Donald Trump is setting the wheels in motion for a major crackdown on voting rights.
Just a few days after falsely telling Congress that illegal voting cost him the popular vote, Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday morning that he would soon ask for a "major investigation into VOTER FRAUD."
According to Trump, this investigation would "[include] those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time)."
The president then added this warning: "Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!"
It's pretty obvious what Trump means by "strengthening up voting procedure."
He means more voter suppression ID laws, more cuts to early voting, and more voter roll purges.
And why would Trump want more of these things?
Easy -- they put him in the White House.
That's the big irony here: If there's going to be an investigation into voting laws in this country it should be an investigation into the Republican-led voter suppression schemes and how they prevented millions of people from exercising their most basic democratic rights on Election Day.
Any meaningful investigation into those schemes would have to begin with Interstate Crosscheck, a program started by Trump advisor Kris Kobach, who you may remember from the "your papers please" "walking while brown" law in Arizona, and the Muslim registry that he designed for George W. Bush in the hysteria right after 9/11.
Although disguised as a tool to prevent people from double voting, Kobach's Crosscheck is essentially a glorified national voter purge.
Investigative reporter
Greg Palast described how it works on a recent episode of my show.
Palast now estimates that
Crosscheck kicked as many as 7 million people -- overwhelmingly people of color, off the voting rolls before Election Day.
In many key states, the number of people purged by Crosscheck was much, much larger than Trump's margin of victory.
In Michigan, for example, the number of people purged from the voting rolls -- 449,000 -- was about 40 times larger than Trump's margin of victory -- around 10,700 votes.
In other words, Crosscheck probably won Michigan for Trump.
It also probably won him Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
So if we're going to "strengthen" voting procedures," as President Trump we should start with investigating Crosscheck.
-Thom
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