Republicans' favorite excuse for losing elections -- voter fraud -- has been thoroughly debunked. Allegations that thousands of people “double voted” by assuming other identities at polling booths has been laughed out of court. Assertions that large numbers of noncitizens cast illegal votes is just as absurd, with most undocumented immigrants so fearful of their status that they will not call the police when someone assaults them. So, sure, they're likely in huge numbers to march through the gauntlet of officialdom into a polling place to cast a ballot in a process they little understand. Tales about large numbers of cheaters casting ballots in the name of “dead voters” is an especially popular explanation in western North Carolina, but so far nobody has produced evidence beyond "I know for a fact that my granddaddy said he saw it happen." Your granddaddy's blind in one eye and can't see out of the other'n, and resurrecting the rumors from decades ago doesn't count for evidence.
"After bringing some 60 lawsuits, and
even offering financial incentive for information about fraud, Mr. Trump and his allies have failed to prove definitively any case of illegal voting on behalf of their opponent in court — not a single case of an undocumented immigrant casting a ballot, a citizen double voting, nor any credible evidence that legions of the voting dead gave Mr. Biden a victory that wasn’t his." (
NewYorkTimes, emphasis added)
High levels of voting are bad for Republicans. Trump himself admitted that back
last March. Other, more circumspect Republican officials know it's true, though they won't say it out loud. Well, they almost say it out loud. In Watauga County, the Republican Party spent years on the local Board of Elections trying to kneecap the voting of college students because young people have no reason earthly to vote for that party and its philosophy.
And now you can watch the Phil Berger/Tim Moore team, still in control of the General Assembly in Raleigh, launch a whole new wave of voter suppression laws in North Carolina, "to prevent fraud," even though the state went for Trump and incidentally kept Berger/Moore in power. Doesn't matter. Fictional fraud is the best cover for doing bad deeds to protect your power, so we can probably expect another round of photo ID laws, clamping down on college student voting, and making it harder to vote by mail since that's what Democrats like to do now in the COVID crisis.
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