Written by: Michael Berlind
Contributor: Chris Ware
While the final months of the Trump administration were marked by repeated claims of voter fraud levied by President Trump and Republican lawmakers, these allegations were so baseless as to result in dozens of rejected lawsuits in state and federal courts, and most crucially, they distracted from the real story of the 2020 election cycle: the ramped up efforts of suppressing the vote among the most disadvantaged people in our society during a once in a lifetime global pandemic.
It’s important to define terms that may seem vague or interchangeable. Voter fraud is a form of election fraud involving the “intentional corruption of the electoral process by the voter.” This definition would apply to any way in which a voter would falsely claim voter eligibility for themselves or for others. Voter suppression, on the other hand, is election fraud defined as “any behavior intended to deter an eligible voter from casting a ballot.” While voter fraud is extremely rare, there were multiple instances of egregious voter suppression in 2020, most noticeably in large minority population centers and swing states.
Your Fundamental Right To Vote Was Made Increasingly Difficult
Minority-heavy areas in conservative-run states became... continue reading