So-called "voter fraud" is the stated reason for every single one of the voter suppression measures Republicans forced through in recent years, and it's the basic building block of Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the "stolen" 2016 presidential election.
The only problem with the Republican assertion, however, is that voter fraud doesn't actually exist, at least not in any meaningful way.
A recent study out of Loyola University found just 31 credible cases of voter fraud out of more than a billion ballots cast in the decade-and-a-half between 2000 and 2014.
The truth is that voter fraud is a pretext -- a pretext to rig elections in the single largest assault on democracy we've seen in more than a century. This is what's so dangerous about Donald Trump's talk about "rigged elections."
If, as is likely the case, he loses in a historic landslide on November 8, his supporters will have a ready-made excuse to explain away that defeat -- one that will conveniently blame minorities and Democrats, not their own candidate's very obvious flaws. And while that's problematic enough on its own, the real problem with Trump's rigged election talk is that it will give Republican legislatures all across the country a new justification to ramp up their war on young people, people of color and older people voting. The base will want it because Trump will have primed them for it, and so will the party establishment, because they've always worked to suppress the vote.
In other words, by complaining about a rigged election, Trump is helping the Republican Party ensure even more badly rigged elections -- where young people, people of color and older people can't vote -- in the near future.
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