A Silver Lining from Trump Vote Rigging Claim: Republicans Repudiating Voter Fraud Myth

Here’s Jennifer Rubin in today’s WaPo:

Claims of massive fraud and efforts to discredit the election system are preposterous on their face, but injurious to our democratic system. Long before Trump arrived on the scene Republicans helped manufacture an environment in which the talk show/Breitbart/Sean Hannity set actually thinks massive fraud is possible. Republicans insistent on ensuring the integrity of the election system with voter ID requirements (which are overwhelmingly popular with voters) too often made it sound as if impersonation and double voting are commonplace. They are not. For example, in Florida in 2014 the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher turned over 14 names of people who possibly voted twice. Roughly 400,000 people voted in the county that year.

As the Associated Press reported, a 2012 study found millions of out of date voter registrations or people registered in multiple states, but “the report cited no evidence that those errors had contributed to any significant voter fraud. Instead, it pointed to estimates that at least 51 million U.S. citizens are eligible but not registered to vote.” (If you’ve moved from one state to another you likely did not “unregister” in your former state of residence; that’s not fraud.) Contrary to Trump’s latest hysteria, “Most experts say voter fraud is extremely rare in the U.S., with one study by a Loyola Law School professor finding just 31 known cases of impersonation fraud out of 1 billion votes cast in U.S. elections between 2000 and 2014.”

When I was on the News Hour yesterday, Al Cardenas of the Republican Party of Florida was adamant that massive voter fraud is not a problem.

There have been responsible Republicans on this for years, and more coming on line now, like Mark Braden, John Fortier, Chris Ashby, Rob Kelner, Ohio SOS John Husted, and others.

And then there’s the path of Mike Roman, Hans von Spakovsky, Kris Kobach, and others. That is the road that should not be taken.

Let’s hope after this election we see a turning point for the GOP, which can start with recognizing that voter fraud is an isolated problem not a massive one, and end with a repudiation of laws, such as very strict state voter identification laws, which make it harder to vote but do nothing to prevent fraud or instill voter confidence. Doing so is not only the right thing for Republicans to do, it is in their self-interest. Expanding and appealing to an electorate which is not old and white is the only way for GOP survival on a national scale.

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