The "Voter Fraud" Fraud

Having grown up in Chicago, where the mantra was "Vote early and often", I consider myself -- if not an expert -- something of a professional observer of voter fraud.  So, it is with much teeth-clenching bemusement that I watch the maniacally-misguided outrage at supposed voter fraud in the 2020 election.

This bemusement (through clenched teeth) takes two forms.

The first is the totally myopic viewpoint of those "outraged" who focus entirely, solely on the supposed fraud that Trump was supposedly denied the presidential election.  What they conveniently, and bizarrely, ignore is that if the ballots for Trump were supposedly manipulated and are supposedly fraudulent, then that means (according to them) that...well, that the ballots are fraudulent.  The ballots.  All those ballots.  Not just the presidential race on the ballots, but everything on the ballots.  Because -- according to them -- the ballots are fraudulent, manipulated, wrong, bad.  And as bad ballots, they must be thrown out.  

But you can't throw out a ballot and only throw out one, convenient race on it.  If a ballot is (in your mind) bad, then every race on it is bad.  If this ballot must be thrown out, every race on it must be thrown out.

Excuse me if I'm stating the obvious, but "the obvious" has been the standard operating procedure for the past six months since November, which 70% of the Republican Party seems determined to ignore.  And by "Republican Party," I include all the Republicans who were voted into office during the 2020 election and whose election -- if they insist on standing by their "outrage" that the ballots with Trump's name on them were supposedly fraudulent and must be thrown out -- must be thrown out, as well.

But that's only one of the two areas of teeth-gnashing bemusement.

The second is that all this attention on voter fraud, and the supposedly-manipulated Dominion voting machines and the pseudo-audit in Arizona where they are looking over machine ballots supposedly from China with bamboo chips in them and all the other cries from other states about the supposedly manipulated machine ballots, and the letter yesterday from the U.S. government that because Arizona gave access to the voting machines to unauthorized "auditors" against the law, then the machines have now been compromised by the faux-auditor itself, and so the machines cannot be certified and must be replaced by the state -- all this, all of it, is focused entirely on the voting machines.  All of it.  On the voting machines.

Not the mail-in votes.

Remember:  the whole point of the supposed "outrage" before the election by Trump and the Republican Party was that vote-by-mail was rife for fraud.  That voting by mail should not be allowed because it was a breeding ground for corruption.  And it was this massive "faux concern" about supposed vote-by-mail fraud which has been the foundation of all the voter suppression laws being passed by Red states across the country, to supposedly protect the sanctity of the election.  

And yet -- never mind that there is zero evidence (as in "zero") of organized voter fraud with mail-in voting -- by Republicans' own action, the GOP and it's outraged members are not even making an issue of voter-fraud with mail-in voting.  They are dealing only with the in-person voting machines. 

While passing voter-suppression laws because of non-existent fraud from voting by mail.

I'm only waiting for the natural outgrowth from this by the Red states. which would be Republican legislatures starting to to pass even more stringent voter suppression laws because of their supposed, fictional claims about supposed fraud with voting machines.

The result of which would be the Republican Party insisting that voting can't be trusted.  That elections can't be trust.  That only results where Republicans win count.

Yes, this is hyperbole.  But it's not that far off the path.  Because it's the logical conclusion you get by following their actions.

And to be clear, this is one of the foundations of fascism.

I've long-written that there are three basic tenets of fascism -- and we've seen all three pushed by the Trump administration and enabled by elected Republicans in Congress and in state houses:  The use of of force against its citizens and promotion of violence.  Xenophobia against outsiders and those who are different.  And an effort to discredit other sources of power, like the press, judiciary, police and intelligence services.  And undermining the faith in elections is not only part of that, but may arguably be the foundation of them all.

This is not about Trump.  This is about today's Republican Party that enables everything and is complicit in trying to get rid of democracy.

Fortunately, elections do count.  And Democrats control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. For now.  And it takes vigilance and action to main all this.  And by "this," I mean democracy.  Fortunately, too, there has been a profound and organized resistance against this Republican Party push towards fascism, and I see it only getting stronger.  But the margins are thin right now -- so "getting stronger" is, in fact, precisely what is needed.