We are in trouble, people. There is a massive disinformation campaign being run by Republicans and even the President-elect (gag) Donald Trump. Last week he sent out a tweet claiming millions of people voted illegally, costing him the popular vote. Time and time again, Republicans have taken to the airwaves to claim voter fraud is a massive, nationwide problem. It. Is. Not. True. A substantial investigation revealed a grand total of 31 fraudulent votes out of ONE BILLION VOTES CAST.
Today, Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway delivered a chilling message:
“He’s been receiving information about the irregularities and about the illegal votes,” Kellyanne Conway told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
She cited Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — a possible candidate for Homeland Security secretary — as one of the officials who has told Trump of illegal voting trends.
Kris Kobach is the single worst Secretary of State in the nation. He sought and received the power to personally prosecute voter fraud in the state of Kansas. He is the only secretary of state in the nation with this power. After years of investigation, wasting taxpayer dollars, he finally prosecuted three people for voter fraud. All three were Republican voters accused of double-voting in another state. ZERO undocumented workers.
In the 2014 mid-term election, Kris Kobach prevented 20,000 Kansans from casting their vote. In 2016, that number jumped to 36,000. And there is a troubling pattern to the people who get flagged in Kobach’s system:
A Reuters analysis of the Kansas suspense list shows the law disproportionately hits young voters, who often do not have ready access to the needed documents, as well as unaffiliated and Democratic voters in the Republican-controlled state.
"What a shock," said Stricker, who was born in Missouri and moved to Kansas with his wife from Illinois. "I was under the impression I had registered to vote, I had done everything I needed to. I just thought, 'This can't be happening.'”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what Kris Kobach wants to bring nationwide. Screaming and howling about “illegals” voting and stealing elections while the read fraud happens right under our noses. Denying people the very basic Constitutional right to vote. All under the guise of protecting the vote. The Kansas City Star’s editorial board even took the unusual step of calling Kris Kobach the real fraud in Kansas.
Kobach threw out these wild claims as he successfully pressed the Legislature to make him the only secretary of state in the nation with the power to prosecute in these matters.
It was all part of Kobach’s continued loathsome attacks on U.S. immigration policy. He knew he could score political points with many Kansans by promising to stop “illegal” voters from canceling out the votes of red-blooded Americans.
But now Kobach has been exposed as a big fraud on the issue of voter fraud, which studies have found to be almost nonexistent in America.
And here we are—on the verge of this voter suppression being hoisted upon us nationwide. Kobach was even photographed in a meeting with Donald Trump, holding a proposal for the Department of Homeland Security that appeared to include a bullet point of "Draft Amendment to National Voter Registration Act."
These voter suppression efforts are enough to swing elections in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina:
Those who champion voter suppression laws are often the most vocal voter fraud conspiracy theorists. They know that voter ID laws and cuts made to polling places and early voting disproportionately affect people of color, people with low incomes, as well as students and youths—groups that tend to vote for Democrats. In striking down North Carolina’s monster voter suppression bill, the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state legislators set out to “deliberately ‘target African-Americans with almost surgical precision’” in an effort to suppress black voters.
The facts are clear that voter suppression laws cost a significant number of Americans their voices at the polls this year. As an example, in Wisconsin, where voter turnout was at its lowest level in two decades, 300,000 registered voters lacked the strict forms of photo ID needed to vote. Places such as Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African American population lives, were hit the hardest, with voter turnout decreasing by 13 percent. In addition, cuts made to polling places and early voting in Ohio and North Carolina also disproportionately affected people of color and led to lower voter turnout.
Is it any wonder why Republicans keep screaming about non-existent voter fraud? It’s all working out quite nicely for them, isn’t it?
Finally, while Donald Trump is screeching about millions of illegal votes, Republicans and Team Trump are going out of their way to stop the recounts in Wisconsin and Michigan. If they are so concerned with the idea of illegal votes, why not allow the recount to continue? Which is it? A corrupted election or not? Right now they want to have it both ways.