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“I probably won all 50 states if we had an honest count,” President Trump said at an Oval Office event three weeks ago.
The lie that American elections are riddled with fraud has become a right-wing shibboleth, despite years of Republican-led investigations which only wind up proving how vanishingly rare it is.
But the election fraud myth undergirds two vital Republican projects: undermining faith in elections generally, and building support for “solutions” that will wind up disenfranchising millions of people, most of whom vote for Democrats.
Trump has been trying to ram these “solutions” through Congress since he got back into office, even blowing up the deal to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by insisting that Republicans include his SAVE America Act, which includes a voter ID mandate and a national voter registry (and, bizarrely, “no transgender mutilization of our children”).
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Congress could indeed enact these reforms. The Constitution’s Elections Clause states that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” But as Senate Majority Leader John Thune has admitted, even blowing up the filibuster wouldn’t get the SAVE America Act through, since it doesn’t have 50 votes.
And so Trump has been trying to will his disenfranchisement machine into existence by executive fiat.
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