The repugican cabal Works the Long Con on ‘Voter Fraud’

As every successful con artist knows, the first rule and last rule is “die with the lie.” Even when the chips are down, the jig is up, and there is no more bam to boozle, never reveal the scheme.

Countless wingnut campaign stump speeches, radio talk shows, and books have pushed the idea that there is massive voter fraud in this country. Despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, it isn’t hard to find someone who buys into the myth. An entire cottage industry has stoked this narrative over the years, relying chiefly of the politics of fear and bigotry.

Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare in this country. That has not prevented state legislatures from tightening voting regulations, passing laws that have a disproportionate impact on people of color, the elderly, and college-aged voters—people more likely to vote Democratic.

“The scourge is largely imaginary, and a thin pretense to keep people from participating in their own democracy,” wrote MSNBC’s Steve Benen. “But that’s the shrieking point and the repugican cabal is sticking to it.”

These laws do more than require voters to bring an ID to the polls. In many states, such as Ohio and Georgia, it has become about restricting the time people have to vote. In the 2014 midterms, a whopping 44 percent of voters took advantage of early voting, and a disparate number of those voters were minorities. But the repugican-misled statehouse in Georgia is pushing a bill that would shorten the “early voting” window from 21 to 12 days and provide for no more than four hours of voting on the weekends.

Why? Georgia repugicans–having only regained the majority in the legislature and taken back the governor’s mansion over the last 20 years—now stand to lose big in the coming election cycles. The demographics in the Peach State are shifting quicker than winds blowing off of Stone Mountain. African Americans are an increasingly large share of the populace, and Hispanic voting numbers are growing in force.

The repugicans will never admit that voter fraud is a myth or that early voting restrictions are designed to keep legal voters away from the polls. As the old adage goes: die with the lie.