Badlands Daily: 5/20/26 - Raffensperger Out, Massey Falls, Ranked Choice Threat Rises

CannCon and Ashe in America open Wednesday with a show packed with Georgia and Kentucky primary fallout. Brad Raffensperger, Gabriel Sterling, and Chris Carr all fail to make the runoff in the Georgia governor's race, which Ashe frames as three people who are going to need the time back to prepare their criminal defense. Ed Galleran defeats Thomas Massey in Kentucky with $15 million from AIPAC and a victory party of roughly 30 people. CannCon reads Massey's full legislative record dating back to Trump's inauguration and challenges anyone to explain which bill on that list they disagree with. Ashe makes the principled point that emotional investment in any of these races is exactly how people get rug-pulled. Multiple primaries going to runoffs are already producing calls for ranked choice voting from both DSA and libertarian factions, and Ashe breaks down why it is the next layer of election opacity being added to an already unverifiable system. The Maritime Cybersecurity Act would bar Chinese components from ports and grid infrastructure, which CannCon and Ashe point out explicitly does not include voting machines despite election systems being defined as critical infrastructure. Trump endorses Ken Paxton for Texas Senate and primaries Cornyn. South Carolina passes a new 7-0 congressional map.