Republicans don't win statewide and urban elections in California. There simply are too few GOP voters to get their candidates over the top. So -- naturally -- for a party that has a hard time with reality, they say our elections must be rigged. Bulls__t!
I am no longer a subscriber to the Los Angeles Times. The editorial policies of the paper's nutcase, Trump-loving owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, made sure of that; I quit. But I still seem to get the paper's California Politics e-newsletter and that means I can read occasional dispatches from one of the most plain spoken columnists writing anywhere, Anita Chabria.
... Voter rolls are a huge refrain in conspiracy theories and the subject of numerous (mostly unsucessful) lawsuits by Trump’s Department of Justice. Trump is demanding that the federal government “audit” the voter rolls to ensure ballots go only to legal voters, which is one of those scary and ill-conceived ideas that sounds reasonable on the surface.
... So what’s the deal with voter rolls? Are they really the dark heart of a Democratic scam to rig elections? Or is the scam that Trump and MAGA are attempting to use the boring and bureaucratic nature of voting rolls to do the very thing they claim to be fighting — undermine of free and fair elections?
... Voter rolls are the lists of eligible voters kept by each state. States run elections, because, well, the Constitution. But that structure is also a good idea because states keep closer track of who is a legal resident and where they are than the federal government.
Republicans charge the Dems cook the books, putting fraudulent people on the rolls. Not so.
... voter rolls are “loose,” according to Chris Fowler, a professor of geography and demographics at Penn State who specializes in voting rights. Most states have laws that strive to be inclusive and are slow to remove people from the lists, precisely because we want as many people to vote as we can get.
Some people in California are added when they get a driver’s license. Some people move and ask the postal service to update their voter registration. Some people register once, move dozens of times and never think to tell their secretary of state.
Some people die. Some people get married and change their name. Some people don’t vote for 10 years, then do. You get the idea. Life happens, and updating voter registration is rarely our first thought.
But doesn't that mean that people who shouldn't be on the rolls can vote? Well no.
... here’s what the conspiracy folks leave out: Being on the voter roll doesn’t automatically mean a vote will be counted or even that a ballot will be sent. It’s just the starting point of everyone who might be invited to the party.
There are numerous safeguards, such as signature verification, that cast ballots go through before the vote is considered legitimate. When there is doubt, the vote is “cured,” which is an unnecessarily convoluted way of saying local election officials may go as far as tracking down the actual voter and making sure they are legit. Yes, if there is a question, actual people contact an actual voter. If they can’t get in contact, the vote is usually set aside.
The MAGA demand to audit voter rolls ignores all this reality and is instead based on the false idea that voter rolls translate directly into counted votes.
The game MAGA is running with voter roll audits is that it was never about election integrity. It’s about suppressing the vote of Black people, brown people, young people and others who tend to vote Democratic and also tend to have more unsettled lives that would lead them to have inaccurate information, such as conflicting addresses, on the voter rolls.
I should add that Chabria is also a fair minded commentator. She points out that the baseless whining is not from all Republicans.
[Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve] Hilton on Tuesday addressed the president’s unfounded but vociferous claims that Democrats have massively cheated in our recent election.
“We’ve got teams standing by, we’ve got lawyers standing by, very focused on that,” Hilton told reporters, including my colleague Seema Mehta, outside the L.A. elections headquarters. “We don’t want to let anyone down, we don’t want to let anything slip away, and we’ve seen nothing.”
Hilton made the November runoff; he's not served by denouncing the vote. He's going to lose; there aren't enough Republicans in California to make a contest. If you want to know who Hilton is, I recommend this delicious piece on his toxic past as a British conservative ad-man by Finton O'Toole in the New York Review of Books. [Free link.]
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