I try not to repeat myself.
Let me say that again.
I try not to repeat myself.
Why? Well, for starters, it becomes dull. The second time never carries the punch of the first. You’ve read it before, maybe. The impact lessens.
Even if I try to switch things around.
Repeating myself is something I try not to do.
But what if the same thing keeps happening? Something important. And any other topic, well, pales in comparison.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court said to President Donald Trump, in essence: “Sure, go ahead and mess with the mail-in ballots, part of your general campaign to undermine and muddy elections, in case your side loses and you have to toss over the game board and cry ‘Unfair!’ your go-to move for years and years.”
In October 2016, when it looked liked the tide might be turning for Hillary Clinton, Trump fired off a series of tweets.
“Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.”
And …
“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD.”
And … speaking of repetition.
“Election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign …”
Then he won, and … poof … suddenly the election was fine. Though Republican candidates, in parroting Trump’s claims, would insist that elections that they themselves won were also rigged. Which would be funny if the situation weren’t so terrifying.
In the 2020 election, which Trump clearly and definitively lost to Joe Biden, the only dramatic attempts at election fraud were the president’s, demanding that Georgia election officials “find” votes to put him over the top. Since then, he has machine-gunned lies about the election.
Not to forget the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. After which the nation reelected him anyway, which tempts a person to give up, sit back and declare we deserve whatever we get.
Maybe we do.
In 2024, Trump beat the drum constantly. He claimed the election was being rigged. Hundreds of times.
Which leads to now, and me wanting to stand on a chair, bang two garbage can lids together and scream something I’ve been saying for quite a long time. Most recently in March, in a column about voting in the primary. This is the very last paragraph, which I can reprint because, attention spans being what they are, I know that many readers never get to the last paragraph, not with Instagram and TikTok right there, demanding attention:
“To me, election integrity is the most important issue facing us. If we can’t vote, we can’t influence government, and it can do whatever it likes, unchecked. We see that in action now. One way to understand our current administration is this: They’re acting like they will never leave power. Whether they are correct or not depends on the survival of free and fair elections.”
Elsewhere in the column, I quote the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy organization, which offered up its “Timeline of the Trump Administration’s Efforts to Undermine Elections.”
It lays out, in painful detail, using color-coding to help make various strategies clear, “a concerted strategy to undermine U.S. elections.”
Heck, its opening bears repeating as well:
“In 2025, a new threat to free and fair elections emerged: the federal government.
“Since day one of his second term, the Trump administration has attempted to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems, targeted and threatened election officials and others who keep elections free and fair, supported people who undermine election administration, and retreated from the federal government’s role of protecting voters and the electoral process.”
Pause a moment to consider why Trump says he’s doing this. To prevent voter fraud, specifically by noncitizens — which scarcely exists. Allow me to quote the Bipartisan Policy Center: “Illegal voting, including by noncitizens, is routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome. When investigating noncitizen voting, it is important to distinguish between voter registration and casting a ballot. Noncitizen registration is already rare, and noncitizen voting is even less common.”
This must be said again and again, in part, because Democrats don’t seem to get it. You would think that keeping America a representative democracy would provide a compelling platform for Democrats to run on. But apparently they see this as the moment to focus on side issues. Other policy questions are important, true. But if the voting process is destroyed, nothing else matters.
If the voting process is destroyed, nothing else matters.
If the voting process is destroyed …