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

[Lorraine Minnite]

Margaret Groarke reviews fraud claims and the 1970s/Carter proposed
reforms.  See, Groarke, "The Impact of Voter Fraud Claims on Voter
Registration Reform Legislation," *Political Science Quarterly* 131(3):
571-595.

On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 11:14 PM Brian Landsberg <blandsberg at pacific.edu>
wrote:

> The obsession led then US Attorney Jeff Sessions to prosecute the Marion
> Three for voter fraud following the 1984 election. This Ill considered
> prosecution and the speedy acquittal cost Sessions a federal judgeship.
> Lani Guinier led the defense and described the case in her book.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jan 16, 2021, at 7:33 PM, J Morgan Kousser <kousser at caltech.edu> wrote:
>
> 
>
> 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
>
> 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> *
>
> -----------------------
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing listLaw-election at department-lists.uci.eduhttps://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
> --
> Prof. of History and Social Science, Emeritus
> 1818 Craig Ave.
> Altadena, CA 91001-3430
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> https://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> https://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20210117/0b18ec95/attachment.html>