Main Edition
US
FR
October 20, 2024 - 5:00pm
Democrats and Republicans are both preparing to question the legitimacy of next month’s election in the event that they lose.
For Democrats, the narrative revolves around voter suppression. Republicans’ election integrity efforts, they argue, can prevent eligible Americans, particularly racial minorities, from voting, thereby giving the Right an electoral advantage. In addition, they dismiss concerns that voter fraud is a major problem, arguing that it does not happen in sufficiently large numbers to impact the outcome of a national election, while efforts to prevent such fraud can infringe on the rights of legal voters.
Kamala Harris has long subscribed to this argument, supporting the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, both of which would transfer certain state election powers to the federal government in the name of preventing voter suppression. Implicit in these legislative efforts is the suspicion that voting rights are being eroded by Republicans, a concern Harris shared during her Democratic Convention speech in August. “In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake,” she said, including “the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”
At the same time, the Department of Justice is currently suing Alabama and Virginia for removing suspected ineligible voters from their registration rolls, arguing that such activity is illegal within 90 days of an election. “Virginia places qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls,” the assistant attorney general for civil rights wrote in a DOJ press release. “Congress adopted the National Voter Registration Act’s quiet period restriction to prevent error-prone, eleventh hour efforts that all too often disenfranchise qualified voters.”
Meanwhile, the voter integrity efforts the Left is targeting are key to conservatives’ own narrative-shaping project, particularly the removal of suspected ineligible voters from registration rolls. “The Department of Justice is suing the Commonwealth of Virginia because someone who self-identified as a noncitizen is being removed from the voter roll unless they prove that they are a citizen,” Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a recent Fox interview. “It is just the next step in a pattern that truly undermines people’s confidence in the election process.”
In addition to efforts to change public perception on voter fraud, conservatives are preemptively challenging election procedures in court. These efforts are taking place well before the election, since judges dismissed some lawsuits challenging the election process in 2020, arguing that they had been filed after the final vote was tallied. In response, Trump allies have brought more than 100 lawsuits ahead of November’s election, including a case seeking to remove 225,000 voters from North Carolina’s registration rolls. In Georgia, Trump allies unsuccessfully sued to allow county election board members to block certification in the event of suspected fraud.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWe as a society have evolved beyond accepting election results.
Evolution for the elite, revolution for the “deplorables”, volution for those able to exercise it.
It is better to be considered deplorable than to be despicable.
People – mainly on the left – who claim that voting fraud “is not a serious problem” and that “nothing needs to be done” disgust me. They deserve to lose.
Some things that the Republicans do here probably aren’t right. But to deny the need to voting integrity is itself fraudulent and anti-democratic. We should expect and demand a secure and reliable voting system with proper voter authentication. This shouldn’t even be up for debate.
We get the same nonsense here in the UK. I hear it from the local Lib Dems. But there’s nothing actually stopping people from registering to vote and vote. No more than there is getting a passport, driving licence or anything else.
Exactly. You can’t buy cold medicine without an ID, but it’s ok for voting. Makes zero sense.
I can’t wait for Petey to give us all the examples of this voter fraud to make his case!
Why do I think that I might be waiting a very long time though?
There are literally more than 1,000 voter fraud convictions in the last 20 years. There’s an actual database that tracks this stuff.
Wow – 1,000 convictions in maybe 6 elections with electorates of c. 45m (or whatever – assuming the UK, so rather bigger electorate in the US). Not exactly a ‘major problem’ now is it?
There probably hasn’t been 10 convictions in the UK during that period.
In the United States?
Do I have to explain to you how statistically insignificant that is? Seriously?
You’re a moron. Totally uninformed and inappropriate use of the term statistical significance.
Don’t get so upset, Jimmy!
I realize that hitching your whole identity to defending a crooked clown must take toll on your mental well being but attacking me isn’t going to help with that!
I don’t know about moron ,but you certainly are a bore
I think what he means that those instances didn’t change the results of any elections.
It’s irrelevant. CS argued that there is no evidence, when evidence was provided CS stated it wasn’t enough rather than admit to being wrong.
Election fraud almost certainly influences the outcome – whether it’s at the municipal, state or federal level. Why does this have to be so damn tribal? You can say Biden won the election, and acknowledge there is a lot of election fraud in the U.S. Democrats and Republicans both engage in it. That’s what the numbers tell us.
Good thinking; murder is also statistically insignificant, so we can ignore that, too.
This is stupid even for a Trump cultist!
I don’t like Trump, but feel free to keep making assumptions.
“Trump cultist” is ironic coming from a cult member who brlieved that Biden was sharp as a tack.
Not in the USA it ain’t!
The excuse that it is statistically insignificant is both inaccurate and disgusting.
You seem to be assuming that every instance of voter fraud was identified and successfully prosecuted. In reality, if the US is anything like the UK, virtually all electoral fraud goes undetected.
You really didn’t understand the point at all did you ?
It wasn’t about numbers. Or examples. Though there’s more than enough evidence and one case is enough.
It’s about what sort of voting system is acceptable and reliable.
If you set out to design a voting system today, what are the chances it would be one where anyone could wander down to the local village hall with neither polling card nor voter ID, simply say I’m Champagne Socialist and then vote Reform for you ? Before you got out of bed. And there would be no traceability or record to detect and prosecute the fraud when you later turned up and discovered that someone else already voted for you.
Because that is exactly what you, the Lib Dems and Labour are defending.
I do hope that’s finally clear to you now !
What is clear to me is that you are howling at the moon about a problem that doesn’t exist.
So it’s perfectly OK for someone to vote in your place !
You said it.
I don’t expect much in terms of reading comprehension from you people but this is a truly bizarre interpretation of what I said!
“You said it.”
I very obviously did not say anything of the sort!
Are you ok?
Pennsylvania counted more ballots than there were voters. Judges around the country violated state voting laws to enable unmonitored mail in ballots. Arizona’s governor race was documented stolen as the democtat candidate also counted the votes. The DoJ this year is forcing states to permit non-citizens voting.
Michigan has more registered voters than living voters by over 500,000.
And you apparently support ID free voting.
We have ID free voting in Australia, with no problems at all.
Using logic and reason never works with CS.
Maybe you should try it sometime, Trump Boy!
Trump’s case is that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election. It didn’t. Pointing to the odd case of it that occasionally comes to light doesn’t change that.
Again not relevant to what I said.
I said nothing about Trump. Nor do I defend his behaviour. He clearly lost in 2020 and by a significant margin. He was wrong to even dispute the result and damaged his own reputation badly.
The point here is not whether voting fraud has or hasn’t changed the results of elections so far. It’s about whether we should allow it to be possible in the first place and the integrity of future elections. We can’t change the past.
I don’t understand why this seems to be so intellectually challenging for some people.
100% security is not possible. 1000 fraud convictions in 5 x 250 million (ie 1 billion!) votes is a very good result! I also understand that many of those relate to people with ‘spent’ criminal convictions where the rules about whether or not one is eligible to vote are so confusing that even electoral officials give the wrong advice.
In the UK I have no problem with some sort of basic identity check at the polling booth but photo id, restricted to very high level id and aimed to exclude young voters, is completely unnecessary. A simple flash of the voting card, or utility bill etc would be quite sufficient. So a tiny and insignificant number of people may go to all the trouble to buck the system and slip through but that really doesn’t matter.
In Australia we don’t even need ID to vote, and we have no problem with fraud.
Everything is tribal with these guys.
Yes it did. Just like the democrat lie about the Biden laptop. And you know it did.
Everything I have read on the subject (and I have read a lot) suggests that the “stolen election” story was devised by Rudi Giuliani during the count. Nobody else in the Trump camp was saying anything like that, they were just coming to terms with the loss. Of course, in Trump’s world, all good ideas are his (he is a genius after all), and he started spruiking it. The result was that his Brownshirts stormed Congress.
You and CS are making this a tribal thing. I clearly stated both parties engage in voter fraud. At no point did I mention Trump or the 2020 election.
You shouldn’t respond to this child. He’s not capable of adult debate and his comments always get deleted in the end anyway.
The U.S. is the most corrupt Democracy in the world. There have been more than 1,000 voter fraud convictions in the last 20 years. Democrats and Republicans both do it.
See my comment above – 1,000 fraud convictions in 5 (?) elections, each with a voter roll of maybe 250m or more! “The most corrupt democracy in the world” – are you off your mind? You probably think that DJT taking time in his rally to discuss the size of Arnold Palmer’s manhood is a fair distraction for a presidential candidate!
See the FBI crime statistics scam for just how much of a strawman your argument is.
You are making it tribal. Not me. I never mentioned Trump or the 2020 election one time. And I clearly stated that BOTH!!!!! Democrats and Republicans engage in it.
Apologies for ‘tribal’ then – I just wanted to get in the further proof that Trump has slipped over the mental edge. I didn’t mention the 2020 election either! What exactly do they both engage in? If it’s electoral fraud then they are not very good at it with 1,000 convictions out of 1 billion votes cast.
Tony, conflating the number of convictions with the size of the problem is a pretty big assumption.
“The .. most corrupt democracy in the world”? 1,000 convictions (at least some very dodgy indeed) in an electorate of over 250m in 20 years. That does not stack up – try living in Venezuela etc. etc etc
Venezuela is not a democracy. I would be surprised if there were 10 convictions in Britain during that same period, or Germany, or France, or Canada, or Australia.
I can speak for Australia. They occasionally investigate so called “voter fraud”. They usually find the odd case of some elderly person voting in the morning, forgetting that they have done so, and then going to vote again in the afternoon. It doesn’t change any results.
Jim, Venezuela holds huge elections and the voting machines dutifully give the results the ruling party approves of.
Vast majority of large scale voter fraud is democrat urban machines.
What ‘large scale’ voter fraud? There has been no evidence of any. If there has please do tell.
Chicago is infamous for documented ballot box fraud. LBJ won his first Senate race by fraud. Fraud was documented in the 1960 Presidential election. Fraud was on live TV in 2020. Gullible people just turned away like they were told to.
When they say voting fraud “is not a serious problem”, they mean that it occurs at such a low level that it doesn’t alter any results.
If it is possible, relatively easy to do and hard to detect and prosecute (this has certainly been the case in the UK) then it could influence the results of future elections.
We should be concerned about future elections – not those in the past which we cannot change.
It did in Minnesota, Washington state, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan, at the least.
There has been no evidence whatsoever produced of that – if so please direct us to it, and I mean evidence not conspiracy theory.
It doesn’t particularly matter if a court find evidence of it, or none, to shake the public’s faith in election integrity.
Clearly a huge amount of mail in votes, arriving in the dead of night, and primarily for only one candidate, looks very suspicious, even if every single vote is in fact legitimate. Atty General Barr, who often disagreed with Trump, said as much to Congress, but was ignored “because COVID.” Apparently everyone who voted in person was risking their lives.
Both Clinton and Trump stated that election integrity was violated in some way, either by “Russian Collusion” or by phoney ballots, respectively.
“Voter suppression” is another canard, staring that some Americans are prevented from voting because of their race, which was true decades ago in the Deep South, but doesn’t occur today.
Lawfare, permanent Leftist governmental bureaucracies and NGOs plus rampant establishment media bias have rendered Western pluralist electoral democracy – as in vote Left-get Left/vote Right-get Right – a bit of a farce in 2024. Meanwhile 90% of real political decision-making is done by a permanent, almost unchallengeable techno-bureaucracy constantly topped up by ‘experts’ emerging from its one-party universities. Elections have been corrupted so much as to have almost become just another branch of the media entertainment industry. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
One can hope that a Trump election victory will make a difference to all this – he’s certainly saying it will – but I’m not holding my breath. A Harris victory won’t change it; that’s for sure.
Let’s see. Who accepted defeat with good grace and honour? Hillary Clinton!
Who sent his moronic cult to try to execute his own VP because he wouldn’t cheat for him? Can you guys guess?!?!?
Hmm. Who told the FBI and CIA to warn voters that the hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and get the story deplatformed from big tech and the regime media? Who had the IRS knock on the door of independent journalist Matt Taibbi while he was testifying in front of Congress about govt censorship?
Jimbo leaps to the defence of the MAGA moron – of course he does!
The Hunter Biden laptop? Hahaha! Is that the best you’ve got, sonny?!?! Really? As opposed to, say, sending your legion of gullible morons to the capitol to block the peaceful transfer of power and murder the vice president?
You see the difference there, Jimbo? One is a right wing fantasy that came to zero. The other was an attempted coup.
Do you need me to tell you which was which?
You tell me what’s a bigger threat to democracy – some yahoo running around in a Viking costume, or the CIA, FBI, Google, Facebook, Twitter, the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC censoring information on behalf of a political party? Hint. One group has institutional power, the other doesn’t.
“the CIA, FBI, Google, Facebook, Twitter, the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC censoring information on behalf of a political party”
That would be terrible! When did that happen?
Oh, you’re still rambling on about this famous laptop that some kook of MAGA clown claims had all this stuff on it – but no one has ever seen – and it was vital to national security that he sent it to the ever hilarious Rudy Giuliani!
No, I think I’m going to stick with the thousands of people attacking Congress and looking to murder Nancy Pelosi and Trump’s own VP in order to stop the transition of power as being the bigger threat to democracy!
Shocker. CS sides with the institutions and the collusion of these institutions with a political party. The content was problematic for Biden. The collusion is problematic for everyone else. The FBI literally had the computer for two years before the Russian disinformation letter came out. And shocker of shocker, used that same computer as evidence in the Hunter Biden tax evasion case.
Ugh. Why do I do this to myself?
Because you are a member of a cult and you can’t help yourself.
CS looked in a mirror and saw nothing…
The closer we get to the election the more rabid you get.
Only a Trump cultist could consider the truth to be “rabid”.
Not surprising really considering the nonsense from your fat leader that you swallow as gospel!
There you go. Not even a comment by me about Trump and it sets you off.
Its a pretty safe assumption to make considering the nature of your comment, slick.
State clearly your assumption.
The term rabid was not applied to your truths but your rabid response to those who differ.
The next time CS posts a verifiable fact will be his first.
There was no insurrection by Trump supporters on J6. The Biden laptop is plenty. The foreign money laundering by Biden, Inc. was plenty. The corruption of using the Russian dossier against Trump and his team was more than enough. And who paid for the dossier…
Just the first quote I found “He knows that this wasn’t on the level… I don’t know that we’ll ever know what happened.” – From a CBS News interview on September 27, 2019, in which she referred to Donald Trump as an “illegitimate president.”
Mind you that does sound like CS’s level of good grace and honour!
You found a single quote from three years after she conceded gracefully?
Shall we compare that to your orange god?
It is amazing to me that you people will say and believe literally anything to defend a guy who is so obviously a crook and a fool. What is wrong with you?!?!
No she didn’t. She went of in a sulk and hid in a hotel room for hours.
She certainly didn’t come right out, face the music and accept that it was all largely her own fault. She still doesn’t.
Let’s just say that Clinton “hid in a hotel room for hours” (she obviously didn’t but I know that facts don’t seem to register with you).
How would that compare to four years of whining, lying and trying to subvert the peaceful transition of power?
Donald Trump did nothing to subvert the peaceful transition of power. At the request of the January 6 Committee, the special counsel Jack Smith investigated Donald Trump’s actions regarding the riot at the Capitol on January 6 and found that he had done nothing that was against the law. He had nothing to do with the riot.
After Donald Trump lost the election, he cooperated with Joe Biden in a peaceful transition period, and left office on schedule on January 20, 2021, leaving behind a “generous” and “shockingly gracious” (Joe Biden’s words) letter to Joe Biden on the desk.
As for Donald Trump whining and lying, that’s his shtick. He exaggerates to make a point. He’s more Ciceronian than Cicero, who two millennia ago made use of hyperbole as a rhetorical technique. His speeches are like farce or satire, not to be taken as fact.
Those people who accuse Donald Trump of lying need to grow up. They fact-check statements that are clearly not intended to be taken as fact. His statements are comparable to “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” or “I’ve told you a million times not to do that” or “I’ve got a ton of work to do”. Or they are gossip or rumors or boasting. What they are not is lies. There is no intent to deceive.
What are lies and deception are the criminal and civil lawsuits that have been brought against Donald Trump, and the two impeachments. They are a disgrace, abuses of the judicial process by his political enemies to gain a political advantage. There is no excuse for them. They are abhorrent to anyone who believes in democracy.
The New York Times had an article detailing all that lawfare by Peter Baker today titled “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment.” It’s a hit piece, presented as reporting rather than opinion. It read as though it was paid advertising for the Democrats.
The reader comments section for the article has over 1,500 comments. The many comments I read all praised the article and added their voices to the chorus. The lies and deception were thick. Not a word I read was in defense of Donald Trump.
There was one reader who wrote a comment that read “What a disgraceful hit piece to run just a few weeks before the election.” But that comment never posted. The censors killed my comment, and two other comments that used less heated and more factual phrasing. Of course the censors would kill my comments. That’s their job.
So in my eyes Donald Trump is, like King Lear, more sinned against than sinning. He has his faults, but they are motes, compared to his enemies’ beams.
Please don’t respond to this guy. It’s really tedious having to wade through acres of his diarrhoea and the responses to it looking for intelligent debate. You’re wasting your time anyway because his comments always get deleted – along with your response – in the end.
Yes! PLEASE!
Just ignore him. Maybe he’s not actually a (primitive) robot, but he certainly sounds like one.
Follow the link – Hilary did NOT question the legitimacy of the 2016 election – so why would you say that, eh?
They say it because they have been brainwashed.
Brainwashed by a clown – how embarrassing!
She repeatedly called the election stolen because of Russian disinformation – for years after the election. Not one time. Dozens of times. She did, however, concede defeat immediately following the election – unlike Trump.
She never said the 2016 election was stolen. Not once.
Yet again you will say anything and outright lie to defend Trump. Amazing.
Hillary Clinton did too say the election was stolen from her. And that the election was not on the level. And that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president.
And Hillary Clinton had good reason to be upset. FBI director Jim Comey was completely out of line with what he did leading up to the election. The Russians did meddle. They always do.
But the idea that Hillary Clinton accepted the results as legitimate is wrong. She thinks she ran a winning campaign only to have the election stolen from her. She said so in so many words.
“Not once”? Here’s one for you, unkess you won’t believe your lying eyes: here’s very clear video evidence showing div > p > a”>Hillary Clinton says the 2016 election was ‘stolen’ from her,
He says in response to my negative comment about Trump. Yikes.
I refer to the link given, in which she does NOT question the legitimacy of the election.
We quote her, directly. She still spreadsvthe lie. Only brainwiped democrats deny that.
How is it legal for Labour to send members to the US to.campaign for the Democrats? Surely that is interference from.a foreign government in the US election?
Let’s fix the headline:
“Democrats Plan Civil War If This Year’s Election Theft Fails”
Secure voting is a basic civil right. Democrats have worked hard to steal that right.
“Large scale voter fraud isn’t serious problem…for me.”
Mayor Richard J. Daley, Dem, Chicago, probably
“Vote early, and often!”
– also Mayor Daley
Every time this comes up I ask people to point to evidence that voting fraud makes a difference to election results. The best I got was some high school teacher playing number games – and a pointer to a database that shows examples of voter fraud – over the last fifty years or so – and not many of them – most being low-level, like selectmen in Podunkville – and of the type ‘NN voted under his cousin’s name’ which just does not scale.
Again – if there is any evidence, show it. If there is none, admit it.
The problem is not preventing voter fraud. There is nothing there to prevent. The problem is that Republicans just refuse accept that all those Democrats keep getting people to vote for them, thus depriving Republicans of the victory they deserve. If it makes them lose, they feel that it *must* be wrong. All those efforts – the purging of electoral rolls, reducing mail voting, making it illegal to give water to people queueing to vote are about preventing Democrats from voting, so that Republicans can win without having to convince a majority. And that effort is working very well indeed.