A resignation in Texas is a reminder of how Trump’s vote-fraud claims come up empty
By Philip Bump
May 28 at 10:56 AM
Barring future developments, the political legacy of former Texas acting secretary of state David Whitley will not be particularly favorable. Whitley, who resigned on Monday, is best known nationally for levying a charge of rampant voter fraud in his state — a charge that remains unproven months later and which has been shown to have been based to a substantial degree on erroneous assumptions.
There is, however, a certain magic in making allegations about widespread voter fraud, particularly from a position of authority. It has been a Republican white whale for decades, without any direct evidence of its existence. For the current Republican president, the idea that elections have been influenced by rampant fraud has become a near-obsession, with President Trump embracing rumors of fraud even in the most abstract, unfounded strokes.
So Trump readily embraced Whitley’s claims, retweeting a summary allegation from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and tweeting his own variant on the numbers after seeing a report on the Fox News show “Fox & Friends.”
A central problem with Whitley’s allegation is that his assessment of the number of noncitizens who allegedly had voted didn’t take into account that those individuals may have — and many had — become citizens before they cast a ballot. (As we reported in February, nearly 1 million Texas residents became citizens during the decade from 2007 to 2016, a period that overlaps with Whitley’s allegations.)
The Texas fraud debacle might, to another politician, have been humbling, an example of the dangers of jumping on enticing allegations before they have been vetted. But Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that this isn’t a lesson he’s interested in learning.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/28/resignation-texas-is-reminder-how-trumps-vote-fraud-claims-come-up-empty/?utm_term=.aac9455435c3
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