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This year, Americans are unlikely to use mail-in voting at the same levels they did during the pandemic,
and Republicans are now encouraging their supporters to take advantage of it.

But Trump and allies are using a new messaging tactic in its place:

that there are scores of non-citizens and other ineligible people on the voter rolls.

Cleta Mitchell has played a key role in leading a coalition of groups that has pushed the
💥false idea that there is a serious threat of non-citizens voting in US elections. 💥

Her coalition has supported federal legislation championed by the House speaker, Mike Johnson,
and others to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Such a restriction would probably do little to prevent fraud,
which is exceedingly rare.

⭐️Instead, it would probably make it harder for millions of eligible voters to cast a ballot.

💥Nearly one in 10 eligible voters
– 21 million Americans
– lack easy access to proof of citizenship documents, 💥
according to one study released earlier this year.

Even though Johnson’s congressional bill passed the House,
it will probably go nowhere in the Senate.

But it helps create an impression that something is amiss with American elections.

To make matters worse, when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket,
Republicans also immediately sought to suggest her candidacy was illegitimate,
calling the effort a “coup”.

A constellation of groups
– including the RNC, the Public Interest Legal Foundation and United Sovereign Americans
– has also filed several lawsuits in various states to create the
♦️ false impression that voter rolls are not properly being cleaned ♦️in several swing states.

These lawsuits use misleading methodology and legal claims to suggest that there are a suspiciously large number of people registered in certain jurisdictions.

Among other issues, they compare up-to-date voter registration information and outdated data from the American Community Survey.

“They’re hanging the hooks to later hang their hat on,” said Sean Morales-Doyle,
the top voting rights expert at the #Brennan #Center.

“It’s all part of creating sort of a pretext to say,
‘Oh, we need to throw out this set of ballots’
or ‘We can’t really know who the real winner is,’”
said Ben Berwick, a lawyer at the non-profit "#Protect #Democracy"
who works on voting rights issues.

“I think much of it won’t stick, but I think the point is to have enough of it stick to create enough uncertainty for that critical post-election period

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#Howell #HeritageFoundation #network #Bobb #poll #observers #Elias #Giuliani #Ellis #Powell