Back when there were just three television networks, there were also television seasons.

Every September, networks would release their new slate of shows, that would populate their schedules through that TV season, which ran through May of the following year. All that changed, of course with the advent of the internet and streaming. Now networks and entertainment platforms cannot wait for a once-a-year release event. To stay competitive, they must keep churning out content, all year, every year.

The Republican Party’s desire to eviscerate American democracy has produced a similar approach.

After Trump’s failed coup attempt in 2020, the party that he now guides by a nose ring has decided that its coup efforts need to be operational continuously. Because their radical policies are opposed by the majority of Americans, the GOP realizes it must interfere with and invalidate as many American’s votes as possible, particularly in the states that are pivotal to maintain their minority control of the federal government. That’s why the 2024 coup has already started in 2022.

Trump failed to steal the last election because of a terrible plan conceived by nut jobs and executed by idiots. So the next insurrection won’t happen in the Capitol; it’s already happening in polling places across in America. And because it is at once less overt, but also plainly obvious, it will be harder to stop.

The Keystone Cops plot to steal the 2020 election was put together after the votes were cast and tabulated. Republicans at various levels of government attempted to stop the certification process, to offer alternative slates of electors, and a relied on a glaringly illegal and unconstitutional scheme to have Vice President Pence simply declare Trump President.

That plan failed for many reasons.

Most obviously among them was that when the vote counting ended, Biden had more votes. It’s pretty much impossible to take votes off the board or to just award the election to the guy with fewer votes. Even hardcore Trump enablers like Georgia’s governor, weren’t down with that. Consequently, in 2024, the Republicans plan is to steal the election by stopping votes from being counted.

This is no secret; GOPers are loud and proud about their intentions.

Trump’s slovenly Svengali, Steve Bannon, actively promotes this plan on his podcast. He says plainly, “We’re taking over all the elections.” And they’re certainly trying. Nationwide, 291 Republican candidates for House, Senate and key statewide races have questioned or denied the outcome of the last presidential election. 291 out of 569 candidates, that’s 51 percent. So over half of Republican candidates this year are Big Lie propagandists.

The candidates themselves thump their chests over their intention to ignore voters’ will.

Kari Lake, the candidate for governor in Arizona, was asked last month if she would accept this month’s election results. She refused to do so saying, “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result.’ Another Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate, this one in Wisconsin, told supporters at a campaign event that, if he’s elected, his party, “will never lose another election” in the state. In Nevada, the GOP candidate for secretary of state “guaranteed” a Republican victory in that state in 2024. On Bannon’s podcast, the candidate admitted he was working on “ways to influence the next election in 2022” and “export it all over the country.”

The 2022 pre-coup efforts are also apparent in state courts.

In Pennsylvania, the state supreme court agreed with Republicans to not count ballots on which the voter didn’t include a date on the outer envelope, even if the ballot is received before election day. Thousands of ballots have now been set aside because of this. In Michigan, the GOP sued to add additional restrictions to absentee ballots only in Detroit, which is dominated by black voters and Democratic voters; nowhere else in the state was targeted in the suit. In Wisconsin, Republicans won a court ruling that will prevent mail ballots from being counted when a witness’ address is incomplete.

These are all targeted strategies to invalidate or cause doubt and confusion over mailed ballots. It’s part of the same cynical undertaking Trump attempted two years ago: to pressure governments to stop counting votes after election day, and to claim they’re “ahead,” and so they must’ve “won.” These repulsive actions are attempts to disqualify Americans’ legitimate votes based on technicalities. This goes against a principle, long-codified in federal law, to not disenfranchise voters for minor errors.

In Arizona, MAGA fanatics couldn’t be bothered with laws and courts, so they started bullying voters at ballot drop-off locations, by positioning armed individuals to “watch” ballot boxes. After numerous complaints from voters describing how they’d been intimated and had been photographed and video recorded while casting their votes, a federal judge intervened and ordered a stop to the fascistic tactics.

Voting by mail has changed our electoral reality from a single “election day” to a weeks-long “election period.”

Similarly, Republicans have now decided that their goal of ending fair elections in the United States can no longer be confined to disrupting the peaceful transfer of power by a single, murderous assault on the nation’s Capitol. The Big Lie proponents are now brazenly and openly trying to wrest control of the levers of our elections, the beating heart of our democratic society, And once they’ve done so, to subjugate it to the whims of their own, radical minority agenda.

This season’s drama is not fiction.

As Americans, we can’t just change the channel or cancel our subscriptions. We have only our free and fairly counted votes to protect us from a bruising and bloodying descent into civil decay that has ended other free societies before us.

Only we can write a finale that ensures this horror show won’t again be renewed.

– Sean Quintal writes on behalf of the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club.