Cleta Mitchell’s ready to make voting harder anyway
“Kind of big deal…” tweets Rick Wilson about Lauren Windsor’s latest Cleta Mitchell recording drop. The Trump attorney and Ginni Thomas ally is on public record (now) as saying she’s seen no proof that the 2020 election was hacked, at least via Dominion voting equipment.
“I’m ready for somebody to bring me the proof. And I haven’t had that,” she says.
Nothing yet on whether Mitchell still believes lots of dead people voted. “We’re going to be finding people have voted across state lines, voted in two states, illegal voting, noncitizens and that sort of thing,” she said after Donald Trump lost reelection in 2020. Mitchell was on Trump’s infamous “11,780 votes” call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. She’s been subpoenaed by both federal special counsel Jack Smith and by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury over her efforts in support of Trump.
“The Left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side … theirs,” she wrote in a written presentation. “Our constitutional republic’s survival is at stake.” Among her objections is states instituting early voting:
Republicans have claimed that lax ID requirements — such as allowing college identification or mail voting where no ID is required — open the door for voter fraud. But they have produced no evidence of widespread fraud — and experts say that’s because it doesn’t happen.
If only she extended that standard to other wild, right-wing claims of Democratic election malfeasance. Might be, could be, possibly is enough for Republicans to demand laws making it harder for Americans to participate in the franchise. Even one illegally cast ballot is unacceptable, they insist. It steals your vote. But barriers to voting that impact their own voters are fine so long as they hit Democrats harder.
I’ve stated my opinion on hacked elections before:
For months after Ohio went for Bush in 2004, allegations flew that the election had been stolen there. People cited statistical anomalies found in studies and totals diverging from exit polls. Rumors flew of voting machines vulnerable to hacking. But that’s different from proving they were hacked. The distributed nature of America’s election system makes manipulation both difficult to pull off and to conceal. Too many people need to be involved.
Get back to me, I said, when you have a live perp who confesses and had the means, motive, and opportunity to do it. I’m still waiting.
Blaming the machines would be too simple, Mitchell complains. “It’s [Democrats have] changed the system. That’s what they’ve done over the last decade and we have to change it back.” That is, to making voting harder.
Meanwhile, over that last decade, they (Republicans) have further gerrymandered the U.S. House and state legislative districts across the country, enacted limitations on voter registration, absentee ballots and drop boxes, passed photo ID requirements that disproportionately impact Democratic voting groups, and more.
Republicans are very selective about what changes to the system they find acceptable where the free exercise of democracy and citizens choosing their own leaders are concerned.