772 search results for ""voter fraud""

What will it take to finally kill this zombie lie?
by Tom Sullivan

V-O-T-E-S!
Photo by Kenny Louie [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Washington Post and News21 confirm again:

A News21 analysis four years ago of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases in 50 states found that while some fraud had occurred since 2000, the rate was infinitesimal compared with the 146 million registered voters in that 12-year span. The analysis found only 10 cases of voter impersonation, the only kind of fraud that could be prevented by voter ID at the polls.

This year, News21 reviewed cases in Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Kansas, where politicians have expressed concern about voter fraud and found hundreds of allegations but few prosecutions between 2012 and 2016. Attorneys general in those states successfully prosecuted 38 cases of vote fraud, though other cases may have been litigated at the county level. At least one-third of those cases involved nonvoters, such as elections officials or volunteers. None of the cases prosecuted was for voter impersonation.

The Post quotes Christopher Coates, a former Justice Department voting section attorney as saying, “The claim by the liberal left that there is no voter fraud that is going on is completely false.” As is his allegation that that is their claim. It is that in-person voter fraud is virtually nonexistent.

At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern writes:

Voter fraud does happen—but it almost never occurs at the polls. Instead, as election law expert and occasional Slate contributor Rick Hasen has explained, voter fraud occurs through absentee ballots. The vast majority of voter fraud prosecutions touted by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation involve absentee ballots that were illegally cast. And the only voting fraud schemes with the potential to actually swing elections involved mail-in ballots, not impersonation at the polls. (This makes sense: It’s much easier to forge a signature, impersonate a voter, or buy a vote in the privacy of one’s home than it is in a voting booth at the polls.)

This distinction is critically important because Republican proposals ostensibly designed to eliminate voter fraud universally target in-person fraud. GOP-sponsored voting restrictions, like the North Carolina law recently ruled unconstitutional and blocked by the Supreme Court, roll back early (in-person) voting and create draconian voter ID requirements. But all evidence suggests these measures do absolutely nothing to prevent voter fraud: They are purportedly designed to thwart voter impersonation, which, again, is virtually nonexistent. None of North Carolina’s restrictions—or any of the restrictions recently pushed through Republican-dominated legislatures—would stop mail-in ballot fraud.

Why would they not prevent that? Because absentee ballot use favors Republicans. In fact, they spend good money promoting absentee voting. I have this modest, slickly produced mailer from 2012:

They even included the blank postcards. A state request form is now required, but no photo ID.

But don’t voter ID laws apply equally to all. Yes, but they don’t impact all equally. Won’t some GOP voters get hurt too? Yes. But as I pointed out three years ago, the GOP is cynically playing the percentages:

In a report issued in April, the NC State Board of Elections estimated that 176,091 registered Democrats are without the state-issued photo identity card most will have to pay $20-$32 for before they can vote under VIVA. Plus 73,787 unaffiliated and 1,126 Libertarian voters. Among registered Republican voters, 67,639 have no photo identity cards. Over 2/3 are women.

See, GOP leaders are playing the percentages. They figure that VIVA’s voting restrictions will hurt more Democrats than Republicans — and they will hurt Republicans. Still, Republican leaders calculate that, in the end, the net result will help them hold onto power. Indefinitely.

But the real story North Carolina and the rest of the country misses is that Republican leaders consider any of their own voters hurt by these vote suppression measures collateral damage. Acceptable casualties. Expendables.

As I pointed out two years ago, when it comes to gun laws:

Imposing new gun laws is counterproductive, many Republicans believe, because most criminals get guns illegally. More regulation just infringes upon honest Americans’ rights. But more regulations passed to prevent voting illegally? A nonissue.

Then come the IDs to buy Sudafed and to get on an airplane arguments. And the appeals to what NC Gov. Pat McCrory calls “common sense.” Let’s put those to rest.

Federal courts up to and including the US Supreme Court couldn’t care less what Republican legislators think is common sense. But judges do have strong opinions about what they think is unconstitutional.

After the storm: delegitimizing a Clinton win


by digby

I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

The latest beltway gossip (aside from Anthony Weiner’s latest sexcapade) is that Trump and his Trumpettes have shifted their focus from trying to win the presidency to making sure that a Hillary Clinton presidency is a total disaster. Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports:

The Clinton delegitimization project is now central to Donald Trump’s campaign and such a prime component of right-wing media that it’s already seeped beyond extremist chat rooms into “lock her up” chants on the convention floor, national news stories debating whether polls actually can be rigged, and voters puzzling over that photo they think they saw of her needing to be carried up the stairs.
[…]
Leading Democrats in Washington and beyond recognize Trump’s tactic because they’ve seen it before. President Barack Obama and his allies spent eight years sandbagged by the birth certificate/Bill Ayers/his-middle-name’s-Hussein attacks that all boil down to the same thinking now threatening Clinton: He’s a fake; his presidency either doesn’t count or is a Moorish-style Trojan horse.

Donald Trump certainly remembers it. He was the man who brought “birtherism” mainstream, questioning the president’s basic qualification to be president. And now, most Republicans don’t believe he was born in the US.

Democrats undoubtedly remember that even before Trump flogged that inane conspiracy theory Senator Mitch McConnell declared that the number one task before the GOP was to make Obama a one term president and Senator Jim DeMint promised that health care reform would be his “Waterloo.”  Total obstruction followed.

One would have thought that after the embarrassment of having to ask the candidate’s own brother to manipulate the voting apparatus in Florida in 2000 and then having to call upon Supreme Court Justices who were appointed by their candidate’s father to stop counting votes would have made them think twice but they were not daunted by such hypocrisy. They already knew how successful it would be because this wasn’t the first time these same Republicans had portrayed a Democratic president as illegitimate. They’d done it with Bill Clinton.

In the book, “A Complicated Man: the life of Bill Clinton by those who knew him” the subject was covered by a number of close confidantes and contemporary reporters. Journalist Michael Kinsley observed:

In 1992, there was a feeling among Republicans of Manifest Destiny, that they were supposed to rule forever. At that point they had been in power since 1980 and basically conservatism had been dominant since the 1978 congressional elections. They thought it should go on forever. That is the reason they were so resentful of Clinton. How could he have won? The only explanation is he must have done something terrible. He must have cheated because he wasn’t supposed to win.

Clinton strategist Paul Begala told the author, ‘There was an ongoing effort to delegitimize him. Some on the right refused to call him President Clinton, called him “Mr Clinton” instead.” He recalled that Congressman Dick Armey said on the floor of the House “he’s your president.”

And they used the fact that Clinton won with a plurality due to the Ross Perot candidacy as proof of his illegitimacy despite the fact that all the studies showed he took equally from both parties. On the day after the election Senator Bob Dole announced, “fifty-seven percent of the Americans who voted in the presidential elections voted against Bill Clinton and I intend to represent that majority on the floor of the US Senate.” And so began the eight years of relentless investigations, scandal mongering, obstruction and finally impeachment.

This is how they operate when Democrats hold the White House. When they have a majority they will lean on investigations and “show” votes to delegitimize the moral authority of the president and create chaos and distraction. When they are in the minority they will obstruct everything. In both cases they will  work to make the American people see a dysfunctional government that takes their money and offers precious little in return.

If the election were held today, Hillary Clinton would win with less than 50% of the vote.  It would be a perfectly legitimate win, as was her husband’s in 1992, Richard Nixon’s in 1968 and Harry Truman, Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln before her. But I think you can see how that is likely to be interpreted by the Republicans. They no longer assume they are in the midst of a thousand year reign, but they have rationalized that by creating the myth of rampant African American voter fraud and hordes of undocumented immigrants voting illegally. She will not be seen as legitimate.

They were very successful at pushing their juicy narratives of corruption and personal misconduct into the mainstream 20 years ago and with the 24 hour news cycle and social media pressures, the press is even less likely to resist today. This is why you see calls for a special prosecutor and wild claims of treason and illegality. If the Republicans manage to keep control of one or more house of congress, they will have a platform from which to run their scandal circus and their own media will prime the MSM pump.

It’s already happening with the State Department emails which have been gathered by right wing organizations for the express purpose of feeding the scandal machine. You can see the outlines of how the mutually reinforcing feedback loops works from Sunday’s Face the Nation in which congressman Jason Chaffetz cites a discredited AP report about the Clinton Foundation as proof of corruption and promises thorough investigations in the next congress. Likewise Meet the Press in which Clinton’s speech condemning Trump’s incestuous relationship with the Alt-right was presented as equivalent to Trump’s incestuous relationship with the alt-right and characterized it as a “race to the bottom.”

There is a bigger concern, however and one that gets more acute every time this happens. This cynical delegitimizing of the duly elected president ends up delegitimizing our democracy in general. And it’s getting downright dangerous. Trump’s “second amendment” remedy talk and the incessant demands to “lock her up” are taking this way beyond even the political trench warfare of the 1990s and the gridlock of the last eight years. These are barely disguised calls for violence. The political media should be very wary of being used as couriers for that message.

.

Walked right into it
by Tom Sullivan

Excerpts from 1982 consent decree, United States District Court
for District of New Jersey, Civil Action 81-3876.

At his Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen brings up a possible violation-by-Trump of the decades-old consent decree I mentioned recently. To get a sense of why this 1982 settlement exists, click on the image above and read it. Also read pages 9-13 (Operative Facts) from the original complaint by the DNC and New Jersey State Democratic Committee.

Hasen writes:

With Trump’s dangerous and irresponsible hyperventilating about voter fraud and cheating in Pennsylvania potentially costing him the election, it is probably no surprise, as reported by the Weekly Standard, that Trump is seeking “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary” from “rigging this election.”

However, there’s a longstanding consent decree that bars the RNC afrom engaging in such activities.  Here’s Tal Kopan and Josh Gerstein, reporting in 2013 on the RNC’s unsuccessful attempt to get the Supreme Court to lift the decree:

The Supreme Court on Monday declined the Republican National Committee’s request to lift a three-decade-old court order that limits the national GOP’s ability to challenge voters’ eligibility at the polls.

The case, Republican National Committee vs. Democratic National Committee, dealt with a consent decree issued in 1982 that prevents the RNC from engaging in some voter fraud prevention efforts without prior court consent. It specifically said the RNC could not engage in ballot security efforts (later defined in 1987 as “ballot integrity, ballot security or other efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud,” according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit opinion), especially in areas where racial or ethnic makeup could be considered a reason for the activities.

A response to claims of voter intimidation in minority areas in the 1970s and early 1980s, the decree allowed the RNC to continue “normal poll watching” operations while barring activities that could be aimed at voter suppression, though the RNC complained to the courts that the distinction was unclear and difficult to follow. The decree effectively put the national party on the sidelines as concern about voter fraud became more and more pronounced in GOP ranks in recent years and as states passed a series of voter-identification measures.

In deciding the case, which stems from a 2008 lawsuit brought by the DNC, the district court clarified ballot security efforts as “any program aimed at combating voter fraud by preventing potential voters from registering to vote or casting a ballot,” and upheld the consent decree while adding a Dec. 1, 2017, expiration date.

In the consent decree, “The RNC agreed that the RNC, its agents, servants, and employees would be bound by the Decree, ‘whether acting directly or indirectly through other party committees.” Does Trump count as the RNC’s agent in these circumstances?  They are certainly acting in concert, and it is plausible to argue that Trump and the RNC are agents of each other for purposes of this election. Also, the activity Trump is talking about engaging violate the consent decree?  One thing the consent decree says is that they must:

(e) refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting; and the conduct of such activities disproportionately in or directed toward districts that have a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic populations shall be considered relevant evidence of the existence of such a factor and purpose…

If this activity violates the consent decree, the DNC can ask for it to be extended for up to another 8 years.

Trump has walked his party right into it. The DNC should indeed seek an extension. Letting the decree lapse at this point would be a mistake. The Roberts Supreme Court eliminated the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act because, you know, times have changed. But we know what happened next.

Trump’s revenge


by digby

I wrote about the inevitable result of the “rigging” accusations for Salon today:

Back in the early 1980s Republicans convinced themselves that the Reagan Revolution had ushered in a thousand year reign. It was unimaginable that any Democrat could possibly be president now that the glory of Ronald had been bestowed upon America.  So when Bill Clinton won in 1992 they simply refused to believe it. Republican leader Dick Armey openly declared that Clinton was not his President. In his 2003 book “The Natural” Joe Klein wrote:

From the beginning of his presidency, there was indeed the sense – radiating from the Gingrich wing of the Republican Party . . . that the new President was a usurper who had managed to hoodwink the American public.  He was to be opposed at every turn, by any means necessary, and, if possible, destroyed.

They nearly succeeded. In fact, it was that belief in Clinton’s fundamental illegitimacy that propelled the scandal machine that dominated the era with the ultimate goal to force his resignation. They ended up impeaching him (and raising his approval rating to the high 60s in the process.)

However when George W. Bush assumed the office under very dubious circumstances, they rejected all complaints from Democrats about the legitimacy of his presidency with a dismissive “get over it.”  9/11 pretty much put an end to any such complaints. Democrats rallied around the flag and that was that.

Locking down the gullible vote
by Tom Sullivan

On Sunday, CNN’s “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter criticized Donald Trump for declaring the fall elections “rigged,” and the press for letting him do so “without a shred of evidence.” Suggesting an American election is rigged is “third-world, dictatorship stuff,” Stelter said.

Essay: Trump is sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the election. It's dangerous. Press has a duty to challenge him https://t.co/V6CCyZIfdF— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 7, 2016

Professor Rick Hasen (University of California at Irvine) supplemented Stelter’s tweet with his own, noting that where minimal fraud exists, it is in absentee, not in-person voting:

Here's a nice comparison of absentee ballot fraud to impersonation fraud etc https://t.co/ZWWIISBMUS pic.twitter.com/ZuuYwltesT— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) August 7, 2016

The stolen election meme is one of those zombie lies that simply will not die. Reporters are complicit in perpetuating it, Stelter argues, by failing to press those making wild claims to provide evidence. Ari Berman wrote last week that stealing an election for anything above a local race is nigh on impossible:

In North Carolina, for example, the watchdog group Democracy North Carolina documented more than 2,300 cases of voters whose ballots were rejected in 2014 because of the state’s elimination of same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting. That was 1,150 times greater than the two cases of voter impersonation committed in North Carolina from 2002 to 2012, out of 35 million votes cast.

In the end, it’s much easier to lose your rightful vote than to gain an extra one.

Berman cites Lorraine Minnite, a political scientist from Rutgers University at Camden, writing, “Minnite has called the GOP’s fixation with voter fraud ‘a new Southern strategy’ that has energized the Republican base by ‘tarring … Democrats as cheaters.’” On top of that, voter fraud, the bogie man behind passage of photo ID laws, makes no sense.

Fraud hucksters are — and/or they think the rest of us are — gullible enough to believe that, unlike Us, each Election Day hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people (you know, Them) go to the polls, not to do their patriotic and civic duty like “real Americans,” no, but to commit felonies punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense, “plus additional state penalties,” Berman adds. All so they can a single extra vote to their preferred candidate’s total.

The Skeptics Society has a handy aphorism it applies to such claims, as well as to dowsing, pyramid power, conspiracy theories, and to belief in Bigfoot and the lost city of Atlantis: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Ask Trump for evidence and he’ll likely swear he saw Muslims celebrating stolen elections in New Jersey.

And speaking of New Jersey … this is not a new fixation for Republicans. Let’s review a post from March 9, 2012:

During the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race, the Democratic National Committee and the New Jersey Democratic State Committee filed suit against the Republican National Committee and New Jersey Republican State Committee for alleged intimidation of minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The RNC allegedly created voter caging lists in minority precincts and, allegedly, hired off-duty law enforcement officers to stand outside minority precincts wearing “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands, some bearing firearms. The settlement the RNC signed with the DNC — applicable nationwide — limited the RNC, its agents’ and employees’ ability to engage in voter fraud prevention efforts without prior court approval. There were successful enforcement actions against the RNC in 1987 in Louisiana and in 1990 in North Carolina. Wikipedia has a list of references to alleged RNC voter suppression actions that never made it to court.

In 2008, the RNC sued to have the 1982 Consent Decree voided, only to lose in New Jersey district court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Of course, Hans Von Spakovsky was on their legal team. Gotta say, I never expected a court opinion to be this humorous.

First the headlines [original Reuters link has gone dead]:

March 8 (Reuters) – The Republican National Committee on Thursday lost a bid to dissolve a decades-old legal agreement with the Democratic National Committee over the GOP’s use of improper election tactics.

[…]

The party argued that the risk of voter fraud had increased, justifying stronger prevention measures. They argued that the political landscape had shifted, with more minority-voter turnout and African Americans serving as president, attorney general and chair of the Republican National Committee. Moreover, the suit claimed the decree violated the Republican Party’s free speech rights.

Those stronger measures would be to prevent the phantasmal voter fraud the RNC has obsessed over for for 30 years. As to free speech, the appeals court held that the RNC knowingly waived some of its rights when its counsel signed settlement agreements in 1982 and 1987, and “may not now seek to withdraw from performing its obligations and from discharging its burdens …” The African Americans in office argument, said the court, “hardly requires a serious response.”

Now on to highlights from the court opinion written by Judge Joseph Greenaway (emphasis mine):

The RNC argues that the NVRA [Motor Voter Law] renders the Decree antiquated because it has led to significant increases in minority voter registration and turnout. The RNC also asserts that the NVRA creates an increased risk of voter fraud. This argument, that the enactment of a law that expands voter registration opportunities renders inequitable a Decree that aims to prevent voter intimidation and suppression, is unpersuasive. The District Court correctly notes that any increase in minority voter registration or voter turnout caused by the Motor Voter Law is irrelevant to the Decree because “the Consent Decree was not designed to encourage minority voter registration, but rather to prevent voter suppression.”

[…]

The RNC argues that the BCRA’s [Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, McCain–Feingold Act] prohibition on the spending of soft money by state parties for voter registration and get-out-the-vote activity has heightened the risk of voter fraud because it is difficult to track the voter registration efforts of the increased number of groups registering voters. As the District Court mentions, the Decree does not prevent the RNC from collaborating with non-party organizations to register voters and the RNC has not demonstrated that any ineligible voter registered by a non-party organization has ever actually cast a vote.

[…]

The District Court rejected the RNC’s argument that the Decree must be vacated or modified because the risk of voter fraud outweighs the risk of voter suppression and intimidation. As the District Court correctly points out, the Decree only requires preclearance for programs involving the prevention of in-person voter fraud. Furthermore, the District Court has never prevented the RNC from implementing a voter fraud prevention program that the RNC has submitted for preclearance, at least in part, because the RNC has never submitted any voter fraud prevention program for preclearance.

[…]

If the RNC does not hope to engage in conduct that would violate the Decree, it is puzzling that the RNC is pursuing vacatur so vigorously …

The evidence Berman cites above from North Carolina would seem to support the District court’s skepticism about relative risk higher of vote suppression vs. thst of voter fraud. Not that that will keep GOP operatives from flogging the supposed threat to election integrity for all they’re worth. Plus, we know what Republican legislators think of preclearance programs, and just what they do when oversight is removed, now don’t we?

Four years later, federal courts are no more tolerant of false piety and artiface about election integrity.

A glimpse into the mind of the crazy man

by digby

This interview with Trump is very, very creepy.  You have to read the whole thing to get a flavor of how nuts he’s becoming.  This is just one chilling excerpt:

RUCKER: You said yesterday that you worried the election might be rigged in some way. 

TRUMP: Yeah. 

RUCKER: What is your worry exactly? 

TRUMP: I don’t like what’s going on with voter ID. 

RUCKER: It would be what’s happening in the states? 

TRUMP: Well, I think its ridiculous. I mean the voter ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair development. We may have people vote 10 times. It’s inconceivable that you don’t have to show identification in order to vote or that that the identification doesn’t have to be somewhat foolproof.

RUCKER: Although, there’s a tradition in this country of when somebody loses an election, they concede graciously and try to get their supporters on board like Al Gore did in 2000. Would you? You know if some reason Hillary were to win narrowly, would you contest that in some way?

TRUMP: I don’t want to jump the gun. I don’t want to talk about that. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if the election . . . there’s a lot of dirty pool played at the election, meaning the election is rigged. I would not be surprised. The voter ID, they’re fighting as hard as you can fight so that that they don’t have to show voter ID. So, what’s the purpose of that? How many times is a person going to vote during the day? If you don’t have voter ID . . .

RUCKER: Do you think someone can vote multiple times?

TRUMP: Multiple times. How about like 10 times. Why not? If you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting.

RUCKER: Is there anything else that you think could be going on?

TRUMP: Look, you never know. It started with me in Louisiana when I won Louisiana and I got fewer delegates than Ted Cruz.

RUCKER: I remember that.

TRUMP: I said, “Whoa! Whoa! What happens here?” And then I polled well in Colorado. and instead of voting, the bosses picked it. I said, “What’s going on here?” It took me a little while to get accustomed to the world of politics and then once I did we started running them off. But, who would’ve thought that was going to happen? I win a state, I get fewer votes. Then, I poll great in Colorado and all of a sudden . . . the voters aren’t going to choose. The bosses are going to choose. Anything is possible.

From what I gather on cable news and social media it’s considered a matter of fact among some number of people that the primaries were rigged and the general election will also be rigged. In other words, many people have become convinced that they cannot legitimately lose an election.

This is a problem. And it’s a problem that could lead to a crisis if Trump fails to win the election in the fall.

Here’s the full analysis on non-existent voter fraud. And no, the primaries were not rigged either.

“You know that we can hear you, right?” revisited
by Tom Sullivan

Court of Federal Appeals (Lewis F. Powell Courthouse), Richmond, VA.
By Acroterion (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons.

On Friday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond unanimously struck down North Carolina’s Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA), one of the most sweeping voting “reform” laws in the country, a voter ID law that was about far more than photo IDs. Perhaps the Charlotte Observer Editorial Board put it best:

We knew. Deep down, most of us knew.

We knew that North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law, like similar laws across the country, was not truly about voter fraud, but voter suppression.

We knew Republicans were less interested in the integrity of elections than in building obstacles for their opponents’ supporters.

We knew. Some Republicans even admitted it. And last week, in North Carolina, they got called on it.

This, as I keep saying, is their M.O.: Find the line. Step over it. Dare someone to push them back.

The federal court did. Judges found that North Carolina’s law targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision.” Plaintiffs included the League of Women Voters, individual plaintiffs, and the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, led by Rev. William J. Barber II, whose address wowed the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia Thursday night.

It was the third such defeat in the courts this month for Republican voting legislation. On July 19, U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson struck down multiple provisions of Wisconsin’s voting law. In particular:

The law limiting early voting “intentionally discriminates on the basis of race,” Peterson wrote. “I reach this conclusion because I am persuaded that this law was specifically targeted to curtail voting in Milwaukee without any other legitimate purpose.

“The Legislature’s immediate goal was to achieve a partisan objective, but the means of achieving that objective was to suppress the reliably Democratic vote of Milwaukee’s African-Americans.”

On July 20, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Texas “voter fraud” prevention law for having a “discriminatory effect on minorities’ voting rights.”

Contra hands-over-hearts protestations from Republican lawmakers across the country that their only concern in passing such laws is preventing in-person “voter fraud,” the courts confirmed what the Charlotte Observer Editorial Board and the rest of us already knew. These laws are about voter suppression. By design. Researchers have found reports of voter impersonation are “nearly identical with the proportion of the population reporting abduction by extraterrestrials.”

The 4th Circuit found that North Carolina’s law was the product of research. The Washington Post reports:

In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. “This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV),” the judges wrote.

So the law eliminated forms of acceptable IDs to those most likely to be held by whites. As in Wisconsin, limiting early voting as a means of disenfranchising black voters was also a factor.

The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina’s 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. “After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days,” the court found.

Most strikingly, the judges point to a “smoking gun” in North Carolina’s justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that “counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic,” and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

Judge Diana Diana Gribbon Motz writes:

[I]n what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race — specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise.

In finding that North Carolina’s voter ID law was discriminatory by design, the 4th Circuit cited the testimony of a former county Republican official to the Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi. In a footnote, the ruling says:

7 Some of the statements by those supporting the legislation included a Republican precinct chairman who testified before the House Rules Committee that the photo ID requirement would “disenfranchise some of [Democrats’] special voting blocks [sic],” and that “that within itself is the reason for the photo voter ID, period, end of discussion.” See J.A. 1313-14; Yelton testimony, Transcript of Public Hearing of the North Carolina General Assembly, House Elections Committee (Apr. 10, 2013) at 51. Responding to the outcry over the law after its enactment, the same witness later said publicly: “If [SL 2013-381] hurts the whites so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” See J.A. 1313-14; Joe Coscarelli, Don Yelton, GOP Precinct Chair, Delivers Most Baldly Racist Daily Show Interview of All Time, New York Magazine, Oct. 24, 2013. These statements do not prove that any member of the General Assembly necessarily acted with discriminatory intent. But the sheer outrageousness of these public statements by a party leader does provide some evidence of the racial and partisan political environment in which the General Assembly enacted the law.

Full disclosure: I know that guy.

The real purpose of these voting reforms was obvious. Republican lawmakers again stepped over the line and dared America to push them back. What is most amazing is the bald-faced, transparent mendacity with which these lawmakers across the country look constituents in the eye and swear they are passing voter suppression laws in the name of election integrity. As if they think constituents are such fools that by their publicly saying so the public will not see what they are plainly doing in full view of the public. Amazing, yes, but hardly unprecedented.

Just weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Texas abortion clinic law in Hellerstedt. The women on the court, in particular, were not buying the state’s argument that the law was passed out of an abundance of legislative concern for women’s health. In her concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed that many other medical procedures are far more risky than abortions, including childbirth, tonsillectomy, colonoscopy, and in-office dental surgery. She agreed with the brief from the American Civil Liberties Union, writing: “[I]t is beyond rational belief that H. B. 2 could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions.'”

Anyone but those fooling themselves knew that was Republican legislators’ intent from the get-go. They are not even being particularly artful about it anymore. They are winking into TV cameras and speaking into live mics about it.

As Aasif Mandvi said in response to Yelton’s “bunch of lazy blacks” comment, “You know that we can hear you, right?”

Kris Kobach: A True Trumpie


by digby

I wrote about him for Salon this morning:

If by some chance Donald Trump were to actually become president, one of the people he would undoubtedly tap for a role in his administration would be Kansas Secretary of state Kris Kobach, a hardcore right wing activist with a particular expertise in anti-immigrant legislation. Before he ran for office in Kansas he helped Republican state legislatures write anti-immigrant legislation, most famously Arizona’s “show me your papers” law which was thankfully tossed out by the federal courts.

Naturally he enthusiastically endorsed Trump and has even gone so far as to take credit for Trump’s plans to “make Mexico pay for the wall,” in which the US government can supposedly use a provision of the Patriot Act to stop undocumented workers from transferring money to their families over the border. Since Trump estimates that the border wall will cost 10 billion and the estimated amount of money that flows over the border is 20 billion per year, Trump and Kobach believe that the Mexican government will be so frightened by the prospect of losing all that money that they will agree to pony up the 10 billion just so they don’t lose it all. Kobach told the Topeka Capitol Journal that Trump is “an excellent negotiator and he looks for opportunities to put pressure on opposing parties in negotiations and this fits the bill.” (As we now know, Trump’s reputation for business savvy is just a tad overblown so he is likely too optimistic in that regard.) 

President Obama called Trump’s plan “half-baked” and told reporters, “the notion that we’re going to track every Western Union bit of money that’s being sent to Mexico — good luck with that.” Others pointed out that, if it were to be found a legal application of the Patriot Act, which is doubtful, it would simply create a shadow money transfer system which would end up making it much harder to track legitimate criminal money laundering.  And it’s highly likely that former president of Mexico Vicente Fox spoke for every member of the Mexican government when he said, “I’m not going to pay for the f**king wall,” anyway. 

Kobach is such a leader in the anti-immigrant circles that he was pushed for the VP slot  by Trump’s nativist fans. As Zachary Roth at MSNBC reported last May:

The nativist website VDARE.com has promoted Kobach as a veep selection for Trump. Peter Brimelow, the site’s founder, called Kobach’s endorsement of Trump “a very brave move,” adding: “Kobach for veep.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes VDARE, which has regularly published writing by white nationalists and anti-Semites, as a hate group. It’s named for Virginia Dare, said to be the first English child born in the New World.

When Kobach appeared on a PBS program defending Trump against former RNC chief Haley Barbour, the website was delirious in its praise:

“In a GOP party that was living up to its professed principles, people like Kobach, and not Barbour, would be running things,” a writer for the site enthused, describing Kobach as “a stalwart warrior against the illegal immigrant invasion.” The post also appeared at the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer, whose founder has endorsed Trump.

As you can see Kobach and Trump have a lot in common.

Kobach did not appear on any list for VP, but he was an important voice at the recent platform drafting committee meetings where he made sure that his draconian immigration agenda was adopted thus ringing another death knell for any hope of Republican outreach to the Hispanic community.He was adamant about Trump’s wall, insisting that it “must cover the entirety of the southern border.” And he was very clear about what kind of wall it has to be. According to The Wichita Eagle:

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said this week that Trump’s wall will actually be a “digital wall” meant to prevent immigration, rather than a physical barrier. Kobach rejected that notion. 

“The wording I chose makes very clear that it must be a physical wall,” Kobach said, explaining that under President George W. Bush, some officials supported the use of electronic sensors at the border instead of a physical wall, an idea he deems insufficient.

“There’s no metaphors. We’re talking an actual, physical barrier,” Kobach said.

There’s no word on whether upon hearing Perry’s suggestion that he wasn’t serious,  Trump repeated his favorite line, “the wall just got 10 feet higher.”

But building the wall is not the only issue on which Trump and Kobach are simpatico. Kobach served in the Bush administration and was instrumental in the implementation of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, the post 9/11 requirement that all Muslims and Middle Eastern citizens in the country on visas register and file their fingerprints with the government. With his plans to deport Syrian refugees, ban Muslims from immigrating and surveilling mosques, Trump could certainly use a man with that kind of expertise on his team.

Kobach’s other area of interest is on the subject of vote suppression where he has also had great influence on the state level by helping to draft laws to thwart non-existent voter fraud, an issue Trump has also said he considers to be a serious problem. He has said, “I want to see voting laws so that people that are citizens can vote, not so people that can walk off the street and can vote, or so that illegal immigrants can vote…You’ve got to have real security with the voting system. This voting system is out of control. You have people, in my opinion, that are voting many, many times.”

He’s a perfect choice for a Trump administration. Indeed, his other contribution to the platform draft could have come right out of the Trump campaign itself. As the president was giving his eulogy for the five slain police officers in Dallas this week, Kris Kobach offered a provision that states that the Republican Party opposes all laws that would restrict magazine capacity, ban AR-style rifles or “deprive a person from the right to keep and bear arms without the right to due process.” It passed without debate.

Kobach said the provision is a “reaction to what some Democrats have been doing every time there’s a terrorist attack in the United States. Instead of talking about defeating ISIS, they use the terrorist attack as an excuse to go after Americans’ guns.” Trump couldn’t have said it better himself.

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The Failure Conspiracy

by digby

I can’t help but enjoy reading hysterical essays from the Wall Street Journal these days even though Trump’s popularity with tens of millions of Americans makes me feel sick to my stomach when I stop to think about it:

Before they gather in Cleveland for their convention, it’s not too soon for Republicans to begin thinking about what exactly a Donald Trump defeat might be like… 

[W]hat happens if Mr. Trump decides he can’t win and no longer is willing to throw good money after bad. Unless they were born on a turnip truck yesterday, campaign vendors will be the first to figure it out. Look for them quickly to cut off services rather than get stiffed in the inevitable Trump campaign bankruptcy filing.

Mr. Trump’s harsher Republican critics are kidding themselves to think Mr. Trump is crazy or unstable and will suffer a breakdown. More likely, he will simply and coldbloodedly toss the ball to the GOP, saying, in effect, “If you want to pay for some events or TV, I’m available. Otherwise I’m done.” The GOP would then have to shoulder the dual burden of propping up a minimally respectable Trump campaign while also distancing its down-ballot candidates from Mr. Trump so they might survive.

And that’s the optimistic scenario. Mr. Trump has learned the value of audacity. He might well decide to cover his retreat and preserve his amour propre with a flurry of lawsuits and conspiracy theories about a “rigged” election.

He’s already begun putting narrative flesh on these bones. He speaks of “crooked Hillary” and increasingly of the Clinton Global Initiative, Bill Clinton’s philanthropy, and what he calls the Clintons’ “politics of personal profit and theft.” In his trade speeches, he portrays the Clintons as members of a nefarious global elite that has enriched itself while foisting impoverishing trade deals on the U.S. middle class.

He perhaps will throw in a few suggestions that foreign governments hold hidden leverage over Hillary because of her hacked, illegal email server. He’ll mention Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich.

Republicans can also expect to be a target of his accusations. He doesn’t need to be plausible, just tell a story that justifies his own stance that he didn’t lose, the other side cheated, “Washington elites” conspired against him, etc.

If the Trump endgame is destined to go this way, Republicans should hope it does so early, ideally before the convention is even over. To date, Mr. Trump continues to tease top GOPers and conservatives with the idea that he may yet come their way, turn his formidable talents to advancing conservative causes. This merciless exploiting of Republican romantics has begun to seem like something out of “The Blue Angel” or Lucy with the football.

Republicans need a strategy, and lots of money to fund it, to preserve their House and Senate majorities. Do they know it? The thing they should fear most: An autumn dynamic in which Mr. Trump believes the best outcome for him personally is one that does as much damage as possible to the long-run GOP cause.

I’m fairly sure that ship has already sailed…

Trump is a conspiracy theorist and he will almost certainly claim that the election was rigged against him. He already says that and he hasn’t even lost yet. But let’s face fact, this theme of rigged elections is a big one in all political circles and not all of it is just the more understandable abstract complaint about big money dominating the system. Current conspiracy theories are all about literal ballot box stuffing and nefarious criminality. Meanwhile, the very real problem of vote suppression, an actual fact, is being driven by another nonsensical conspiracy theory, “voter fraud.”

We seem to be in one of those periods where everyone believes there’s a conspiracy behind every door. It’s tiresome but it happens in times when people lose faith in institutions. If there’s one person who will use that sentiment to excuse what we hope is going to be his massive failure it’s Trump. And he’ll find a way to turn a profit at other people’s expense. He always does.

“THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2016

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Two peas in a pod

by digby

I wrote about the man who is currently seen by the oddsmakers a having the best chance to become Trump’s VP:

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