The "investigation" into voter fraud is strictly ridiculous, but that doesn't mean it won't have consequences. (Image Credit: Flickr/Tim Evanson)
Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton got three million more votes than Donald Trump, right? Yeah. It’s true. She got 65 million votes and Trump only got 62 million votes.
Trump won the electoral college because America’s system is weird, but in terms of raw vote numbers, Hillary was more popular.
That bothers Trump.
Whenever Trump is reminded of his popular vote loss, he starts flipping out and making stuff up to explain it. He’s not even trying to tell the truth. He’s frantically lying like a kid who’s just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and tries to concoct a story about somehow tripping and falling into the cookies. It’s plain old lying.
The lie he’s most apt to tell is that millions of people voted illegally and that’s what accounts for his loss. He claims that people who aren't legally permitted to vote go out and vote in massive numbers. Back in December, he said it was three million. But he’s clearly gotten more upset about this because he’s now expanded the lie to 3-5 million illegal votes.
To quote a tweet from CNN today, there is no evidence of voter fraud.
This lack of evidence is not going to stop the White House from ordering an investigation into the allegations of voter fraud, even if it's an allegation not coming from anyone but Trump himself and has absolutely no basis in reality. An investigation was announced today, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the investigation might include other election years than 2016; it may focus on “urban areas” that Trump lost.
RED ALERT! RED ALERT!
Whenever Trump wants to refer to people of color he starts talking about “inner cities." If his investigation of fraud is going to focus on cities, that’s a signal that he wants to target people of color. His intention to investigate California — another area he lost — is a sign that he’s going to look for other fraud by Latinx people, too.
Can voting rights proponents stop any of this? I don’t know. What I do know is that I am ready and willing to get out in front of this issue. Voter ID laws? I will help people get ID. Purging voter rolls so people need to re-register? I will help people re-register. Closing precincts so people need to drive further to be able to vote? I will drive them to the polls and I will watch their kids while they wait in line.
I know I keep saying this but we have to take care of each other. This is one more thing we all need to do.
