New voter restrictions are based on a lie said to appease Trump voters

New voter restrictions are based on a lie said to appease Trump voters

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These polls are the latest to indicate that Republicans mistakenly think the 2020 election was not legal, when it became clear.

What is the point: Republicans have urged state-level legislation to make the vote at least somewhat more difficult than it was for the 2020 election. This came in the wake of polls showing that many Republicans doubted the election result. It is unclear what effect this legislation will ultimately have on future election results.

What is quite clear, however, is that Republicans’ lack of confidence in our current electoral infrastructure is a direct result of Trump’s historic efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 results.

After Trump left the White House in January, Monmouth University asked Americans if they thought the 2020 election would be fair and confident. Overall, most (66%) were confident.

But the majority of Republicans (65%) disagree, saying they were not confident at all. The election was conducted fairly and accurately, in line with the Ipsos poll discussed above. This 65% has really been a deviation lately.

After each election from 2004 to 2016, the Pew Research Center asked voters if they were confident that the votes across the country would be counted accurately.

The voters for the lost candidate in that election had far more confidence than Trump voters had in the outcome of the 2020 election. In every election from 2004 to 2016, between 8% and 14% of the voters of the lost candidate said that they have no confidence at all that the election is legal. In 2016, only 11% of Hillary Clinton voters were not confident at all.

This means that Republicans this time somewhere between 40 and 50 points are more likely to say that they have no confidence in the results than the supporters of any lost candidate in recent times.

The big difference this time is that the lost candidate repeatedly doubted the results.

Republicans’ doubts come despite a clear margin for Biden in the swing states that made the difference. Trump would have to win at least three states he lost by more than 10,000 votes (one he lost by more than 20,000) to simply withhold Biden from 270 electoral votes.
Trump’s margins over Clinton in the major swing states were similar to Biden’s against Trump in terms of percentage points, but Clinton voters did not have nearly the same doubts about the results.
Trump’s false claims have certainly changed the way Republicans think about who should be able to vote. Last month, Pew asked Americans whether citizens should prove they really want to vote by pre-registering and whether everything should be done to make it easy for every citizen to vote.

Only 28% of Republicans today say everything must be done to make it easy for citizens to vote. This can be compared to 71% who say that citizens must prove that they really want to vote.

Back in 2018 (before Trump lost) the split was much closer to 48% of Republicans who believed it should be as easy as possible to vote for 51% who thought voters should prove it.

(Democrats, by comparison, barely passed the question, and 85% argued that it should be as easy as possible to vote. That was 84% ​​in 2018.)

The only thing that really changed between 2018 and 2021 was the 2020 election.

It should be noted that Republicans are in the minority on this issue. Most Americans (59%) say that everything must be done to make the citizens vote as easily as possible.

Most importantly, it is not at all clear that attempts to appease those who have doubts in the system will work.

We can see this by looking at studies on the voter identification laws, which many Republicans have supported to ensure that those who vote are who they say they are.

According to a new AP / NORC poll, most Americans (72%) are in favor of it. This makes it one of the few Republican-driven electoral reforms most Americans agree with.
The problem is that studies show that the fact that voter identification laws do not actually increase confidence in the legitimacy of the electoral process. There is much reason to doubt that the Republican will move the current election laws, actually giving more confidence in the system.

People who believe in conspiracy theories find ways to believe the truth.

What would actually help people have more confidence in our election process is that if Trump and other Republicans stop lying to their voters and admit the truth: Biden wins the election legally.

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