Recently another diary — ironically subtitled “Beware the False Narrative” — sought to explain “why we are losing everywhere but a handful of blue states.” The real, honest-to-gosh truth, as the diarist went on to burble? — “urban areas just turned out less for Hillary Clinton” and “the lower income end fled the Democratic parties banner” and “The real culprit was collapsing support for Clinton” … and commenters gleefully joined in blaming either the voters or the Clinton campaign or the Democratic Party as a whole.
Not until well down the thread (in a comment by Ashes of Roses, thanks!) did anyone mention voter suppression, and that was immediately disputed: the first reply included “… ‘voter suppression’ should have meaning other than just less participation.” Others insisted the reason was “disengagement,” “disgust,” etc., on the part of voters, but not being prevented from voting.
Gosh, nothing before this about voter suppression? disenfranchisement? The GOP’s kicked people off the voter registration lists with Crosscheck (whose architect Kris Kobach is now Trump’s “immigration advisor”), closed 868 polling places in African-American and Latino districts across the South for this election, has been working hard at Voter ID laws nationwide — and boasting about the results!
Trump has won in a number of states by narrow victories, so that small factors would be enough to change the results; but voter ID provided even larger effects than he needed to win.
In Wisconsin alone, where Trump’s margin of victory was just 22,000, voter ID was projected by a US circuit judge to block 300,000 legal registered voters — “disproportionately African-American and Latino voters”. (After a determined GOTV effort, including trying to get voter IDs for voters who had none, the difference between Obama’s 2012 and Clinton’s 2016 totals in Wisconsin was only 231,740, suggesting that over 68,000 voters from that projected drop were regained.)
According to a post-election study:
Wanted to vote but were unable:
Minorities were twice as likely to have voted by provisional ballot (which may end up not counted) than whites.
Oh yeah, that’s all the voters’ fault, or the Clinton campaign’s fault, or the Democrats’ fault, but never ever the GOP’s! Just ignore that elephant standing in the middle of the room, on top of all those voters! It’s not like we have Right-Wing Talking Points being spread here at Daily Kos….
(Let’s also never discuss the effect of gerrymandering on legislative balances!)