‘These are not crazy people’: GOP defends its voter-fraud push, ignoring obvious perils

And the message, repeatedly, was: Why not?

“This hearing is not dangerous,” Senate Homeland Security Committee and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in defending the proceedings. Johnson added: “I said its goal was to, quote, ‘resolve suspicions with full transparency and public awareness.’ What’s wrong with that?”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), at another point, floated a bipartisan commission to look at the issue ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) suggested such hearings were necessary given how many people truly believe there was fraud. “These are not crazy people,” he said, adding, “These are normal folks living normal lives who firmly believe that they have been disenfranchised.”

Indeed, given that strong suspicion, what’s the harm? The harm is that it reinforces that suspicion.

Every alleged problem in Washington can be addressed, depending upon whom you ask, by a true bipartisan or nonpartisan effort to look into the situation. But there is always a cost involved in setting up a formal inquiry into something. That cost: It suggests an actual problem is involved.

Portman’s call for a bipartisan commission was particularly striking, given that he’s generally regarded as one of the more pragmatic Republican senators. It should be noted that Portman has acknowledged Biden’s win and that his idea for a commission is geared toward future elections. But Democrats agreeing to his commission suggestion would just be playing into the idea that there is something substantive to look into.

Such measures are usually a fallback when the standard processes might not be viewed as sufficiently impartial. A good recent example is having a special counsel examine an issue like the Russia investigation, when there is a very logical question about how independent the Justice Department is (such as, say, when the president fires an FBI director looking into the matter). Another would be a huge issue like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when there is massive public interest and Congress wants to eliminate any perceptions that one party or another is unduly guiding the proceedings in its preferred direction.

The allegations of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election, though, don’t track with either of those precedents.

We have, in fact, already had extensive review in the arena that is supposed to deal with such questions and is supposed to be nonpartisan: the judiciary. And even if you believe that judges are somewhat beholden to the political parties that put them on the bench, the verdict on the 2020 election has been resoundingly bipartisan. A Washington Post analysis this weekend found that at least 86 judges had heard challenges to the election results, including 38 appointed by Republicans. I further found that nine were either President Trump’s appointees or had been included in Trump’s Supreme Court shortlists. Judges, regardless of who appointed them, to date have overwhelmingly found that there was nothing to substantiate the allegations of massive fraud.

It’s true that each of them was dealing with an individual case in a specific state — rather than the full picture. But if there was some there there, you would have expected some judge, somewhere, to have lent credence to the allegations. Thus far, the only favorable ruling for the Trump team has been on a procedural motion.

Trump’s allies like to compare the voter-fraud push to the Russia investigation. When critics of the fraud claims complain about a lack of evidence, the Trump team will increasingly cite the Russia probe as an allegedly similarly speculative endeavor. If that’s worth looking into, the argument goes, why not this? Both, after all, risk delegitimizing an American election.

The big difference, as Philip Bump wrote, is that there was established meat on the bone when it came to the Russia probe. We had documented instances of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians and then obscuring it — and even welcoming their help. There was an actual Justice Department investigation, unlike with allegations of voter fraud, which even Trump-loyal attorney general William P. Barr says aren’t substantial enough. And an inspector general ruled that the investigation was properly predicated.

Just because it didn’t lead to a conclusion of criminal conspiracy doesn’t mean these weren’t valid questions, and indeed there are plenty of indications that lots of people inside the government were concerned. A recent report from the GOP-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee only reinforced the seriousness of the situation.

When it comes to widespread voter fraud, there is no similarly established seriousness. Will there be some fraud, somewhere? Undoubtedly. It’s a big country. The question is whether it’s substantial enough to launch an effort that gives credence to suspicions that it actually mattered — or could matter. We could launch a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission or a special counsel on any allegation. But pretending that doing so doesn’t come with costs when it comes to the veracity of the allegations is to bury one’s head in the sand.

Hawley’s reference to the many Republicans who believe this election was stolen is a case in point. There is no genuine reason to harbor that belief at this point. Judges have routinely ruled that people who signed affidavits to that effect either misunderstood the process or were wrong. Courts have overwhelmingly found the contentions to be baseless.

At some point, it merely becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to examine these questions. They have already been examined by a process that our country literally set up to deal with them — and with no reason to doubt that there is anything compromising that process.

But there is something to be gained politically by pressing forward with these questions — especially given, as Hawley notes, that the majority of Republicans believe in these debunked claims. Telling people what they want to hear, or at least hinting at it, is a time-honored political tradition. And there is a very receptive audience for this, particularly in GOP primaries, despite the lack of evidence.

If this hearing were truly just about irregularities, that would be one thing. But invited witnesses claimed without evidence that dead people voted, among other things. Johnson acknowledged the “dozens” of court cases affirming the election results. But he added that “lax enforcement denying effective bipartisan observation” of vote-counting “has led to heightened suspicion” — despite those same courts having dealt with this issue over and over again.

Anybody pretending that they see no downside for American democracy in going down this road either isn’t being honest or doesn’t understand how this works. It’s fine to say this should be dealt with conclusively, but the mechanism for doing so has already been employed extensively. And any future pursuits need to be measured against how they might foment already prevalent baseless beliefs.