This Essay was posted on 10/8/2025.
Making it harder to vote early or with absentee ballots is not a new issue. I wrote about it 9 years ago. The claims of voter fraud were false then and they are still false, because the vast majority of people take their privilege to vote very seriously. These are the words that described the voting issues in October, 2016.
Real election manipulation comes from the top. Current and past attempts to protect us from imagined fraud with intimidation tactics only create draconian deterrents to voting. States have passed measures requiring special voter IDs, reducing registration days, reducing early voting schedules, and reducing polling places.
These voter suppression measures work. Voter ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee reduced turnout in 2012 by 2% as reported by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in American Amnesia. The 2% figure represents about 120,000 potential votes that were not cast; more than enough votes to flip electoral results between two candidates in a close election.
Individual voter fraud is a red herring. Instead, we must make reversing voter suppression laws a high priority by electing more Democrats to our state legislatures.
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