ELECTION: Crosscheck fraud

Stalin should have known, after all. It was his opinion that it’s not those who do the voting, but those who count the votes that make the difference.

To be a little more current, we might add that it’s also election officials and others who can and do make it hard for some to vote and easy for others, who play dirty tricks, suppress votes, rig voting machines, cage and purge voter rolls ‘til the cows come home and, lucky devils, may just be connected enough to have friends on the U.S. Supreme Court.

And, as if all that weren’t enough, those so inclined have made electoral fraud more secretive and even more effective. Since 2013, in time for our election in November, more than a million voters were purged and prevented from voting through a scheme known as The Interstate Crosscheck Program. This is the brainchild of a Trump operative, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Seventeen different Republican-controlled states participated. Their voter rolls were scanned for voters with names — first and last — appearing on two or more lists, who were then, by whatever stretch, taken to be the same person attempting to vote more than once. Ethnic and minority names were targeted, voters most likely to vote Democratic.

(The Rolling Stone September 2016 cover story has more info.)

It’s fair to ask whether the Republican Party can or will ever again attempt getting a presidential candidate fairly elected, elected by the people.

What is being taken from us, we can take back.

DEL CAMERON

Coeur d’Alene