Despite Voter ID, Trump smashes confidence in elections by saying they're rigged, opening door for more restrictions.

An article at Talking Points Memo brought up an interesting question about voter confidence in elections due to Voter ID; despite requiring photo ID’s, Republicans still cast doubt on elections by saying they’re rigged. So despite the rhetoric about voter confidence, why are Republicans claiming rigged elections, basically destroying that confidence?

“The whole aura of illegitimacy he is casting on the election in general ... he is feeding an already very hungry beast here with these kinds of accusations,” Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law professor who served on the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2012. 

“I’m telling you, November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged,” Trump said on Fox News this week. “And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us. “I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if the election . . . there’s a lot of dirty pool played at the election, meaning the election is rigged. I would not be surprised,” Trump said.

Just as bad, recent Trump comments on the myth of voting multiple times makes it obvious this guy never set foot in his own local polling place.

“The voter ID, they’re fighting as hard as you can fight so that that they don’t have to show voter ID. So, what’s the purpose of that? How many times is a person going to vote during the day? If you don’t have voter ID. Multiple times. How about like 10 times. Why not? If you don’t have voter ID, you can just keep voting and voting and voting,” Trump said. 

Rick Hasen --- professor at UC-Irvine School of Law who also runs the Election Law Blog. -- told PBS Newshour Wednesday, “That sounds like someone who has never been to a polling place, because you just can’t go in and ask for a ballot, and they will just trust you. There is a voter roll. There is a list. Every state identifies you somehow. It might be that you give your signature. And if it’s that, then your signature is on the line. You’re already voted. You can’t vote 10 times.” 

Ironically, Trump did go to a polling place, not once, but three times in the same day but was turned away. Ah, he does know he can only go to one designated place? From Access Hollywood:



Destroying the public trust in elections despite voter ID...:

Voter ID laws are necessary to maintain public trust that voter fraud is being prevented. This is one of the arguments the Supreme Court invoked in its 2008 decision upholding Indiana’s voter ID law, Crawford vs. Marion County. 

Yet, a study published in June by Persily -- along with Charles Stewart III and Stephen Ansolabehere -- undercut that justification. They found no evidence that voters in states with strict voter ID laws had greater levels of confidence in elections than those in states without them. 

But Persily worries even if voter ID laws aren’t increasing confidence elections, Trump’s comments are making Americans less trusting of democratic institutions. “You have this perverse cycle here, you are ... casting [the electoral system] in a bad light of disrepute, and in the process, by creating these anti-system views, you are now justifying more restrictive measures that might keep people from voting," Persily said.