Reality simply doesn’t matter to the vast majority of Donald Trump voters.
The former President’s own Department of Homeland Security called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.” No fraud of any significant consequence was unearthed in Trump’s barrage of shoddy lawsuits, of which his lawyers lost fifty-nine of sixty. Attorney General William Barr, closely aligned with Trump, authorized federal attorneys to ferret out fraud, and they turned up nothing of consequence.
Now the Republican Party, in the throes of such madness, is pinning its hopes of future success not on winning votes but in keeping them from being cast.
Still, 73 percent of Trump voters are convinced their guy won the election, CNBC reported this week. Trump voters are overwhelmingly and utterly unpersuaded by the facts of the election’s outcome. Their views remain anchored in stone after months of the now ex-President proclaiming that any possible outcome except a Trump victory would be damning proof of massive fraud.
For the increasingly Trump-tilted Republican Party, the Capitol insurrection of January 6 has been no cause for shame, but rather a jumping-off point for a new foray into authoritarian politics. In the eyes of Trumpsters, this was the day when Congress finalized the theft of the presidency. And so, emboldened by this belief, Republican leaders in more than thirty states are trying to reduce voting by what they consider the wrong people—Democratic-leaning constituencies, Black people in particular.
Racism has clearly colored perceptions of Trump’s electoral defeat among his supporters. Blame for his loss was affixed to cities with Black majorities like Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee—all supposedly hot spots for voter corruption.
“In making their case in real courts and the court of public opinion, Mr. Trump and his allies have trotted out a series of tropes and canards similar to those Republicans have pushed to justify laws that in many cases made voting disproportionately harder for Blacks and Hispanics, who largely support Democrats,” The New York Times reported. “Their allegations that thousands of people ‘double voted’ by assuming other identities at polling booths echoed those that have previously been cited as a reason to impose strict new voter identification laws.”
For the deluded, theories about “double voting,” dead people voting, and grandiose conspiracies—although thoroughly debunked—offer the only acceptable explanation for Trump’s loss in a party which remains in his thrall. Consequently, as Republicans see it, truly decisive steps against too much voting by suspect populations are imperative to prevent any more elections from being blatantly “stolen” from them.
So now the Republican Party is unleashing an unprecedented assault on voting rights at the state level, with at least 165 bills being introduced in thirty-three states, all aimed at making it more difficult to exercise the right to vote.
A decisive share of Republicans apparently believe that no step is too extreme to prevent the electoral defeat of Trump, or at least that of a Trump clone. Pro-Trump forces—who increasingly appear to have become dominant within the Republican Party—have developed a paramilitary wing, most visible on January 6.
The paramilitaries have become notably prominent in Michigan, such as when armed militia members, perched in the Capitol gallery, menacingly loomed over legislators sitting directly below. One faction of the militia forces even plotted to kidnap and potentially kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The majority leader of the Michigan state senate, Mike Shirkey, the GOP’s top legislator, spoke at an event run by militia leaders. Pro-militia leader Meshawn Maddock was recently elected co-chair of the state Republican Party.
In these quarters, the Capitol takeover is now dismissed as a “hoax” that was “staged” by “antifa,” an interesting interpretation of events provided by Michigan’s Shirkey and widely shared on social media. Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, declared, contrary to all evidence, that “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.” A far-out conspiracist like Marjorie Taylor Greene can be welcomed into the Republican caucus in Congress despite her previous calls to assassinate Democratic figures including Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Now the Republican Party, in the throes of such madness, is pinning its hopes of future success not on winning votes but in keeping them from being cast. The latest wave of voter suppression efforts, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, have four primary goals:
- Limit mail voting access, used more extensively now due to fear of exposure to the COVID-19 virus that has killed more than 500,000 Americans;
- Impose stricter ID requirements which disproportionately effect pro-Democratic constituencies, like Black people, the poor, and college students;
- Heighten barriers to voter registration; and
- Expand more aggressive voter purges.
Some of the proposals unmistakably target Black voters with laser-like precision. One key bill would restrict voting by mail and eliminate voting on Sundays before elections, when Black churches have traditionally organized “souls-to-the-polls” events.
In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers have unveiled a package of bills meant to restrict and complicate absentee voting and the filing of ballots, following Trump’s unfounded accusations that absentee votes led to massive fraud. Democrats on a legislative committee overseeing elections decried the proposals, saying Republicans have “continued their attack on voter rights and sunk further into conspiracy theories rather than admitting that Donald Trump lost in a free and fair election.”
Some of the bills being introduced across the nation have particularly innovative flourishes, like a New Hampshire measure banning all college student IDs as a valid identification. In Georgia, one especially punitive bill would disallow the free provision of food and water to people waiting in hours-long lines to cast their votes in sweltering heat.
There is another especially pernicious set of bills being advanced by Republicans. Among the growing legion of attacks on democracy are proposals in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to split up the states’ electoral votes by Congressional districts.
“Further suppression measures are forthcoming from Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature,” says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. “Without proof, verification, evidence or with even a single court—state or federal—they are seeking to continue the big lie that Trump was somehow cheated from carrying Wisconsin.”
Boundaries for Congressional districts in these two states in particular are heavily distorted to magnify popular support for Republicans and minimize it for Democrats, as David Daley outlines in the 2016 book, Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count. Splitting up electoral votes along unfairly drawn Congressional district lines would thus transfer the grotesque distortions of state-level gerrymandering to the national level of presidential elections.
January 6 seared into public consciousness vivid images of our democracy under attack. We must now turn our eyes to the profound and accelerating threat to the cornerstone of that democracy: basic voting rights.