A Good Try

In a closing argument as a defense attorney, John Adams once argued "Facts are stubborn things. They cannot be altered by our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions.”

Fact #1: There is nothing which more thoroughly assumes today's Republican Party than its campaign against voter fraud.

In the cagily termed "audit" it conducted of the 2020 presidential vote in Maricopa, County, a group of Arizona Republicans

A group of Arizona Republicans engaged a private cybersecurity firm, whose "CEO is a known election conspiracy theorist," to conduct an "audit" of the 2000 presidential vote in Maricopa County, which produces by far the greatest number of Democratic votes in the state. Nonetheless

Despite the obvious partisanship of the audit, they found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump — a negligible difference which nonetheless nullifies any claims that Trump should have won the county. Yet Trump has falsely reiterated that they found evidence of fraud and many Republicans in other states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are pushing for similar audits.

Democrats and even many Republicans have spoken out against these partisan audits. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters continue to push for them and perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, according to a CNN poll, six out of 10 Republicans said that believing that Trump would win the 2020 election was a significant part of what being Republican meant to them.

Earlier this year, Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the pro-democracy Freedom to Vote Act because- well, it was freedom to vote.  Then, at the insistence, and assistance, of West Virginia's center-right Democratic senator Joe Manchin, the bill was weakened and transformed into the For the People Act, which was successfully filibustered by the GOP.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed the House, with support from zero (0) Republicans, a truly impressive wall of opposition to a bill named after one of their recently deceased and allegedly revered colleagues. Even Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted against it because, well, they are Republicans. On Wednesday, November 3, that bill drowned in GOP filibuster.

A group of Arizona Republicans in April had engaged a private cybersecurity firm, whose "CEO is a known election conspiracytheorist," to conduct an "audit" of the 2000 presidential vote in Maricopa County, which produces by far the greatest number of Democratic votes in the state. Nonetheless

Despite the obvious partisanship of the audit, they found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump — a negligible difference which nonetheless nullifies any claims that Trump should have won the county. Yet Trump has falsely reiterated that they found evidence of fraud and many Republicans in other states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are pushing for similar audits.

Democrats and even many Republicans have spoken out against these partisan audits. Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters continue to push for them and perpetuate the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, according to a CNN poll, six out of 10 Republicans said that believing that Trump would win the 2020 election was a significant part of what being Republican meant to them.

Most Republican-controlled states since the election of 2020 have enacted laws to make voting more difficult, and others are trying, though there is virtually no voter fraud.  Roughly eight years ago

24 journalism students at twelve universities reviewed some 2,000 public records and identified just six cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2012. • Under Republican President George W. Bush, the U.S. Justice Department searched for voter fraud. But in the first three years of the program, just 26 people were convicted or pled guilty to illegal registration or voting. Out of 197,056,035 votes cast in the two federal elections held during that period, the rate of voter fraud was a miniscule 0.00000132 percent.

 A few years later, the Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative

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, 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.

Reputed audits done in several states following GOP whining about the 2020 presidential election revealed similar results.

Voter impersonation fraud, the target of suppressive election laws and subject of GOP ire, is virtually non-existent. But the Republican Party is obsessed with proving to the American public that it does exist. And so it shouldn't be surprising that, as fact #2

The 17-year-old son of Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) tried to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election twice despite being too young to vote, Fairfax County officials said in a statement released Friday.

The statement, which identified the teen as Youngkin’s 17-year-old son, emphasized that he did not end up voting and stated that he did not violate any state election laws. The Washington Post is not publishing the teen’s first name because he is a juvenile and has not been charged with a crime.

The teen walked into the voting precinct inside the Great Falls Library on Tuesday, presenting his driver’s license to election officials when asked for a proof of identity, according to Jennifer Chanty, the precinct captain there.

Chanty said in an interview with The Post that she realized who the teen was when she looked at his ID. Upon seeing his age, she said she informed him that he must be at least 18 to be eligible to vote in Virginia. Under Virginia’s election laws, the only time 17-year-olds can vote is in a primary election if they’ll be 18 by the time of the general election.

She said she offered to register him to vote for the next election, but the teen declined and walked out.

About 20 minutes later, the teen returned, insisting that he be allowed to vote, saying that a friend who was also 17 had been allowed to cast a ballot, Chanty said.

“I told him, ‘I don’t know what occurred with your friend, but you are not registered to vote today. You’re welcome to register, but you will not be voting today,’ ” Chanty, a Democrat, recalled saying. A copy of Chanty’s notes she took at the time showed she recorded the encounters as occurring in the morning.

There is virtually no voter fraud in the USA Despite the constant, ongoing efforts of prosecutors, Republican think tanks, Republican pundits and donor class, and the rest of the GOP machinery to prove to the American people voter fraud is rampant, it barely exists. Yet, of all the young people in the state of Virginia, the son of a Republican standing for governor is found to have tried to vote illegally.

This might well have been a Project Veritas operation, if it were a little less clumsy. If young Mr. Youngkin had succeeded, the GOP would flooded conventional and social media with the news (proof!) that Democrats win elections because of massive voter fraud. And because he was caught in the act, the office of the incoming governor gets to blame it on Youngkin's "political opponents." Whomever in the GOP orbit was behind it, the ploy should not have been unexpected, a clever idea poorly executed.

There are coincidences, and there are coincidences. This is neither.

 

 

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Voter Fraud, Presidential Division

President Trump has played golf an awful lot since he entered office. As of late May, he had been at a golf club once very 4.92 days, after President Obama  and played golf once every 8.77 days. And of course he makes a killing while doing so; after all, what is the point of there even being a Donald Trump if he does squeeze every last penny out of anyone he can. 

As of now, the federal government (otherwise known as taxpayers) has paid the President's businesses $900,000, approximately $570,000 as a result of Trump's travel, which has included 271 days spent at a property he owns. But most of the time he is in Washington, D.C.

One of the Trump properties is Mar-a-Lago, the resort in Palm Beach, Florida, which the President claims as his home, which if  true would enable him to vote as a Floridian.

Which is curious because documents obtained by TheWashington Post, in light of the President's effort to obtain approval for a boat dock at the resort, indicated that Trump

agreed in writing years ago to change the use of the Mar-a-Lago property from a single-family residence to a private club owned by a corporation he controls.

The distinction is significant. The property is taxed as a private club — not as a residence, according to Palm Beach County property appraiser records. Trump’s own attorney assured local officials in Palm Beach before they voted to approve the club in 1993 that he would not live there. Mar-a-Lago’s website says only that Trump maintains “private quarters” at the club.

“It’s one or the other — it’s a club or it’s your home,” Reginald Stambaugh, an attorney who represents a neighbor opposed to Trump’s dock plan, said in a recent interview. “You can’t have it both ways.”

Alas, President Donald J. Trump, the Chosen One, can have it both ways. In his acceptance speech on the grounds of the White House Thursday night, he declared

The fact is, I am here. What is the name of that building? But I’ll say it differently, the fact is, we are here and they are not. To me, one of the most beautiful buildings anywhere in the world is not a building, it is a home, as far as I am concerned. It’s not even a house, it is a home. Wonderful place with an incredible history. But it is all because of you.

Asking the nation to re-elect him, Trump suggested the People's House was his private domicile, thereby making him a resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, "a home, as far as I am concerned," in Washington, D.C.

But District of Columbia residents are second-class citizens and  elections are barely contested there while Florida is a swing state. So Donald Trump votes as a resident of Palm Beach, Florida.

In March, Donald Trump voted by mail as a resident of Palm Beach, Florida, where he does not live. However, he is claiming to be a resident there- except when he illegally conducted his campaign rally Thursday night in front of the White House.

It's not the President's greatest crime or con. However, when the media reports GOP complaints about illegal voting, Donald Trump should be unmasked as someone who knowingly and intentionally has committed voter fraud, and recently.

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Give Him No Platform

And that's when I knew I was wrong.

On March 23 I wrote

Broadcast live, these task force briefings are more partisan political affair than informative news event. They should be televised only on delay, shown only after Daniel Dale and other fact-checkers have had an opportunity to vet remarks by such political actors as the President, the Vice-President, and the Surgeon General. As remarks are heard, a script at the bottom of the screen would indicate results of the fact check.

Since then, it has become clear to me, as it had to a few others by then, that these are campaign events, a mix of the President's personal resentments, strategic invective, and lies.  Responding to Tuesday's briefing:

Daniel Dale is amazing at this: but isn’t this kinda fact checking the barn once the horse has run out? The President said all these things—on live tv. Platforming lies is a mistake. But media does it daily. I don’t get it. https://t.co/k5m51brTVg

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) April 8, 2020

Donald Trump's periodic lies about "voter fraud" are the most insidious because the truth is not simple and the specter of voter impersonation fraud are at the core of GOP electoral strategy.

The "autopsy" the Republican Party performed on itself in 20013, in the wake of yet another defeat in a presidential election, prescribed support for "comprehensive immigration reform" and outreach to African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and gay voters.

Then Donald Trump came along and won the presidency with a vigorous anti-immigrant message and  emphasis on ethnic bias, and the earlier prescription was shelved.  Following the direction of Senate Majority Leader McConnell, whose wife was selected for the President's cabinet, the party would be all in for Donald Trump.  The President would lead the party and brook no dissent.

The effort to squash voting in heavily Democratic Milwaukee is only the latest manifestation of the GOP's electoral strategy. Republicans know that if a lot of people vote, it is blacks, Latinos, and young people, who traditionally have a low turnout, who will turn out in higher numbers than normal. 

I waited 2.5 hours today in rain and hail (and a mask and gloves) to vote in Milwaukee because @wisgop and @scotus would rather risk lives than have a fair election. Instead of 182 polling sites, we had 5. #VoterSuppression #WisconsinPrimary pic.twitter.com/9F8xKwciOX

— Trudy Harwood (@TrudyandPierre) April 8, 2020

On March 30, the Present had called in to Trump TV's Fox and Friends and "dismissed a Democrat-led push for (voting) reforms" by stating "The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again."

That should have been obvious. However, the President thought it necessary to tweet on Wednesday morning

Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason,  doesn’t work out well for Republicans.

Still, aside from fact-checker Dale, Soledad O'Brien, and a few others, there was still little little of Trump's intent, and even less indication that people appreciated the implication. The President of the United States has made it very clear- he does not want people to vote and he's going to do whatever it takes to make sure they don't.

Fact-checking as Donald Trump spews a string of fabrications is more difficult than I understood, even recently. Moreover, it takes context for independent-minded voters to understand the damage and danger in the  distortion and lies characterizing virtually every appearance the President makes.

Refusing to show these dog-and-pony shows will enrage the President; good. They will undermine his obsession with being the center of attention at any and all times. They deprive him of at least one platform to disseminate propaganda.

It is irresponsible to give Donald Trump the forum to promote his campaign and various prejudices with reckless disregard for truth. Though there is no perfect remedy to the evil embodied in one man, media organizations must recognize- as they do- that the briefings are only campaign events, and dishonest ones.  Deciding not to tilt the election toward the incumbent by broadcasting them is the least which should be expected of them.

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It's "Don't Rock The Vote"

Steve M quotes (emphasis his) Laura Ingraham in Wednesday's controversial commentary, "The Left's Effort To Remake America," in which the conservative Republican contended





Because in some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people and they’re changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like. From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically in some ways the country has changed. Now, much of this is related to both illegal and in some cases legal immigration that of course progressives love.

Most criticism went elsewhere. Former New York Times and Washington Times reporter Heather Timmons slammed "divisive and racist words (which) could incite more hatred towards immigrants in the US. Morning Joe regular Donnie Deutsch remarked "I have a call to action to advertisers as far as to Laura Ingraham's message. Someone gets thrown off the air for saying the N-word- this is more reprehensible, you're basically saying we should be white." And S.E. Cupp maintained

To many, that sounded racist. That's because it is. She isn't complaining that the country's getting older or younger, richer or poorer, that we're having more or fewer children or moving to the suburbs. She's complaining that people who come to America from other countries -- even legally -- are making this country unrecognizable to her. Indeed, to "us."

Who "us" means is also clear: Fox News viewers, who are predominantly 65 and older and white. I know many of those viewers, and I'm sad to say that message probably resonated with a lot of them.

However, Ingraham singled out Virginia and California rather than saying "throughout the country" or specifying Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Nebraska, Iowa- other states which have seen a major influx of refugees and/or immigrants.

Those six states are either marginally, or solidly, Republican, while California is overwhelmingly Democratic and Virginia increasingly so.

The main concern of Ingraham, who has two Russian-born children, probably is voting, a message resonating with the Trump Administration, which

is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News.

The move, which would not need congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller's plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.

Details of the rulemaking proposal are still being finalized, but based on a recent draft seen last week and described to NBC News, immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from obtaining legal status in the U.S.

Those immigrants would not be booted from the USA but until and unless they became citizens, would not be permitted to vote. That applies to visa holders and.... what do we have here?

Despite his rhetoric that immigration hurts American workers, President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club is seeking to hire 61 foreign workers for the 2018 winter season, according to the Labor Department.

Trump’s “Winter White House” has applied to hire 21 cooks from other countries to work at the resort from October to May. The Palm Beach, Fla., club also wants to hire 40 foreigners for wait-staff positions.

The seasonal workers would be required to return to their home country once their H-2B visas expire.

Sometimes, foreigners are fine with this crowd, as long as they cannot vote.

Donald J. Trump is a Republican. Stephen Miller is a Republican. Laura Ingraham is a Republican. They may have multiple motives, even including animus to individuals based on their, well, cultural backgrounds. But what they want most is the election of Republicans.It's an obsession as old as Richard Nixon and Anna Chenault, Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, and Kris Kobach. 

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Black Lives Matter- Sometimes

A forty-three-year-old black mother, Crystal Mason of Tarrant County, Texas, has been sentenced to five years in prison for voter fraud, though her attorney now has filed an appeal. BET explains she

was on supervised release for tax fraud after serving nearly three years in federal prison. While she was on her release, her mother insisted she exercise her civic duty of voting in the crucial election, the Star-Telegram reported.

However, Mason was unaware that convicted felons are not allowed to register to vote in Texas, and voting their rights can be restored only after the sentence, including a supervised release, has been completed.

When Mason arrived at her polling place, the workers could not find her name on the list of registered voters, so a poll worker handed her a provisional ballot.

The poll worker gave Mason an affidavit listing the conditions required to vote. Mason signed the document and voted.

A poll worker later reported problems with Mason’s ballot which prompted an investigation, the district attorney's office spokesperson Samantha Jordan told the Dallas Morning News.

Mason, who was originally served time for a 2011 conviction for inflating returns, said she has “owned up” to her crime and she would never intentionally put herself in a position to go back to jail.

"I inflated returns," Mason told the Telegram. "I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote."

As BET notes, several people, including but not limited to a superb news host and the president of the NAACP, tweeted about Mason, in some instances drawing a contrast to a white Republican woman sentenced to probation for trying to vote twice for Donald Trump in Iowa.

But one organization is glaringly absent from the individuals and groups righteously outraged at this effort to depress voting and imprison someone up for something relatively innocuous.

That would be Black Lives Matter, the first page of whose website includes

The Black Lives Matter Global Network is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

Apparently, the Network does not want to interfere with the "violence" or discrimination inflicted by the state of Texas. It continues

We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.

Evidently, their network does not center on blacks whose votes are being suppressed. Their rant continues

We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.

We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.

The oppression they affirm does not include oppression of the right to cast a ballot.

Despite President Trump finally shutting down Kris Kobach's fraudulent voter fraud commission, GOP efforts to abort voting rights continues, and would be a concern to any organization truly dedicated to black empowerment.

So, too, would unusually punitive criminal justice practices in specific states. As with much of the effort among politicians and others toward criminal justice reform, among politicians and others, Black Lives Matter seems blissfully unaware that not all states, unlike people, are created equal. Both law enforcement and courts vary from state-to-state, and it is no coincidence that Crystal Mason was abused in Texas (video from 1/23/17).




Inarguably, black lives matter. Arguably, Black Lives Matter shouldn't.




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Good For Thee, Not For Me

This story is at once terrifying, bizarre, and enervating

The terrifying part is that the Presidential Advisory Commissionon on Election Integrity, created by President Donald Trump to root out the voter impersonation fraud which doesn't exist but which he believes cost him the popular vote in the presidential election, is headed by Vice-President Mike Pence.

Yes, that Mike Pence, who will become President once Donald Trump leaves office, is officially in charge of the GOP's newest and boldest voter suppression effort. The vice-chairperson is Kris Kobach, who has been the nation's leader in trying to wipe likely Democratic voters off the voting rolls.

According to a copy of a letter, obtained by The Hill, sent to all 50 state secretaries of state, Kobach has

asked for names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters in each state. It also sought felony convictions, military statuses, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting records dating back to 2006,

Fortunately, 29 states thus far have denied Kobach's request, and on Saturday morning, the President tweeted (emphasis his, but did I really have to point that out?) "numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?"

That is an interesting question, one which reveals the bizarre- or maybe not so bizarre. Trump might want to ask the panel's vice-chairperson, the very individual who made the request.

"In Kansas," remarked the state's Secretary of State (a fellow named Kris Kobach) "the Social Security number is not publicly available. Every state receives the same letter, but we're not asking for it if it's not publicly available." The individual asking 49 other states to turn their data over to his commission refuses to give his own state's information to the Trump re-election effort. But Kris Kobach is running for governor, and Kansans would not be partial to use of their private information for political gain.





If this were only funny or grotesquely hypocritical, it would little matter. However

Justin Levitt, an elections expert at Loyola Law School, pointed to the request about voters’ party affiliations, which he said violates the federal Privacy Act of 1974. Critics also said that because of varying state laws, the commission won’t be able to make an apples-to-apples comparison with the data it collects, which could undermine its eventual conclusions.

The most acute worry Friday was about what the group’s expected report in 2018 will recommend.

“It could end up leading to trying to create a justification for more state laws that restrict voting in very serious and what are proven to be unlawful ways,” said Vanita Gupta, who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration. “And that’s through all kinds of cuts, through restrictive voter ID laws, through cuts in early voting [and] same day registration.”

There are sweeping demographic changes across the USA, changes which- if left unchecked- will doom GOP efforts to attain permanent electoral advantage. Voters from groups which skew Democratic must be stopped. Kris Kobach, Donald Trump, and Mike Pence think they've found the way to do that.





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Trumpian Behavior

"Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin," tweeted Donald J. Trump in October of 2012, "watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate." He repeated this advice more than a dozen times in 2013 and 2014.

That strike against Libya or Iran never came.  In retrospect, we should have expected that as president.Trump would launch a military strike, legitimately prompted or otherwise, of some sort somewhere in that theatre.

If you're Donald J. Trump, it's what you do- whatever heinous thing it is that you accuse your opponent of doing, This President- with his extensive and profitable business enterprises around the globe- has been in constant violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This is anastoundingly ironic violation committed by the man whose twin campaign slogans were "Make America Great Again" and "Crooked Hillary."

The New York Times on January 27 reported that the President

spent his first week in office repeating the lie that between three million and five million people had voted illegally in the November election, first to members of Congress, then on Twitter, then in an ABC News interview, then again on Twitter on Friday, citing an unsubstantiated claim popular in conspiracy circles.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump had announced in a pair of tweets that he would be asking for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, “including those registered to vote in two states.”

There is no word on whether the Trump family or regime remains infested with individuals committing this dastardly form of voter fraud. Chief Strategist Seve Bannon, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, son-in-law and diplomat-at-large Jared Kushner, and daughter Tiffany Trump may still be thwarting American democracy by being registered in two states.

Given that this is not illegal, the President of the United States is ignorant and corrupt, and the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court is a plagiarist, this inconvenient fact is approximately #998 of 1000 sins of this young Administration.  But it should be a reminder both that GOP voter suppression is nothing more than a tool to elect Republicans, and that President Trump, most adoring that which he publicly most abhors, is a thoroughly unpredictable, hence dangerous, man.












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Donald Trump Is A Republican.

Michael Tracey, criticizing individuals who are criticizing some Democratic senators for their willingness to work with Donald Trump against the GOP Congress, argues

Can someone please explain the harm done by working with Trump to produce better policy on infrastructure, outsourcing, and trade? If the worry is about “normalizing” him, that ship has already sailed. He is president, and therefore basically about as “normalized” as you can get. 

Tracey may be confusing normalizing with legitimizing. The latter concept aside, Donald Trump has most assuredly not been normalized.  This morning on CNN's "New Day," Michael Smerconish stated that after he noted on his radio program that there is no evidence of Trump's claim of  3-5 million illegal immigrants having voted in November, a caller irrationally challenged him to "prove" that it did not occur. Tracey might as well "prove" that he did not write the paragraph above while under the influence of intoxicating substances.

God is in the details, and we do not know yet- and may not know for a long time- how any effort to play ball with the singularly megalomaniacal, highly mercurial, and far right President will turn out. However, speculation is not only reasonable, but irresisible, and the arrow is pointing in the direction Tracey is turned from.  Politico reports

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday endorsed President Donald Trump's call to launch an investigation into voter fraud in the presidential election. "I think it's fine," Ryan told MSNBC's Greta Van Susteren.

To be fair, Ryan also

made a point of saying that he has not seen any evidence to support Trump’s unsubstantiated claim, repeatedly debunked by independent fact-checkers, that his loss in the popular vote was a result of millions of people voting illegally for Hillary Clinton.

That's not much of a concession.  In 30 of 47 states, the Secretary of State is a  Republican (no such position in three states), and Ryan is hardly likely to contradict those Secretaries. If he singled out other states, it might be interpreted as an overly partisan claim, and Ryan is jealous in protecting his image with the media as knowledgeable, rational, and sensible.    Yet,

Ryan, noting that he is "sure there is some fraud," suggeted that an investigation into the issue is the right step to establishing the facts if Trump really believes the claim. 

"If he believes there's a problem to be looked at, the right thing to do is get an investigation, to get the facts," Ryan said. "I haven't seen evidence of this kind of widespread numbers that  we've been hearing about. The thing to do is to get an investigation to get the facts and then make a judgment based on the facts."

Ryan contends there is fraud and that President Trump is right to investigate it. He is perpetuating the legend.

It may matter little why Ryan is keeping this urban myth alive. Most likely he is pandering to that Smerconish caller- and other Republicans- who believe there is widespread voter impersonation fraud. Less likely, he is giving it up for the President. Conceivably- but just barely- he really believes in this pile of horse manure.






But he is doing it and he is no back-bencher, but the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, arguably the second most powerful person in American government.   And he is all-in with President Trump.

Let's remember, further, that Donald Trump became President running against a candidate boasting of support from rank-and-file Republicans and GOP foreign-policy hands.  .  Hillary Clinton beleived candidate Trump could be separated from more moderate, more reasonable Republicans. She won very few votes from Republicans, was defeated decisively among Independents, and lost an election which was hers to lose. The notion was that Donald Trump was an outlier in his party. We learned otherwise. Charlie Pierce remarks

The more stringent "gag rule" on abortion that Trump signed into place with his executive order is pure Mike Pence. While he's blathering on about crowd size and Peyton Manning, Paul Ryan is as close as he's ever been to his golden dream of dismantling the social programs that, in his mind, stopped serving a useful purpose when they got him through college. The country's environmental programs are being handed over to people who would frack their grandmother's old gray head if they thought there was a buck to be made in doing it.

Triangulation failed Hillary Clinton as it had failed President Obama.  The most effective political movement of the past quarter century was the Tea Party movement, which might as well have borrowed Nancy Reagan's drug slogan "just say no."  If Democratic officials, like Michael Tracey, does not heed that lesson, they will lose both their sould and a lot of elections.







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Obvious Strategy

Two weeks ago, The Nation's Ari Berman- who has been on top of GOP voter suppression like no one's business- wrote (in reverse order)

North Carolina is a case study for how Republicans have institutionalized voter suppression at every level of government and made it the new normal within the GOP. The same thing could soon happen in Washington when Trump takes power....

His conspiracy theories about rigged elections during the presidential race were meant to delegitimize the possibility of Hillary Clinton’s election. But now that he’s won the election we have to take his words far more seriously. He will appoint the next attorney general, at least one Supreme Court justice and thousands of positions in the federal government. His lies about the prevalence of voter fraud are a prelude to the massive voter suppression Trump and his allies in the GOP are about to unleash.

The battle has been joined- on Trump's side, unfortunately. Yesterday we learned from Politico that (President-in-waiting)

Paul Ryan says he doesn’t know if millions of Americans voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, and he refused to repudiate Donald Trump’s groundless claims of a vast voter-fraud conspiracy.

In an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the speaker was asked about Trump's tweet that said he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

In a nod to the GOP claims of "I am not a scientist" when asked about climate change, Ryan added "I don't know. I'm not really focused on these things."

Admittedly, his focus is on making health care a whole lot harder for elderly people and poor people to find.. Still, Ryan is intimately interested in voter suppression, without which few Republicans (including Trump) would get elected at the national level, which would leave Ryan's plans in the dust. Last week (prior to Ryan's claims of ignorance and unconcern), Brian Schaffner gave a detailed, thorough takedown of Trump's remarks alleging voter fraud.  The President-elect

and his staff are pointing to a study by Jesse Richman and his co-authors that was published in the journal Electoral Studies and advertised on the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog. As a member of the team that produces the datasets upon which that study was based and as the co-author of an article published in the same journal that provides a clear “take down” of the study in question, I can say unequivocally that this research is not only wrong, it is irresponsible social science and should never have been published in the first place. There is no evidence that non-citizens have voted in recent U.S. elections.

That won't stop the Administration and its allies, including virtually all Republicans, and most significantly the Speaker of the House. "Today," Ari Berman tweeted in what is a safe bet, "Ryan, Preibus & Pence refused to condemn Trump lie that millions voted illegally. Tells you massive voter suppression is coming."











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Ramping Up Voter Suppression

At first, it seemed not only absurd, but purposeless, when on Sunday Donald Trump tweted “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

He didn't win the Electoral College in a landslide, of course, as he garnered 306 electoral votes (pending recounts, which could lower the figure). In the six previos presidential elections, the victor was awarded more than 306 votes in four occasions, with the average in the last six elections 336 electoral votes.

But Trump's claim of an electoral vote landslide is no more an accident than the fabrication that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."  When he charged fraud

Trump offered nothing to back up his allegations of wrongdoing in the Nov. 8 election -- one that returned to his pre-election mantra of a “rigged” result. Although Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton 306-232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, the former secretary of state leads Trump by more than 2.2 million votes in the nationwide popular vote, according to a running tally by the non-partisan Cook Political Report. A Trump spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cook shows Clinton with 64.65 million total votes to Trump’s 62.42 million, or a lead of 48.2 percent to 46.5 percent. Third-party and other candidates received 7.19 million votes, or about 5.4 percent. In 13 swing states, Trump won 48.4 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 46.6 percent.

On Nov. 13, Gregg Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission deputy commissioner, tweeted about there being 3 million votes that were cast by noncitizens.

Attempting to con the masses, Trump is trying to insinuate the myth that there is a conspiracy. Phillip Bump of The Washington Post explains

Phillips claims in another tweet that his organization (it's not clear which organization, but it may be VoteStand) has a database of 180 million voter registrations and he confirms that 3 million of the people in that database who voted are noncitizens. He has been asked to provide evidence for that claim repeatedly, without having done so.

Regardless, the story was quickly picked up by the conspiracy-theory hawking site InfoWars, a story that was linked out at the top of the Drudge Report on Nov. 14.

When Matt Drudge qualifies something with "Claim:" it's worth treating it with skepticism.

The rumor-debunking site Snopes looked at Phillips' claim and found no evidence for it. (It also noted that Phillips has a history of implying that Obamacare will lead to the registration of millions of immigrants here illegally.)

(This is standard operating procedure among conservatives. A website makes something up and then rank-and-file conservatives pick it up and spread it as settled fact.)

"Worth saying," Jamelle Bouie tweeted, "that broad accusations of illegal voting were the first steps toward voter suppression laws in WI, NC, TX, etc."

And maybe elsewhere.  Four hours after the original remark, Trump tweeted "serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.  So why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias- big problem."

In addition to the standard- yet tactically wise- GOP tactic of whining about the media, this is setting the predicate for claiming a wide-ranging Democratic voter fraud conspiracy.







"The Trump voting tweet," David Frum observed, "may be more than an ego spasm. It may also be a warning that voting is about to be made more difficult for millions."  Donald Trump is no RINO. He recognizes, as does the entire Party, there is no way Republicans can consistently win races for national office without voter suppression, and their success on November 8 will only embolden them.

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Rigging

Volunteer to be a Trump Election Observer. Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election! 

So reads the Donald J. Trump for President website. On October 1 in Manheim, Pennsylvania he put meat on those bones when he told an adoring crowd in Manheim, Pennsylvania

You’ve got to go out. You’ve got to go out. And you’ve got to get your friends. And you’ve got to get everyone you know. And you got to watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania. Certain areas. I hear too many bad stories, and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about.

Certain areas?  Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani made clear on CNN's "State of the Union" that he wasn't talking about Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Rather

There are -- there are -- there are a few places, and not many in the swing states, there are a few places where they have been notorious for stealing votes, Pennsylvania, Chicago. There have been places where a lot of cheating has gone on over the years.

I know that from my own knowledge of bussing people in from Camden. When I ran for mayor of New York City the first time, some people voted eight and 10 times. And the second time, I had -- I had firefighters and police officers outside checking on the buses, so we take down the number of the bus. The bus had voted 10 times. And then we wouldn't let the bus vote again. 





Sure he did. If any of this resulted in charges, let alone convictions, Giuliani didn't mention it, and soemone would have noticed. Of course, if they're allowing buses to vote in New York City- let alone 10 times- the city has far greater problems than Giuliani's voter fraud hallucinations. But maybe the media wouldn't report the prosecution of such culprits because, as Giuliani remarked

You can find just as many wacko nuts on her side that write us horrible and awful things. So, when he talks about a rigged election, he's not talking about the fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls. What he's talking about is that 80 percent to 85 percent of the media is against him, that when you look at "The New York Times," when you pick it up every morning, on the top of the paper, there are three stories that are anti-Trump, some of them totally baseless, some of some silly.

The fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls. It seems that Giuliani is all in with the Trump theory of rigged eleections, rigged debates, rigged media, and rigged voting, with vigilante poll watchers the remedy.  "It's pitchforks and  torches time," warns another of Trump's surrogates, Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.  Just don't call the likes of Clarke and Giuliani "deplorable."

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No Substantive Pivot

In January Politifact rated as "pants on fire" the assertion of Michigan Representative Mike Rogers, who had on CNN argued "I think we're missing one important point here. Donald Trump is appealing as much to Democrats as he is to Republicans.And anybody that misses this point by missing the folks on the street who are drawn to his campaign."

It is now seven months later and the meme, now repackaged as support deriving from voters facing economic anxiety, will not die.  Trump's popularity, Steve M. recognizes, now is often mistakenly

attributed to white America's increasing sense of economic displacement, as manufacturing jobs continue to disappear and the well-to-do benefit disproportionately from the economic recovery. We've been told that Trump is appealing to the same sense of economic unfairness that drove the campaign of Bernie Sanders.

It is hogwash now, just as it was early in the year, and SM blows  the whistle on it by pointing out that the voice on Trump's new commercial remarks

In Hillary Clinton’s America, the system stays rigged against Americans. Syrian refugees flood in. Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay, collecting Social Security benefits, skipping the line. Our border open. It’s more of the same, but worse.

Donald Trump’s America is secure, terrorists and dangerous criminals kept out. The border secure. Our families safe. Change that makes America safe again. Donald Trump for president.








The ad "starts by telling us that the system is rigged (but) doesn't see any rigging in the economic system."  Instead, the thrust is

about fear of the Other -- including, we can safely infer, that opening shot of a polling place entrance and the words "system rigged," which, to Trump's base, is a dog whistle meaning "Democratic machine bosses in big cities with large non-white populations are going to manipulate the vote in Clinton's favor."

Shortly before the 2012 election, a Monmouth University poll found that 51% of Republicans thought "voter fraud is a major problem nationally," as its analysis put it.  A few months earlier, 57% of Republicans were found by The Washington Post to consider it a major problem in presidential elections.  Earlier this month, Trump claimed he would lose Pennsylvania in November only "if cheating goes on."

 African-Americans and illegal  immigrants, in the minds of many Republicans, are manipulated into voting for Democrats. With surveys now indicating that Hillary Clinton may surpass Barack Obama's share of the two-party black vote, there is little doubt who is suspected of cheating.

The myth is reflected in Trump's recent statement, theoretically directed toward African-Americans, "You're living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. 58% of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?" Why, he might have asked, do you persist in being manipulated into voting against the Party which in many states is trying to deny you the right to vote?







Just as Trump's ad suggests no manner in which the system- or anything- is "rigged," so he offers no substantive proposals for improving the lot of the impoverished, which in his telling, apparently includes all blacks. (But it's all Hillary Clinton's fault.)

There is no new Trump. There only is the same old Trump, lumping together everyone of an ethnic group (such as blacks, Mexicans, and Arabs), who vote illegally and cheat to get free benefits, all the while manipulating a "rigged" system (or rigged something).   Add it all up, and to Donald Trump, the opposition- like John McCain - represents a bunch of losers.








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The Right To Vote, As Long As It's For Trump

On Tuesday night in Wisconsin, Donald Trump gave a speech covering a grab bag of issues in a remarkably superficial fashion.  (The only transcript available seems to be the one prepared for delivery, and given the candidate's penchant for going off-strip, any quotes may not be identical to his words as delivered.)   Trade, education, and Islamic terrorism also were trotted out for a cameo role.

It also was a highly partisan speech, in which Grump claimed

The Democratic Party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin. 

They've ruined the schools.

They've driven out the jobs.

Most of all, crime must be attributed to Democrats, and primarily to his opponent because "Hillary Clinton-backed policies are responsible for the problems in the inner cities today, and a vote for her is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime, and lost opportunities."

Grump was short on facts, long on generalities and short on specifics, though he did complain about conditions in "inner cities,"  which is nowhere an official designation, unlike cities, towns, townships, boroughs, etc. But for voters over the age of 50 it is translated as "black"  and sounds like a dogwhistle out of Frank Luntz's bag of rhetorical dirty tricks.

It's not surprising that a candidate who has warned "We're going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study make sure other people don't come in and vote five times" had his eyes on the votes of white supremacists as he gave a speech pretending to be concerned about minorities.

No one can say for certain whether Grump in his shout-out to vigilantism was referring to illegal immigrants, obviously a particular scourge to him, or blacks, who make up the dominant voting bloc for Democrats in Pennsylvania.   But Trump has charged the system is "rigged" and supporters have portrayed him as willling to challenge both Democratic and Republican members of the Establishment.

Yet, he didn't mention the effort underway in many states, led invariably by Republicans and typically opposed by Democrats, to prevent blacks from voting.  Were it not intentional from a man who throughout his speech ignored the structural barriers to equality of opportunity in American society, it would be only an egregious oversight.

The GOP tactic of suppressing the vote of blacks and Latinos is no mere oversight, and belies any expression of concern for either group.  In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a voter idenification law in North Carolina because

The photo ID requirement, which applies only to in-person voting and not to absentee voting, is too narrow to combat fraud. On the one hand, the State has failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina. On the other, the General Assembly did have evidence of alleged cases of mail- in absentee voter fraud. Notably, the legislature also had evidence that absentee voting was not disproportionately used by African Americans; indeed, whites disproportionately used absentee voting. The General Assembly then exempted absentee voting from the photo ID requirement.

Speaking in Virginia twelve days later, Trump was clear in his support for voter disenfranchisment, remarking

You know, and I just left a great place, North Carolina. And they just had a tremendous loss. Voter ID. Voter ID. They lost voter ID. How do you lose voter ID? You mean, you don’t have to show identification? You don’t have to show that — hey?

Hey? Hey, voter identification fraud is nearly nonexistent, Donald:

Requirement of voter identification is a great way of depressing the vote, and waiting times at polling places varies significantly among ethinic groups, as indicated by the chart below:

In recognizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Senator Barbara Boxer in 2003 wrote "Without a meaningful vote, there can be no equality before the law, no equal access, no equal opportunity." Donald Trump may buck his Party in varied and superficial ways and plead for votes of African-Americans. But promoting voter suppression, as he and his Party are most anxious to do, make clear that Donald Trump's GOP has little interest in the black community.








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Voter Identification And Lengthy Lines

On Sunday's commentary (video below), John Oliver summarized the problems with requiring voter identification: the difficulty in many states of obtaining I.D.; the disproportionate impact on black and hispanic voters; inapplicability of the remedy to anything but voter impersonation, which a study found occurred at most 31 times of more than a billion votes cast from 2000 through 2014; the evidence that it may be used as a partisan effort to elect more Republicans.

There may be only one pitfall in requiring voter identification which went unmentioned, and that possibly only because of time limitations.  The day before the last off-year congressional election, Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones posted an article detailing what she considers the most "subtle" means of disenfranchising black and hispanic voters: "polling places without enough voting machines or poll workers." She found

Nationally, African Americans waited about twice as long to vote in the 2012 election as white people (23 minutes on average versus 12 minutes); Hispanics waited 19 minutes. White people who live in neighborhoods whose residents are less than 5 percent minority had the shortest of all wait times, just 7 minutes. These averages obscure some of the unusually long lines in some areas. In South Carolina's Richland County, which is 48 percent black and is home to 14 percent of the state's African American registered voters, some people waited more than five hours to cast their ballots.

A recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice suggests that a big factor behind these delays was inadequately prepared polling places in heavily minority precincts. Looking at Florida, Maryland, and South Carolina, three states that had some of the longest voting lines in 2012 , the center found a strong correlation between areas with large minority populations and a lack of voting machines and poll workers. In South Carolina, the 10 precincts with the longest waits had more than twice the percentage of black voters (64 percent) as the state as a whole (27 percent).

When individuals have to wait to vote, they are tempted to turn around and go home, especially because in the vast majority of elections the likelihood of one vote (or even a few votes) deciding an election is virtually nill.  One study, Mencimer found, " suggested that roughly 130,000 would-be voters were turned away thanks to long lines" in Franklin County (home to Columbus), Ohio, in 2004. (Mencimer adds "Those missing votes would not have been enough to swing the state for John Kerry." Wrong. This way, too.)

Long waiting lines, most prevalent in urban and minority areas, discourage turnout, primarily of Democratic voters. Given the most common reasons for those lines, racial discrimination is not the primary motivation, though there is an obvious discriminatory impact.  Mencimer notes

Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied voting wait times, has posited that the problem is likely related to the poor provision of public service in minority areas in general. In other words, if you don't have good trash pick up, your polling station isn't likely to function very well, either.

Blacks and hispanics are those most likely to live in areas plagued by inadequate municipal services. They also are disproportionately unlikely to possess voter I.D., hence especially likely to be harmed by the requirement that identification be presented at the polls.  Additionally, the mere presentation of identification, along with verification (albeit a relatively brief process in most cases), lengthens the time required for voting. Lines inevitably are longer and some discouraged voters will return home without casting a ballot.

The impact on minority voters severely hampers Democratic fortunes. It should be a bigger issue in the presidential race, and would be if only there were a Democrat countering her opponent's campaign with a race-based appeal.

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Not The Fraud He Was Referring To

Hillary Clinton called out four GOP governors or ex-governors, all of them presidential hopefuls, on Thursday for voter suppression.  Ohio's John Kasich, Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Texas' Rick Perry, and New Jersey's Chris Christie were named.   As one of the GOP chief executives who "offer themselves to undercut this fundamental American principle," Christie, she noted,  had "vetoed legislation to extend early voting."

With his usual thoughtfulness and dignity, Christie (as a softball player Wednesday, below, from deadspin) responded

She doesn't know what she's talking about.  In New Jersey, we have early voting that are available to people... I don't want to expand it and increase the opportunities for fraud.  And maybe that's what Mrs. Clinton wants to do. I don't know. But the fact is that the folks in New Jersey have plenty of an opportunity to vote.

In May, 2013 The New York Times had reported "Mr. Christie on Thursday vetoed a bill to set up voting at up to seven locations in each county during a 14-day period before elections," which seems a heck of a lot like what Mrs. Clinton was saying.

Still, voting fraud exists and however barely, voter fraud exists. On November 2, 2012 the Las Vegas Sun reported the arrest of registered Republican Roxanne Rubin for voting the previous day in Henderson, Nevada, then unsuccessfully trying to vote later in the day at another location in Henderson.   According to the Houston Chronicle, Republican precinct chairman Bruce J. Fleming appeared to have cast ballots in 2006, 2008, and 2010 in both Sugar Land, Texas and Yardley, Pennsylvania.  And then there is Massachusetts, in which California resident Willard "Mitt" Romney in January, 2010 voted for Scott Brown in a special election to fill the US Senate seat vacated by the death of Edward Kennedy.

However, no GOP election official, precinct chairperson, or ex-governor has been seen voting illegally in New Jersey.The Brennan Center for Justice discovered

Just before the 2005 election, partisan actors attempted to probe the accuracy of New Jersey’s voter rolls by comparing election records for 2004 with death records and with the rolls of other states. The allegations yielded only eight substantiated cases of individuals knowingly casting invalid votes that counted—eight voters who voted twice. Given the number of votes cast in these elections, this amounts to a rate of 0.0004%. None of these problems could have been resolved by requiring photo ID at the polls. 

Facts may not matter, however, and Steve M. wryly observes

So even though Christie din't make a tightly reasoned argument, he beats Perry and Kasich. The right believes voter fraud is rife, and that Democrats steal elections routinely. If that's the case, I'm not sure why Democrats didn't do more thievery in, say, 2010 and 2014 -- but that's not even question worth asking on the right. To the right, Democrats are the voter fraud party, and Christie wisely went straight for that talking point. If he wants to get back into contention, maybe he should run an entire presidential campaign based on opposition to nonexistent voter fraud.

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Fear Of The Vote

Rush Limbaugh sounds nostalgic for the good old days. But don't believe him, although on Tuesday he longingly stated of European immigrants to the USA in the 1920s

Now, they wanted to be.  They wanted to become Americans.  They had to learn English. They learned American custom.  They became acquainted with American holidays.  They studied for citizenship.  All of this they wanted.  And it took that many years to assimilate.  

Don't believe him, because Rush added "There's not a person I know that wants to deport, try to round up 15 or 20 million people and send 'em packing.  It isn't practical.  It isn't going to happen."  So he wants illegal immigrants to remain but argues "these people" (who apparently are the "anti-American left")

don't want these people to ever be self-reliant.  They want these people to be voting as dependent incompetents.  The political powers that be that are trying to make this happen see a wave of potential registered voters who are unskilled and uneducated and will never be self-reliant. Therefore they are always going to need support from government.  They are seeking dutiful, respectful, appreciative dependents. 

This consistent with the immigration position Limbaugh has taken in the past, as well as the obsession he and most other conservatives have with vote fraud that doesn't exist.  Rush does not toe the Chamber of Commerce line. He doesn't want illegal immigrants to remain so they can mow his lawn or bus his table at a fine restaurant, or even because they would depress the wage scale, though that would be a collateral benefit.

They may stay as long as they don't vote (photo, below, of line at Florida polling place in 2012, from the official student newspaper of St. Petersburg College).  Beholden to psychological projection, Rush believes Democrats want "amnesty" merely to gain a whole raft of new voters, rather than because of a humanitarian impulse and instinct to help the downtrodden.

The Repub Party already has lost the political battle over illegal immigration.   That was displayed during campaign 2012 when GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney urged illegal immigrants to "self-deport" and in response to the firestorm which erupted, Republicans barely defended their candidate or themselves. Following a near-disaster at the polls that November, the GOP attempted an "autopsy" which suggested the Party "reboot" itself in an effort to woo Hispanics and others. After the President's recent executive order on immigration, a lot of huffing and puffing ensued but as Dana Milbank wrote at the time

There will be more spluttering and stomping and shouting about Obama’s illegal and unconstitutional activities, but pay no attention. In the immigration stare-down, Republicans have already blinked. Unwilling to squander their new majority and public support by risking a government shutdown, they are quickly falling in line behind symbolic protests.

Rush Limbaugh, clothing his opposition as realism, opposes deporting illegal immigrants, As with the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba announced Wednesday, the GOP has lost the political war and therefore has nothing positive to recommend and no policy except to oppose Barack Obama.

And so it is now that Rush Limbaugh says keep 'em here, but don't allow them to assimilate and become citizens. If they aren't afforded the rights and privileges of Americans, including the right to vote, they can stay as long as they want,  There is a reason the title of Limbaugh's segment is "Conservatives Don't Hate Immigrants!" They don't hate immigrants. They hate voters.

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