The Myth Of Voter Fraud: Gerrymandering, Lies & Hardball Politics

If you ask random people if there’s a lot of voter fraud affecting elections many may say, incorrectly, that yes there is. They might say that because of the right-wing Republicans’ (RWR) strategy, in the name of the oxymoron “election integrity,” to pass laws making it harder to vote because of the imaginary wide-spread voter fraud. The RWR file multiple lawsuits decrying rampant voter fraud, and generally attract so much media attention to their false claims that it leads segments of the population, who aren’t paying much attention, to think “where there’s smoke there must be fire.”

But it’s just a scam the RWR is attempting, often successfully, to confuse the voters into thinking that “both sides do it,” when it’s a cynical and strictly RWR project to discourage people from bothering to vote in such a “corrupt system,” just lies similar to most of a Trump speech. (The ones who get confused and duped are the low-info voters who don’t have the time or inclination to study or investigate the cascading charges by the RWR.)

It’s a smart and legal strategy to create confusion, suppress the vote, and get their foot in the courthouse door to possibly try to steal the election if or when it comes down to the predicted close one, by focusing ballot challenges on districts, counties, and other slivers of the demographic in swing states where the electoral college is in play. (When the nation was being created and debated, while the constitution was being written, the electoral college was created as part of a grand compromise to keep the slave states in the new nation, instead of dividing the country in two. So once again the effects of slavery, our original sin, makes an appearance 250 years later.)

Why do they do this? Why do RWR lawyers and political operatives now have ninety-four lawsuits filed pre-election in battleground states? They do it because they are outnumbered by the liberal popular vote numbers as old conservative Fox “News” viewers die off, and young people who like diversity and support human and abortion rights, are emerging as a potentially powerful voting block. (Yes, it’s hard to get them out to vote as they are often deeply disillusioned by housing costs, lack of action on climate change, economic inequality, and the bombing of Gaza, among other issues.)

With these tactics the RWR tries to stay competitive nationally in the face of the challenging demographics, even though they probably all know they’re lying, while trying to sell the country a load of bullshit. (The MAGA crowd in their Fox or Newsmax bubble might not realize it’s a scam.)

One disheartening example of this brand of politics is what the RWR legislature did in Tennessee. The state is deep red with a couple pockets of Democratic blue in Nashville and Memphis and the Republicans have almost all the congressional seats. Nashville until recently was a reliably liberal voting block with a lot of creative artists and a Democratic congressman. With redistricting, the RWR chopped the city up into three pieces, connected each of those splintered gerrymandered chunks to more rural Republican districts surrounding the town, and eliminated the blue district. (I feel for you Nashville, does this seem fair? Not to me, but the RWR aren’t satisfied with an already overwhelming majority in the state, they want it all, even if they have to destroy a small city’s logical and historical political district.)

Hollowing out a liberal city’s political center in a red state also happened in Austin, Texas, diluting Democratic power. The attorney general in Texas recently raided the houses and offices of activists working in organizations to register and get out the vote among Hispanics, including the home of a Latina Democratic congressional candidate. Texas has also joined the majority of the fifty states which have enacted voter-restriction laws since the 2020 election, often just applying to Democratic strongholds, like the multicultural city of Houston, aiming to discourage, suppress, and make it harder to cast a vote, and usually affecting minority neighborhoods and districts the most. (They say it’s not racist, and Trump’s corrupt and politicized Supreme Court majority usually agree.)

The Reps play hardball politics while the Dems try to get their majority to the polls. Yes, Dems gerrymander also, but not to the extent of the RWR, like in states like North Carolina and Wisconsin where the congressional and state districts are so thoroughly gerrymandered that even though there’s a Democratic majority in ballots cast, the statehouses are controlled by veto-proof majorities of Republicans. (When there’s a Democratic governor, the Republican legislature sometimes strips them of some of their powers.)

When the Trump campaign filed sixty-four lawsuits contesting the 2020 election results, and falsely called it stolen, the big lie traveled far and wide, bringing the protestors of January 6th shouting “stop the steal,” with the then-president exhorting the crowd to march on the capitol and fight, which they violently did. (To this day he denies that he lost the election, any top Republican elected official or RWR pundit disagrees with him at their political peril, and 70% of Republicans polled say it was stolen.)

When Vance refused to answer the question in the debate about whether Trump won or lost, he echoed RWR who like to bring up Hilary blaming her 2016 loss on the half a million dollars Russia put into Facebook ads against her. “See, both sides deny elections,” the RWR say, but that’s a laugh: Clinton blew off some steam for a minute but didn’t file sixty-four lawsuits, continually spread the lie that she had won, or get on the phone to swing state officials asking them to “find 11,000 votes,” as Trump did in a call to the secretary of state in Georgia.

Lying politicians and candidates are an American tradition going all the way back to the beginning of the Republic (One of the latest lies was heard at the vice presidential debate, when Vance blamed Harris for undocumented migrants bringing fentanyl up from Mexico, when over 80% of the dangerous drug which comes north through the Tijuana-San Diego corridor, is smuggled by American citizens in their cars, often poor desperate high school kids recruited by cartel intermediaries.)

With the election just a few weeks away, one thing is sure: No matter who wins, about half the population is going to be severely disappointed.