Debunking the Left’s Big Lie on Election Integrity

COMMENTARY Election Integrity

Debunking the Left’s Big Lie on Election Integrity

Apr 19, 2021 4 min read

Commentary By

John Cooper @thejcoop

Former Senior Advisor, Communications

Greg Scott

Former Director, Media and Public Relations

U.S. President Joe Bide, pictured here on April 15, 2021 in Washington, D.C., has repeatedly compared efforts to strengthen the electoral process to "Jim Crow." Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

Compounding the lies that the left is telling about state election laws are the lies that they are telling about HR 1.

One of their favorite lies is that voter fraud just doesn’t exist.

Conservatives and moderates want to make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat. We want a free, fair, and trustworthy process.

It’s a sad, but inescapable fact: Today’s American left is incapable of honesty about elections.

The lies are obvious, but the left’s control over all of the most powerful political, corporate, and cultural institutions provides a thick fabulist fog that obscures the truth Americans deserve to know.

Perhaps the most abominable lie is the nationally coordinated messaging psy-op that compares any efforts to strengthen our electoral process—no matter how benign—to “Jim Crow.”

President Joe Biden has joined this disgraceful pile-on, saying Georgia’s new election law “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle”—whatever that means.

So, in Biden’s mind, things like expanded early voting and universally popular voter-ID requirements, both of which are in the Georgia law, are somehow morally equivalent to, or even worse than, segregated drinking fountains, voiding mixed-race marriages, and throwing white mothers of mixed-race children in jail.  

Lest you think Biden’s was just an isolated incident, consider the Senate Judiciary Committee’s despicably named “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote” hearing, to be chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., set for April 20.

Compounding the lies that the left is telling about state election laws are the lies that they are telling about HR 1. This bill, brazenly—and euphemistically—called the “For the People Act” is a clear and existential threat to election integrity, increases opportunities for voter fraud, and removes important safeguards that ensure more secure elections.

For example, HR 1 would essentially end voter-ID laws nationwide. Voter-ID requirements are wildly popular, and supported across demographic groups, including black AmericansAbiding popularity aside, forcibly replacing voter-ID requirements with a mere declaration of identity would destroy all trust in our electoral process.

HR 1 also imposes ballot harvesting nationwide. Ballot harvesting is the collection and delivery of batches of ballots, usually by partisan political operatives.

It also commands states to enact automatic voter registration, which will place ineligible voters, including illegal aliens, on the rolls, despite what the “fact checkers” at The Washington Post tell you. The bill also restricts states’ efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls.

If you’re wondering how those provisions make our elections stronger and more secure, you’re not alone. Yet, our media continue to refer to HR 1 as an “election-reform bill” or with other, similar euphemistic verbiage.

The past few months have demonstrated that leftist politicians and their allies in the media, Hollywood, and woke corporate boardrooms are intent on advancing any number of falsehoods about election integrity as a whole, not just the Georgia law.

One of their favorite lies is that voter fraud just doesn’t exist. As “evidence,” they say that The Heritage Foundation’s Voter Fraud Database does not document enough cases of voter fraud to prove that fraud is a problem.

Heritage made very clear in the midst of the 2020 election that the findings in the database were being twisted to fit the left’s false narrative and that reporters should do more research on these fraud cases.  

The 1,300-plus cases of thoroughly documented voter fraud that the database highlights make one thing very clear: Those who are intent on committing voter fraud currently have numerous ways to do so at their disposal. The sweeping changes HR 1 would impose would only give lawbreakers more opportunity to do so. 

However, Democrats’ position on voter fraud is that we don’t need to strengthen and secure our elections, simply because voter fraud hasn’t led to a major national election being decided incorrectly—so far.

Following this logic, a convenience store that has never been robbed shouldn’t lock its door when it closes, nor set its alarm. A football player shouldn’t wear a helmet because he hasn’t gotten a concussion yet. Police in Portland, Oregon, shouldn’t show up for their shifts because Antifa isn’t rioting … until tonight.

These are just some of the absurd public policy outcomes that would follow from this line of “reasoning,” yet it is an underlying argument informing the modern left’s attack on measures that would help strengthen and secure elections.  

Securing elections shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Policymakers should be working together at the state and federal levels to safeguard our elections with commonsense measures that work, while ensuring everyone has access to the ballot box.

Instead, the left whips out the well-worn playbook, which starts with labeling everyone who disagrees with them as “racist.”  

Conservatives and moderates want to make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat. We want a free, fair, and trustworthy process by which the best ideas win. The left wants to make it easier for cheaters to vote. That’s because lying and cheating makes it easier for them to win.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal.