When it comes to voter fraud Trump and his idiots seem like a cross between Inspector Javert and Diogenes. Relentless to the point of maniacal pursuit to locate even just one fraudulent voter. The truth is that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. Still, Trump says it’s a massive problem so his people go looking for it with a vengeance. Their latest hobby-horse is non-citizens casting votes which of course is a felony. They’ve created a list of ‘non-citizen criminal voters which seems to be shall we say inaccurate. In fact, Nevada has just told DHS every one of the ‘noncitizens’ on their (DHS) list of fraudulent voters in that state is in fact an American citizen!
Oops. Markwayne Mullin and DHS has a major case of egg on the face in a state where Republicans somehow manage to make a lot of elections nail-bitingly close. I say that because so many of the workers/voters are in the service sector. Anyway this is something Democrats in Nevada can use to help voters understand just how out of touch the GOP is with the needs of working class voters. Instead of spending so much effort on helping people Team Trump is instead obsessed with generating lists of people to a) remove from the voter rolls, and b) prosecute them.
Well, Nevada just threw Mullin and DHS into the wood chipper. DHS gave them a list of 185 names (DHS actually claims the number is far higher) but as this article from HuffPost tells us the whole list they were given was bogus:
Claims of widespread voting by noncitizens by President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin took a major hit Thursday after Nevada officials could not identify a single noncitizen on a list DHS sent them.
The rebuke of the Trump administration came in a bombshell report from The New York Times, in which Nevada election officials said all 185 names DHS claimed were noncitizens were, in fact, U.S. citizens.
I should note this is part of an even larger claim from DHS about “widespread voting by noncitizens.” Mullin and Trump have been claiming there are 250,000 noncitzens on voter rolls in Nevada, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Actually I’m surprised that 250k they cite isn’t a much bigger number. Trump has after all in the past claiming millions of fraudulent votes in California alone. Well, this current pile of bullshite only covers four states, and Mullin might have convinced Trump to not get too far out over his skis.
That’s a good thing (for Team Trump) because that July claim of almost 16,000 names shrank as time went by. But in the end Mullin gave Nevada a list, claiming that from the original 15,903 ‘noncitizens’ he started touting back in July were registered to vote it was ‘confirmed 185 were in fact noncitizens.’ One assumes DHS used their own methods to whittle it down to those 185 names and still couldn’t get it right. Still, rather than tell Mullin to shove it Nevada officials did their due diligence and checked out the names that had been provided and… well you know what they found:
“As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens,” Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials that The New York Times obtained. “You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.”
Ott went on to say DHS still hasn’t given them that larger list of 16,903 names. Nor the means with which to properly investigate. Then he twisted the knife:
“Our records do not support DHS’s claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” Francisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state in Nevada, said in a statement to the Times. “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.”
I especially like that last sentence. Trump and his band of sycophants make all kinds of claims. Claims that turn out to be big steaming piles of nasty smelling brown organic matter. They’ve done it again and Nevada called them out on it. But again it shows how out of touch this administration is. Trump’s people are so busy trying to feed his ego and delusions Americans are struggling, even suffering.
Unless I’m mistaken Nevada doesn’t have one of the key midterm races that might decide control of either chamber of Congress this year. Still, candidates in other states can point to this to make the case Trump and the GOP don’t care about what really matters to voters. Instead they waste time and effort on this kind of crap. Let’s hope officials in the other three states mentioned above can do what Nevada has just done. Announce that DHS gave them a list of noncitizen voters but after checking every single one was in fact a U.S. citizen. The more our candidate can show the GOP is wasting time and money on the wrong things the better it will be when voters cast their ballots.
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
