Trump and Election Doubt

By J. Michael Atherton

Trump and the RNC want doubt to do their bidding. They (sort of) have two goals: first, severely restrict who can vote, and second, use their voter-restriction efforts to put all election results in doubt. Even if they fail in the first, they plan to advance their cause using the second. This is serious stuff. Election doubt sickens democracy, makes it frail, and opens it to manipulation.

The sickness from electoral doubt metastasizes. It moves from confusion and chaos to open opposition toward election results to furious calls for replacement processes to isolated outbreaks of violence to outright rebellion. Remember January 6, 2021, when insurrectionists thought, without evidence, that they were fighting a stolen election? Those people blindly believed Trump and the RNC who had poisoned them with lies about illegal voters. Trump has spread his toxic lies for years and infected everyone who believes him. Insurrectionist believers have openly pledged to continue their efforts in 2024.

The RNC is playing with an electoral pandemic that can sicken them as well as the Dems with the result that the whole nation suffers. Regardless of who suffers, the RNC continues to incubate their election lies in political Petrie dishes across the nation. Such doubt betrays the country by infecting its most sacred institution: the vote.

To resist this treasonous assault on the vote, we must enter the healing land of the facts to study details knowing they will tell us what is happening and what to do about it. So, let’s enter the Surgical Theatre where we use red-hot, specific details to cauterize the misuse of doubt.

First, a word about doubt. Doubt can be healthy and advance our knowledge. However, we must be wary when people, such as Trump and the RNC, distort doubt to gain power. We must realize Trump follows the tradition of other slick-tongued, snake-oil salesmen as he uses distorted doubt to confuse our view of reality so he can promise us a cure while he sells us lies in a bottle.

Now to the details of the RNC and voter suppression.

The immediate goal of Trump and the RNC is to allow Arizona to impede voters by forcing them to produce documentation to prove they are citizens. This documentation requirement is only the latest iteration of voter suppression and resembles the outlawed use of a poll tax, literacy and comprehension tests, “good character” standards, and white-only and men-only requirements that were used in the past. Arizona’s requirement opposes the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 that established Congress as the sole authority on voter registration rules in presidential elections for the whole nation.

The RNC contends that states have more power than Congress regarding voter registration in presidential elections. But they are fighting an uphill battle. From 1993 to 2013 the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that Congress is the final authority on a long list of voter registration questions basing their rulings on the 14th and 15th Amendments. In addition, the Purcell principle essentially says if we are close to an election then don’t bring legal action about voting for fear that it will spread doubt that leads to confusion and chaos.

The SCOTUS recently ruled in favor of the Arizona voter restriction law and overturned precedent. Cause: SCOTUS conservatives carry water for Trump. Prediction: the Robert’s court will issue an even larger flood of right-leaning rulings doing damage or killing “settled” law as they have done in the following: Citizens United, Dobbs, McCain-Feingold, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy, and the Clean Air Act, the Clean Power Plan, Union Representation, Antitrust laws, Civil Rights, Gender Pay Discrimination, Second Language Programs, and Protection from Gun Violence.

Until recently, precedent and principle blocked the RNC and Trump in their quest for voter suppression. While their doubt-mongering may have no legal merit, they soldier on. We must ask why. Here we find Trump and the RNC cynically indifferent to lawsuit results. They know by raising the question they sow doubt, and doubt is their goal. By publicly clothing their case in legalese, they decorate it, and make it seem worthy. All the while they know doubt is enough in a close race where voters infected with Trump’s lies see anything but a Trump victory as proof of voter fraud.

For all practical purposes our elections have been fraud free. There is no evidence that non-citizens are voting. There is no hint that our elections have been manipulated, again, for all practical purposes. Over 60 election fraud cases brought by Trump and his lackeys have been thrown out by courts, some of which have Trump appointed judges. Not one case has been shown to have merit. Not one! The 2020 election was free, fair, accurate, legal, and final. It has been decided to everyone’s satisfaction except, of course, for those who have been brainwashed by Trump. Undeterred by facts and legal rulings, Trump whines about it constantly, not because of its accuracy, but for one reason: to sow doubt at every event and all his rallies.

One would think he has learned his lesson, but we doubt it.