Here they go again.
Six months before Election Day, for the third consecutive presidential race, Donald Trump and his Republican licks are sounding the alarm about virtually non-existent voter fraud, laying the groundwork for claims that he would be robbed if he lost to President Biden.
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Trump has refused recent interviews commit to accepting the results in November; Given that the sore loser has yet to acknowledge his 2020 defeat, his anti-democratic perfidy over 2024 is not surprising. Nor do the echoes of his party's subservience, especially the Republicans vying to be his running mate. Lately, his evasion of reporters' questions about whether they would honor the result is nothing short of embarrassing.
and speaker “MAGA Mike” Johnson (R-La.), after snuggling with trump at Mar-a-Lago on the issue, is trying to ram through the House a bill requiring anyone who registers to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship beyond driver's licenses or Social Security cards. , to prevent non-citizens from voting, something that almost never happens and it is already a federal crime.
However, politics is not the point; politics is. This tactic is a double attempt to energize Republican voters: it plays on their anti-immigrant fervor. and Myths of electoral fraud.
“We all know, intuitively, that many illegals vote in federal elections,” Johnson said. lied at a news conference Wednesday on the steps of the Capitol. “But it hasn't been something that can be easily proven. “We don't have that number.”
Because it doesn't exist, certainly not on the scale that Johnson, Trump and other Republicans claim. Repeated studies, including last year. in arizonashow that the examples of noncitizens attempting to vote are infinitesimal, and even those few are mostly prevented from registering or voting. cast votes.
This is how I would like to make America great again: by getting Republicans to stop lying. on fraud, stop legislating unnecessary restrictions on voting, and restore what had been a bipartisan consensus: that our elections are free and fair, a model for the world. The 2020 election that Trump still insists was stolen from him? A tip from the Department of Homeland Security itself declared It is “the safest in American history.”
Before Trump, no one had to ask candidates whether they would accept the results of an election. Of all the norms shattered by Trump, his refusal to commit to that fundamental principle is perhaps the most corrosive to our democratic foundations.
“If everything is honest, I will gladly accept the results,” Trump said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this month, before other MAGA rally in which he falsely claimed that he won Wisconsin in 2020. “If not, we must fight for the rights of the country.” When asked by a Time magazine reporter if he expected violence after the 2024 election, Trump responded matter-of-factly: “If we don't win, you know, it depends.”
In other words, “if I win, I will accept the results.” And: “If I lose, you might get hurt.” As Biden said, most recently on CNN on Wednesday: “You can't only love your country when you're winning.”
Even when Trump won in 2016, thanks to a majority in the electoral college, he alleged fraud. Upset because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, he made up the lie that between 3 and 5 million illegal immigrants in the country had voted for her. Trump's alliance with the president of the House of Representatives against the practically non-existent vote of non-citizens It has the added benefit, for him, of strengthening that falsehood.
Destroying elections – and specifically, refusing to promise support for the results. It comes naturally to Trump. But for his sycophants, the posture is, to say the least, uncomfortable.
The once-respected Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina last week was embarrassingly dodged He was asked whether he would accept the outcome of the 2024 vote more than a half-dozen times on NBC News' “Meet the Press.” When host Kristen Welker insisted on going for a simple yes or no, Scott grumpily demurred: “This is why so many Americans believe NBC is an extension of the Democratic Party.” (Scott, like many Republican trolls, will childishly not use the opposition's legitimate name: Democratic Party.)
Among others hoping to be Trump's vice presidential nominee, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum also dodged CNN's “State of the Union” question. And Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican leader of the New York House of Representatives, refused to say whether he would vote in Congress to certify the 2024 results. “We'll see if this is a legal and valid election,” he told Welker.
In February, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, a Trump favorite, lashed out at host George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' “This Week” for asking about the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, eventually admitting that if he had been vice president, he would have No would have certified Biden's election later as former Vice President Mike Pence did. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida did not commit to Axios that, if he is Trump's vice president, he would certify the 2028 presidential votes if he wins a Democrat.
What a sad sign to the rest of the world when prominent politicians – and, for that matter, their entire party – fail to recognize the proven integrity of American elections.
If Democrats are stealing elections, how do these Republicans explain their own victories? How did Democrats allow Republicans to take control of the House in 2022?
Well, Republicans now seem to have their answer: it's because Democrats had not yet allowed enough undocumented immigrants into the country to vote illegally!
“I think that's why they opened the border.” Johnson said on CNBCimitating The rhetoric of Trump's rallies. “To turn them into voters.”
It's just not like that, and Johnson knows it; I give him a lot of credit. Non-citizens do not vote. The US elections are not rigged. Voter fraud is extremely rare. Republicans who say otherwise are lying.
And we all know, intuitively, why.
