Think Like A Man

By now anyone interested in reality understands that America suffers from voter suppression but almost no voter fraud. Yet the campaign to pass laws preventing voter fraud and suppress minority voting continues. This illustrates that many of us (maybe all of us) will believe anything if it suits our purposes. 

For example, I have friends who believe that the Civil War was not about slavery, although every state that seceded did so in a resolution that named the defense of slavery as the reason. Or so I've been told. 

How do the Republicans justify pushing for voter suppression? Tom Belton pointed out to me that Nebraska State Senator John Murante has the answer.  Murante states clearly that there is no meaningful voter fraud going on, but the perception that there is must be addressed. In short, the Republicans have lied to us about voter fraud for decades, and people now believe it exists. We need to pass laws repressing voters in order to reassure the people who believe the Republican lies. 

The law on this is clear. The very first voting fraud case to reach the Supreme Court, Crawford v. Marion County, acknowledged that there was no evidence of voting fraud in Indiana, but it was okay to block significant numbers of people from voting in an effort to restore confidence in the electoral system.

This is called "the perception argument." The world of alternative facts is legal.

Also the word "alternative" is a noun, not an adjective, unless the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise.