avatarVanessa Robinson

Summary

The article discusses the efforts to suppress Black votes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, particularly in key battleground states, and the legal battles that ensued as a result of unfounded claims of voter fraud by President Trump and his legal team.

Abstract

The article titled "This Is Why They Didn’t Want Blacks to Vote" delves into the historical context and contemporary attempts to undermine the voting power of Black Americans in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. It highlights the significance of Black voters in urban areas of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, and the baseless accusations of voter fraud levied by President Trump and his associates, including Rudy Giuliani. Despite the certification of electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump campaign pursued legal challenges in states with higher Black populations, suggesting an underlying motive to disenfranchise Black voters. The article underscores the importance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the ongoing struggle for voting equality, while also pointing out the rarity of actual voter fraud and the legitimacy of the election results determined by a diverse electorate.

Opinions

  • The article implies that the Trump campaign's focus on cities with larger Black populations, such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, was racially motivated, with the intent to discredit and invalidate votes in those areas.
  • It criticizes the Trump team's legal strategy, suggesting that their lawsuits were not based on evidence but rather on a desire to disenfranchise Black voters and overturn the election results.
  • The author expresses that the efforts to cast doubt on the integrity of the election, particularly in areas with significant Black populations, were an attack on democracy and an attempt to delegitimize the voices of Black voters.
  • The article opines that the claims of widespread voter fraud were a smokescreen for the real objective of undermining the electoral process and the validity of legally cast votes by Black Americans.
  • It emphasizes the historical significance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the ongoing challenges faced by Black voters in exercising their right to vote without interference or discrimination.
  • The author asserts that the election results, which included a diverse coalition of White, Black, and Brown voters, were legitimate and that voter fraud was exceedingly rare, contrary to the claims made by President Trump and his supporters.

This Is Why They Didn’t Want Blacks to Vote

It might actually make a difference and then where would we be?

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

The states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are hot spots right now. Well — perhaps not as much as it was since Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have certified their electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden as of today.

There were three other states in contention; Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. (Nevada recently certified its electoral vote.) But the protests for President Trump in those states were muted; the fervor was not as strong. There are a few reasons for this. It’s not that these three states aren’t diverse, but they are less diverse, at least in regards to Black people. Arizona’s black population is 4%. Nevada? 8.6%. New Mexico is 2.6% black.

In 2016, Trump won Arizona. Hillary Clinton won Nevada and New Mexico. But the president thought he should have won all of them in 2020. There were legal challenges to all three, but they were all rejected by their state's high courts.

However, none of the major cities in those states (Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Las Vegas) fit the stereotype that President Trump and Rudy Giuliani wanted to emphasize…because they simply weren’t black enough.

The percentage of black people in the states of Wisconsin (6.1%), Michigan (14.1%), Pennsylvania (12%), and Georgia (31.9%) doesn’t stand out at first until you realize they are concentrated in the cities…

The cities in those states were black enough; Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. They were black enough for President Trump’s team of attorneys to accuse of corruption. They had to be!

After all, they had an awful lot of black people.

The President’s legal “elite strike force team” composed of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Attorney Sidney Powell (who was recently removed from the team), and Attorney Jenna Ellis filed one suit after another in these states.

There is a pattern for those who have the eyes to see.

There are thousands of white people

Have you ever been to Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta? I have. There are hundreds of thousands of perfectly nice white people in these cities, born and raised. The President's team had no compunction in asking to throw their votes out too - if only because of their proximity to black people.

The president and Giuliani have repeatedly alleged that the fraud was coming from big Democratic cities with large Black populations, including Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, while acknowledging the results in mostly white areas.

Thank God for the local state and city officials; they are the walls upholding our democracy. And in court, as provided by Giuliani and his team, in state after state, there has been no proof of fraud provided for examination. It has been nothing…but talk.

It is one thing, though, to have a press conference alleging fraud. It is another thing entirely to lie about it in court. That would push the attorneys into the “you will be sanctioned” territory.

American courts, like God, hate a liar.

Wisconsin is a typical coup attempt

As late as November 24th, 2020, twenty-one days after the election, President Trump is actively lying about voter fraud.

“ ‘In Wisconsin, somebody has to be indefinitely confined in order to vote absentee. In the past, there were 20,000 people. This past election there were 120,000…and Republicans were locked out of the vote-counting process.’ @VicToensing @newsmax”

The first sentence is a lie. According to local officials, anyone can request an absentee ballot — and this has been the case since 2000. Ignoring this fact, President Trump wants Wisconsin to throw out the votes of any absentee voter who wasn’t confined to their home.

The final figures of absentee voters will not be available until December, but local election officials say their number is not accurate. And finally, Republicans have not been locked out of the vote-counting process.

The president paid three million dollars to have a recount for the Dane and Milwaukee counties in Wisconsin — and two things are true; these areas have large black populations. and “Election officials in Wisconsin’s largest county accused observers for President Donald Trump on Saturday of seeking to obstruct a recount of the presidential results, in some instances by objecting to every ballot tabulators pulled to count.” according to the Associated Press.

Biden is ahead by 20,000 votes in Wisconsin—and nitpicking the poll workers to eliminate that many black votes is…impossible.

The realization of this fact has become obvious, and so a new lawsuit was submitted by a conservative group on November 24th to throw out the entire Wisconsin result.

That would cancel the votes of over three million Wisconsinites and it would remove democracy-at least in Wisconsin. The hope of this group is the Republican legislature would send in their electors. Does one wonder how they, Democrat and Republican alike, feel about that?

The effort to disenfranchise American voters continues…

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

A certain percentage of people believe that the votes of Black people should not count, at least, not in any way that would actually determine the outcome of an election unless said black people vote for their preferred candidate.

Since they couldn’t be sure how the Black person would vote, in the past it was determined that they should not vote at all.

Black voters were systematically turned away from state polling places.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to fix this.

It did help. In 1965, twenty-three percent of Blacks were registered nationally, but by 1969, sixty-one percent of Blacks were registered to vote.

Now that Black people can and do vote, the effort is in to minimize or throw out those votes — using unethical and immoral means…

In other words, it’s not about the mail-in part. That is a smokescreen.

Rudy Giuliani was hired to disenfranchise Black voters

Could it be that the reason is…racism? That Giuliani and Trump are using it as a weapon against these states to try to overturn the certifications? If they can get their followers, who are already ethnocentrically challenged — to fall back on their prejudices, it’s very easy to help them to believe that dark people are stuffing ballot boxes in alleys with fake names and addresses.

Frankly, it’s not practical to only throw out black voters. All black people do not vote for Democrats. Trump won a larger share in 2020 than he did in 2016, increasing from 6% to 8% (preliminary numbers). It could be more once a complete analysis is completed.

Additionally, suburban white voters went to the Democrat side in 2020. The Brookings Institute writes that “Biden’s victory came from the suburbs.”

The irony from the 2020 election will be written about for decades.

History will not be kind.

Cheating is hard

Maybe some guy could order a ballot for his dead mother? That happened in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania recently — Republican Robert Lynn did just that. He was arrested and could serve ten years.

And Democrat Larry Wiggins in Manatee County, Florida ordered a ballot for his dead wife. He said he wanted to test the system. The County Supervisor of Elections Mike Bennett said, “He did test the system, and guess what? It worked.”

But Bennett, a Republican, said this was the first instance of voter fraud he had come across in the county since assuming his post in 2012.

But this isn’t new. Trump has been telling people consistently that American elections are rigged (unless he wins) and in 2016, Terri Lynne Rote believed him.

Terri Lynn Rote, a registered Republican, is accused of submitting ballot at two different early voting stations, the Des Moines Register reports.

Terri Lynn Rote | Des Moines Police Department.

Rote told reporters that she was afraid her first ballot for Donald Trump would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton, so she decided to vote for Trump a second time.

These are individual cases of poor judgment. They are not enough in themselves to change a result. That requires thousands of fake votes — but these days, it too hard to hide.

State databases don’t accept fake names that are pulled out of somebody’s imagination. It’s not 1931 Sullivan County, Tammany Hall politics. Back then, absentee votes from people living in Manhattan and Brooklyn were used to vote for a candidate in Sullivan County; the county is almost 100 miles away.

Voting fraud is rare

Even though millions are hurt that President Trump lost, it is time to admit the truth. Voting fraud is extremely rare. Over 80,000,000 voters voted Trump out. They were White, Black, and Brown. They want him out of the White House. No illegal votes were necessary or required.

Even more importantly, it is crucial to note that the vote of a Brown or Black person is legal.

This is why they didn’t want Blacks to vote.

It might actually make a difference.

Elections
History
Racism
Trump
Voting
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