Will Claims Of Voter Fraud Lead To Voter Suppression?

It is generally felt that Trump's claims of voter fraud, especially, apparently, by illegal aliens -- Or some kind of alien, not sure -- could be a prelude, or excuse for some kind of widespread voter suppression campaign. In any event, these repeated claims were once thought of as an odd and embarassing bit of yammering by the President elect, but now they have become a keystone of the White House's current activism, foregrounded by the hapless Sean Spicer, who appears to not believe the claims himself.

From NBC:

The White House doubled down on President Donald Trump's widely debunked claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, costing Trump the popular vote.

"The President does believe that," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday, just one day after pledging to tell the public "the facts as I know them."...

When pressed for evidence, Spicer said "the president has believed that for a while based on studies and information he has." Spicer also cited a 2008 Pew study that he said showed 14 percent of people who voted were not citizens.

Those figures appear to come from two different studies.

A 2012 Pew report found millions of invalid voter registrations due to people moving or dying.

But the author of that report, David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, tweeted back in late November that this isn't voter fraud....

The second study was a highly criticized work by Old Dominion University professors who found 14 percent of non-citizens said saying they were registered to vote. The study was based on a sample of a few hundred respondents.

During the campaign season, one of the authors said the Trump campaign was exaggerating the study's findings.

Check out this rather astounding bit of news reporting on CNN:

They're coming for him.

More like this

Close Enough To Honest: CNN lies about ACORN 54 times which is certainly better than, say, a billion. Nuts About ACORN: Believing in vote fraud may be dangerous to a democracy's health.: As far as "gotcha" stunts go, the right-wing feeding frenzy over the vile vote-fraud treachery of ACORN has…
You know that Donald Trump has been claiming very clearly and precisely that he won both the electoral and popular vote, and that it only looks like he did not win the popular vote because of voter fraud, meaning, that a certain number of American citizens voted twice, or otherwise rigged the…
The most recent polling indicates that Donald Trump has a 43% approval and 53% disapproval rating. So he is not exactly loved by the American people, which is odd because he seems so lovable. And, he has told us that the American people love him. And his victory in the November election was…
In the days following the 2016 election, reports of hate crimes and harassment have spiked, and experts have described it as being worse than in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. Between Wednesday, November 9 (the day after the election) and the morning of November 14, the…

Will Claims Of Voter Fraud Lead To Voter Suppression?

Of this there is zero doubt. It's the whole point of the claim.

By Doug Alder (not verified) on 24 Jan 2017 #permalink

Of course. Voter suppression worked beautifully in 2014 and even better in 2016, so this is all laying the groundwork to press down even harder in the next election cycles.

By Young CC Prof (not verified) on 24 Jan 2017 #permalink

#1, no, we don't.

Will Claims Of Voter Fraud Lead To Voter Suppression?

Will Claims Of Voter Fraud Lead To Continued and More Widespread Voter Suppression?

FTFY

By Brainstorms (not verified) on 24 Jan 2017 #permalink

Purely out of interest, what happens if he does find voter fraud, but in the Trump vote in critical states..?

By Andrew J Dodds (not verified) on 25 Jan 2017 #permalink

Why, "vote fraud investigation fraud", of course.

By Brainstorms (not verified) on 26 Jan 2017 #permalink

Absolutely there is voter fraud. Worked in Chicago Bush/ Gore, on election day we were inundated with calls for fraud. Had no way to check it out. Post-election precinct returns in the poorest areas of Chicago there was over 100% turnout. All voters should have an ID!

Yup, we know. For example, Trump's daughter is registered in two states for the 2016 election.

She would have voted for Trump too.

So, defo, there's fraud. Bumping up Trumps pitiful figures.

"Post-election precinct returns in the poorest areas of Chicago there was over 100% turnout."

Of course you reported this and made a big deal about it, right? You have proof?

Didn't think so.

Absolutely there was voter fraud. There have been several documented conservative efforts to suppress voting by both the poor and by minorities using fraudulent justifications.

In addition, our nation's intelligence agencies have documented Russian manipulation of the vote to get Citizen Trump elected.

What mics implies is correct: Donald Trump's "election" is not legitimate; it was based on fraud.

By Brainstorms (not verified) on 29 Jan 2017 #permalink

@11: True. I don't think mics was saying the same thing you are - he/she was (imo) repeating the old lie about gross voter fraud in favor of former President Obama.

I expect this investigation to lead to the requirement that every state check citizenship of any voter who is voting for a federal office.

The states control voting generally, but the Feds control voting for Federal offices, like congressperson, senate and president.

So if the Feds want, they can write a law which requires verification of citizenship for voting.

I also would expect the Feds to require the voting rolls be provided to the Feds, and who voted in each election.

Who but the Feds can verify if a person has voted in more than one state for the same election?

The only way to do that is to forward all voting records to the Feds to cross-check and find people who vote in New York and then fly down and vote in Florida (for example).

When someone dies, the records should also be provided to the Feds - so they can not only make sure they are not receiving social security past death, but to ensure they are taken off the state voting rolls. A cross-check between social security and state voting rolls would be useful to prevent voter fraud and social security fraud - a win win.

I am sure many other ideas will be forthcoming..

If ID is going to be required to vote, then everyone should get a free ID and it should be available outside working hours, because many people have to work for others who will refuse to let them take time off to collect.

Heck, make it a requirement that you pay all taxes owed and make no use of offshoring money to get ID. If you're trying to pay "taxes" (zero rates) elsewhere, you shouldn't get representation in the USA.