gift would that be for reaction in this country to have their power to meddle with elections with impunity validated by the highest judicial body of the land?

Florida is only the beginning. On July 2, Trump commented that if Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York City and attempts to “interfere” with ICE activities in that city, Trump would entertain the arrest of Mamdani, decrying this reformist Democrat as a “communist, and we don’t need communists in this country.”

The Supreme Court has also ruled in the last week to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts to block the Executive Orders of the White House, especially regarding injunctions on Birthright citizenship.

This inevitable judicial decay, this heavy-handed authoritarianism from the Executive, and these local cancellation and postponement of elections are all the necessary steps that the ruling class in this country must make for the increasing fascistization of the political structure of America, to build the unlimited oligarchy they have always sought. The working class of the U.S. and all oppressed peoples must not allow this to pass. Our opposition must be made known, it must be independent of all stooges of capitalism, especially the Democratic party, and we must act now before we cannot even recall elections and citizenship in this country. For above saving the wretched world the capitalists are leaving us, we have every need and right to win a new and better one.

Categories: Elections, Government, U.S. News