Donald Trump, who the polls show is losing, likes to say the election is “rigged”. Well, that’s just more bullshit from Trump. But in fact, as surprising as that may be, there is actually some truth to that. The thing is, it’s actually rigged about as opposite as possible from the way Trump says it is. That is, instead of looking at precincts/cities/states where Hillary Clinton wins, one should look at those where Trump wins, as the more likely locations of rigging.
How does this rigging work? Really, it’s no surprise, it’s something that Republicans have been doing for a long, long time. And they’ve been going at it again quite strongly recently, what with all the voter ID laws the last few years, many of them coming on the heels of the Republican-leaning Supreme Court striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act. Unfortunately, Jim Crow voting laws are not dead.
Some people like to say that voter ID laws are to prevent the very serious problem of voter fraud. These people are either lying or deluded. First of all, the kinds of voter fraud people say voter ID laws will stop have been studied, and they are *extremely* rare. And the real impacts of these laws have also been analyzed, and, guess what, minorities and Democratic-leaning voters are the most negatively impacted.
North Carolina’s voter ID law, recently struck down by a federal court, contained many specific requirements brazenly put in place by Republicans to impact minorities and Democrats. Similar is the case with Texas’s law.
Republicans have been caught numerous times, often in unguarded moments, admitting how they use such laws to their advantage.
And it’s not just voter ID laws. There’s gerrymandering, which the Republicans made heavy use of after they did so well in the mid-term elections in the census year 2010. The “voter ID” laws also contain provisions to restrict early voting times and locations. Some states disallow, or make it difficult for, convicted felons to vote. And there are many other ways to do voter suppression as well.
Finally, Trump’s call for supporters to monitor polling places is really meant as just another form of voter intimidation, a form of voter suppression. It is illegal, and the RNC is forbidden from doing it based on a consent decree.
So we may have a ways to go until we get perfectly fair elections, but let’s be realistic about what the problems are, and which side is pushing things as much as they can.