[EL] “‘Stop the Steal’ Didn’t Start With Trump"

[J Morgan Kousser]

The Bouie article misses the fact that the Republican "voter fraud" push 
began earlier.  In 1977, Jimmy Carter introduced a fairly comprehensive 
voting reform law, which grew out of failures to pass such bills that 
began in 1969 or even earlier.  The most innovative part of the Carter 
Administration bill was same day registration.  A great many Republican 
members of Congress had previously favored at least some of the 
components of the measure, including House Minority Leader John Rhodes.  
Suddenly, Republican activists began to attack the bill, with Kevin 
Phillips contending that it would "blow the Republican Party sky high" 
and the Heritage Foundation alleging that it might allow "eight million 
illegal aliens in the U.S. to vote."  Gov. Ronald Reagan asserted that 
the bill, if successful in registering more voters, would "render the 
Republican Party as dead as the dodo bird."  Although RNC Chair Bill 
Brock had previously called universal registration "a Republican 
concept," after meeting with Reagan, he denounced it as "the Universal 
Voter Fraud Bill" and "a Democratic Power Grab."  The quotations are 
from Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland," pp. 93-95.  The bill, HR5400, was 
never brought to a vote in either house.  See CQ Almanac, 33 (1977), 
798-800.  So far as I know, there is no comprehensive academic study of 
this and other precursors of the NVRA.

On 1/16/2021 6:05 PM, Hess, Douglas (Doug) wrote:
>
> A good article in the NYTimes by Janelle Bouie about ACORN and the 
> history of “Stop the Steal” rhetoric and conspiracy theories:
>
> “‘Stop the Steal’ Didn’t Start With Trump” 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/opinion/voter-fraud-capitol-attack.html?referringSource=articleShare 
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/opinion/voter-fraud-capitol-attack.html?referringSource=articleShare> 
>
>
> Excerpt:
>
> “Over the ensuing years, under pressure from the White House ahead of 
> the presidential election in 2004, the Justice Department ramped up 
> its crusade against voter fraud. Of particular interest was ACORN, a 
> now-defunct advocacy organization that was working — as the 
> presidential election got underway — to register hundreds of thousands 
> of low-income voters. Swing-state Republicans accused the group of “ 
> manufacturing voters ,” and federal prosecutors looked, 
> unsuccessfully, for evidence of wrongdoing. Later, Karl Rove would 
> press President Bush’s second attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, to 
> fire a number of U.S. attorneys for failure to investigate voter fraud 
> allegations, leading to a scandal that eventually led to Gonzales’s 
> resignation in 2007.
>
> ACORN and voter fraud would remain a bête noire for Republicans for 
> the rest of the decade. Conservative advocacy groups and media 
> organizations produced a steady stream of anti-ACORN material and, as 
> the 2008 election campaign heated up, did everything they could to tie 
> Democratic candidates, and Barack Obama in particular, to a group they 
> portrayed as radical and dangerous. ACORN, Rush Limbaugh said in one 
> characteristic segment , has “been training young Black kids to hate, 
> hate, hate this country.”
>
> During his second debate with Obama, a few weeks before the election, 
> the Republican nominee, John McCain, charged that ACORN “is now on the 
> verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter 
> history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” 
> And his campaign materials similarly accused Obama, Joe Biden and the 
> Democratic Party of orchestrating a vast conspiracy of fraud. “We’ve 
> always known the Obama-Biden Democrats will do anything to win this 
> November, but we didn’t know how far their allies would go,” read one 
> mailer…”
>
> -----------------------
>
> Douglas R Hess
>
> Assistant Professor, Political Science/Policy Studies
>
> Grinnell College
>
> *On sabbatical until fall 2021*
>
> *My latest op-ed using Grinnell College National Poll: 
> https://bit.ly/hesshess102020 <https://bit.ly/hesshess102020> *
>
> **
>
> *Website: http://www.douglasrhess.com <http://www.douglasrhess.com> *
>
> -----------------------
>
>
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-- 
Prof. of History and Social Science, Emeritus
1818 Craig Ave.
Altadena, CA 91001-3430

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