11/20/20
President Donald Trump's four-year history of undermining American rights and legal norms is fittingly ending with his attack on one of the most fundamental: the right to vote. The current attacks by Trump and fellow Republican leaders on valid election results, without any evidence, represent more than a flailing attempt to keep Trump in the White House. They amount to the ultimate disdain in a democracy. Voting is cherished as a basic, universal right, because when people cannot choose their representatives, they lose a path toward ensuring other rights. Trump's disregard for the franchise, particularly when it comes to that for Blacks and Latinos, culminates a pattern of scorning democratic norms that began four years ago. It is a pattern that has been deep and disturbing, yet somehow so routine and predictable that it fails to provoke widescale public outrage. As Trump has tried to dehumanize immigrants and racial minorities, he has attempted to delegitimize officials in positions to protect against the arbitrary denial of individual life and liberty. Soon after taking office, he disparaged one federal jurist as a "so-called judge."
It also emerged on Thursday that the President earlier this week personally contacted two Republican canvass board members from Michigan's Wayne County who had reluctantly certified election results from that county covering Detroit. Trump has repeatedly targeted the majority-Black city of Detroit, writing baselessly on Twitter on Thursday, "Voter Fraud in Detroit is rampant, and has been for many years!" His personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed, in the same vein, with no evidence on Thursday that people from Camden, New Jersey, vote in Philadelphia. "They do it every year," he said of people in the heavily African-American city. "Happens all the time in Philly." From the start of Trump's time on the national stage, he has stoked racial divisions. Now, Trump's focus is on the people who counted ballots this month. He has homed in on Detroit, where he falsely claimed on Wednesday, "there are FAR MORE VOTES THAN PEOPLE. Nothing can be done to cure that giant scam. I win Michigan."
