There’s Always Fraud when Trump Doesn’t Win

 

There’s Always Fraud when Trump Doesn’t Win

Or where more than a small fraction of the vote goes to his opponents

"What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state." 

January 2, 2021, telephone call to Georgia Sec of State, Brad Raffensperger

"The courts have consistently held that redistricting for purposes of political performance by either party is acceptable.” 

Republican Texas State Representative Tom Oliverson in an NPR interview

Despite Donald Trump’s relying on dictator and vote-rigger-extraordinaire, Vladimir Putin’s admonition that voting by mail always enables election fraud, virtually all major democracies on earth routinely accept such ballot practices as do most of the American states. Virtually all challenges to vote-by-mail as untrustworthy are based on biased opinions without any serious factual proof. Even as Trump issues another dictatorial Executive Order, to ban mail-in ballots, once again in direct contradiction of the Constitution, there is no measurable factual proof that such fraud exists anywhere in the United States. Strangely, it was a Republican “get out the vote” campaign targeting that older demographic (generally Trump supporters), heavily encouraging the vote-by-mail balloting, that may have won the 2024 election for Trump.

While explicit language embracing racial redistricting is banned, the Supreme Court seems to have adopted a very anti-democratic vision that seems to allow obvious racial biases if sufficiently disguised. In 2013, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 5-to-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that effectively ended preclearance, the Voting Rights Act’s most effective enforcement mechanism, and liberated states, many clustered in the South, from federal oversight of legislative maps. The formerly controlled states quickly set about with an explosion of such disguised racially driven redistricting (particularly in those once-controlled states), until today, both Democrats and Republicans are focused less on full and fair representative elections and more on excluding voters that support their opponents.

Culling voters rolls, placing polling stations far from minority communities, banning voting assistance (driving people to the polls, handing out water on hot days, helping with registering and securing voter IDs, etc.), eliminating vote-by-mail, allowing legislatures to overrule voting results, gerrymandering, etc. are moving US elections to the brink of meaninglessness. The Economist calls the United States an unrepresentative, flawed democracy, and I wonder how long the word “democracy” can even be used to define our political system.

It would be bad enough if gerrymandering were merely a grassroots phenomenon, a bit worse if it were a conscious effort on the part of one party to dominate national voting on its own. But when a call to amp up gerrymandering to cater to the whims of a single leader who has followed the “how to convert a democracy into a dictatorship” playbook to the tee, that one-man-rule vector makes it that much worse. As Donald Trump’s mishandling overreach of immigration arrests, his inflationary tariff policy, the “take from the poor and give to the rich” Big Beautiful Bill, his kowtowing to Vladimir Putin, slamming Canada and Mexico with particularly confiscatory, punitive tariffs, his “hide the salami” game with the Epstein papers, his use of National Guard troops from the heart of red dixie to invade and take over policing in Union blue states, his foundering over finding peace in Gaza and ending the Russo-Ukraine war, etc. drops his and GOP approval level through floor.

It started with a telephone call from Donald Trump to his “mini-me” Texas Governor Greg Abbott, suggesting a 11th hour gerrymander (between the ordinary required Censuses) that would flip five or more Democratic seats into a GOP legislature that could not be outvoted and congressional districts that just might guarantee Republican control of the House of Representatives. Key Democratic states, long since having eliminated partisan redistricting by using independent determination of voting districts, were now suggesting reversing that state practice and allowing partisan gerrymandering again. California and New York were beginning to introduce state constitutional amendments to counter the efforts Texas (and more than a few GOP states) was using to disembowel Democrats everywhere they could. To Trump loyalists, Trump’s only failure lay in not exposing the deep state, hiding a potential Trump link to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

But red states were smiling at the prospect of using now-legal gerrymandering to end the Democratic Party once and for all. A Google Search reveals the legal basis: Texas Republicans cite a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, Rucho v. Common Cause, which concluded that federal courts cannot intervene in cases where districts are drawn to give one party an advantage, effectively allowing for partisan gerrymandering. This ruling, coupled with the absence of a federal law explicitly banning mid-decade redistricting, leaves the practice open to states where local laws don't restrict it… Unlike some states, Texas law does not ban partisan gerrymandering. In fact, the Supreme Court in LULAC v. Perry (2006) upheld Texas's 2003 mid-decade redistricting, and Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that neither the U.S. Constitution nor federal law prohibits it… The new map aims to create additional Republican-leaning districts, with analysts suggesting it could add 3 to 5 seats to the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. This is seen as a way to potentially defy the historical trend of the president's party losing seats in midterm elections.

As quorum-resisting Democratic Texas House members returned to the state capitol after the first Abbott-called special legislative session ended without that gerrymander vote, they were each assigned a “monitor” to ensure that could not avoid that quorum in the next special legislative session Gregg called. Only one Texas House Democrat – State Rep. Nicole Collier – refused to leave the House chamber and be required to have such a monitor assigned to track her every move. Once a quorum was present, the gerrymander would shift five Democratic seats to the Republican Party. And without a Democratic counter move, Trump was much closer to ensuring House control in the midterms. It was so clear to Trump that without gerrymandered seat in major red states, Trump would lose his majority in the House of Representative. The Senate was up for grabs too.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that not enough Americans are outraged at this raw attempt to repeal American democracy is the most troubling political reality I have seen in this nation in my lifetime.