President Trump
has abandoned the voter fraud commission that he established in May. The commission was itself a fraud, which grew out of Trump’s ludicrous lie that massive voter fraud had cost him the popular vote. Since the president is elected via the electoral college, not the popular vote, it is unclear why Dear Diva is so insecure about losing the popular vote by several million. In normal times, Trump’s peevish insecurities would simply be a sad curiosity for reality television and gossip columns. After all, we know that he lies constantly, luxuriates in laughable conspiracy theories, and has petulant temper tantrums about all sorts of irrelevant matters. Ho hum. Unfortunately, he’s president of the United States, so we ended up with this commission, which a White House adviser described to CNN as a “shit show” that went “off the rails.”

It is worth noting that, as with many of Trump’s lunacies, his voter fraud obsession simply grew out of actually taking cynical GOP rhetoric seriously. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has been one of the more outlandish peddlers of this particular brand of manure, and naturally he was chosen to co-chair the panel. Kobach is an ally of Secretary of State Mark Martin, who has co-signed on voter suppression trickery, error-riddled voter roll investigations, and sloppily collected data highly susceptible to hackers. 

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Martin, a longtime connoisseur of voter fraud fanfic, happily and immediately turned over voter information to Kobach and company, but most states bucked at Kobach’s request for information, which included names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, birth dates, voting history, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Even red states were leery (more than 40 states refused to fully comply). The Republican Secretary of State from Mississippi responded, “My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from. Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.” States across the country filed lawsuits. A member of the commission also filed a lawsuit against the commission.

A statement from the White House whined that there was substantial evidence of voter fraud (there is not):

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Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry. Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.

Trump then followed up on Twitter, blaming Democrats, saying that states were knowingly hiding illegal voters, and closing with this: “System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D.” Martin, probably, released a squeal of approval out of his cherub cheeks.

I shudder to think what Trump will tweet if he is voted out of office.

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