Democrats are working arduous to get out the vote. From Vice President Kamala Harris visiting rural Georgia, to Gov. Tim Walz hyping up a union crowd in Milwaukee, to 34,000 Taylor Swift followers becoming a member of a Zoom fundraising name and entering their “Swifties for Kamala” period, the efforts are paying off. In distinction, former President Donald Trump and Gov. JD Vance stayed off the campaign trail for Labor Day, and Trump has no upcoming occasions on his schedule till Sept. 7.
As a substitute of making an attempt to get their supporters to the polls, the GOP is falling again on acquainted ways: voter suppression and unsupported claims of voter fraud.
Main the best way, as normal, is Texas—although they’re not alone. However earlier than diving into simply how unhealthy issues are getting, it’s vital to do not forget that whereas voter suppression is actual, voter fraud on any significant scale is completely not. It’s been debunked and debunked and debunked. Even in the event you simply take a look at swing states, or use the breathless reporting from the hyper-conservative Heritage Basis, the numbers actually don’t add up.
Nothing about these uncontroverted information means a factor to Texas Legal professional Common Ken Paxton, who’s overseeing an nearly comically evil assault on voters in his state. Paxton is convinced that President Joe Biden solely received the 2020 election due to widespread voter fraud. Now, Paxton’s “Election Integrity” unit is making certain the integrity of the 2024 election by having a number of armed officers execute a search warrant and seize the possessions of individuals like 87-year-old Lidia Martinez, whose ostensible crime appears to be registering individuals to vote.
Tuesday, the League of United Latin American Residents, of which Martinez has been a member for over 35 years, referred to as a press convention asking that the Division of Justice step in. The group, which is the oldest and largest Latino civil rights group within the U.S., additionally despatched a letter to the DOJ late final month after Martinez’s residence was raided. LULAC mentioned that 4 different members of the group have been similarly targeted by Paxton.
In response to Paxton, LULAC members are being investigated for “allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred in the course of the 2022 elections.” There’s so much to unpack there. First, election fraud is just not a factor. Bear in mind the way it was a lot not a factor that even Trump’s handpicked “voting integrity” fee couldn’t find proof of it?
Subsequent, “vote harvesting” is only a scary-sounding time period for the perfectly banal act of amassing absentee ballots and bringing them to polling locations or election places of work. It’s solely within the GOP world, the place extra voter turnout equals much less of an opportunity they win, that making certain extra individuals get to vote is a nasty factor.
Lastly, these allegations date not from efforts throughout this election however from the 2022 midterms. It takes so much to imagine that Paxton spent two lengthy, cautious years investigating and solely simply managed to wrap it up in time for the 2024 election. As a substitute, it seems to be so much like what LULAC calls it: voter intimidation. Many individuals are going to suppose twice about serving to to register voters if the subsequent step is a daybreak raid by armed officers.
Paxton can be threatening to sue Bexar and Harris Counties—each of which went handily for President Joe Biden within the 2020 election—over their efforts to ship voter registration playing cards to everybody. So, to recap: Paxton doesn’t need personal teams to assist individuals register to vote. He additionally doesn’t need the federal government to assist individuals register to vote—nicely, a minimum of the federal government in blue counties.
Paxton can’t do all of this voter suppression alone, nonetheless. Fortunately for the GOP, Texas additionally has Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s busy bragging about eradicating over 1 million voters from the state rolls since 2021. Cleansing up voter rolls is a standard course of, and states must take away individuals who transfer or die. Certainly, the variety of voters Texas faraway from its rolls this time isn’t uncommon compared to earlier elections.
However by highlighting this massive purge so near the election—and just a few days after the LULAC raids—Abbott is insinuating there’s something nefarious that he’s working to cease. Truly, he’s simply coming proper out and saying that, for instance, 1000’s of noncitizens have been suspected of voting.
If this sounds acquainted, it’s as a result of in 2019, Texas made a loud splash when it flagged a staggering 95,000 voters for “citizenship evaluation,” alleging that “tens of 1000’s of noncitizens” weren’t simply registered to vote, however had beforehand voted. It took just a few days for this to begin falling aside, with the state having to nearly immediately admit that 25,000 individuals have been on the record by mistake, and lots of have been residents. The whole affair ended with a whimper, with Texas agreeing to rescind the advisory as a part of a settlement in three lawsuits introduced in opposition to the state.
Ohio can be getting in on the motion, with Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose additionally flagging alleged noncitizens. Very like Texas, although, this falls aside, with a number of the alleged noncitizens really being recently naturalized citizens who’re due to this fact absolutely eligible to vote.
LaRose retains sending voter fraud referrals to investigators, however the state has seen solely 13 convictions throughout a number of elections. Because the Ohio Capital Journal put it, this could imply Ohio’s voter fraud charge is about .0001%, as over 14 million state ballots have been solid in that point.
In states that don’t have a authorities keen to assault its personal residents for making an attempt to vote, there are personal right-wing teams like United Sovereign People inflicting bother. The group has introduced lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Maryland, alleging these states have mismanaged their voter registration and rolls. Explicitly stating its purpose is to problem voter rolls in a number of states, hoping to get completely different rulings from completely different federal courts, the group is thus forcing the Supreme Court docket to step in.
It isn’t shocking that Republicans are having to resort to improper voter purges and off, long-debunked allegations of voter fraud. When Trump took full management of the Republican Nationwide Committee earlier this year, certainly one of his first acts was to shift assets away from Financial institution Your Vote, a 50-state RNC effort to encourage early voting. This echoes Trump’s 2020 rhetoric, the place he saved trashing his personal social gathering’s GOTV efforts by attacking mail-in voting.
Couple that with the truth that Trump has spent over $80 million in tremendous PAC cash on his authorized charges as an alternative of on working for president, and it’s straightforward to see why the GOP’s finest path ahead is stopping individuals from voting.
