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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 writes 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.
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SubscribePeople – 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!
Good thinking; murder is also statistically insignificant, so we can ignore that, too.
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.
Using logic and reason never works with CS.
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.
“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.
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.
We as a society have evolved beyond accepting election results.
Evolution for the elite, revolution for the “deplorables”, volution for those able to exercise it.
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.
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.
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.