Commentary: Trump's noncitizen voting fraud claims will backfire. Just look at history
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Set us as preferred Thirty years ago this fall, a Republican politician cried electoral fraud after losing a close race.Orange County Rep.Bob Dornan couldn’t accept the most logical explanations for why Loretta Sanchez beat him in a historic upset: that voters had tired of his polarizing politics.
That his Latino-majority district wanted one of their own to represent them.That he was an ideologue who never brought anything back from D.C.
for his constituents.Instead, Dornan and his supporters settled on the craziest excuse of them all: Illegal immigrants.
Politics The White House published a series of heavily redacted documents that echo debunked fraud claims about the 2020 election.California voters were passing anti-immigrant laws by the boatful, so Dornan’s fevered tales about nonprofits registering noncitizens to vote and take him down landed with Republicans.A compliant Congress investigated Dornan’s claims, while local lawmakers proposed bills that would force voters to show government-issued identification every time they cast a ballot — a voter suppression tactic going back to the segregationist South.The congressional investigation flopped like a soccer player fishing to draw a red card, finally concluding in 1998.
Yes, noncitizens did vote for Sanchez, but only an infinitesimal number — less than 1% of the total votes tallied and not enough to overturn the results.No one was charged for illegally voting on purpose or improperly registering noncitizens to vote.
When Dornan ran again in 1998, with volunteers vowing to pursue any election irregularities, Sanchez walloped him, and he was swept into the dustbin of political history.I teach this episode in my O.C.history college classes as a case study in what happens when political parties succumb to the spell of a vindictive demagogue who blames everyone f...