A conservative Washington Post columnist slammed the GOP for promoting voter fraud conspiracies in light of mounting evidence in North Carolina that a Republican campaign did exactly that.
The Post‘s Jennifer Rubin wrote that while “Republicans have done untold damage to the integrity of elections by their false claims of fraud,” they now are staying mum in the face of the real thing.
“This is the most blatant and arguably serious example of putting party above country, and above democracy,” Rubin wrote. “You have to question whether a party that is uncommitted to preserving the credibility and integrity of elections is fit to govern.”
The conservative writer pointed out multiple instances of the GOP promoting the conspiracy — with the president’s now-defunct Election Integrity Commission, with arguably racist voter ID laws and Donald Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in California (which were recently echoed by outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan).
Americans now “have a big, ugly and blatant example of what is very likely election fraud” in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, where an operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless has been accused of tampering with and stealing absentee ballots on behalf of Republican candidate Mark Harris. The matter is now under investigation at the state level.
“The absentee ballots, wouldn’t you know, are disproportionately from African American neighborhoods,” Rubin mused.
The country is lucky that Democrats are soon to be in control of the House of Representatives, the columnist noted, because there are multiple steps — including refusing to seat Harris — that they can take to make sure the apparent GOP victory is not fraudulent.
“If Harris’s apparent victory is voided, the Democratic House majority will assure he is not seated,” Rubin wrote. “But do we have any doubt that if Republicans were in the majority they’d find some rationale for sitting a Republican, no matter what evidence was presented and how many African American votes were discarded?”
Image: Republican Mark Harris speaking at a MAGA rally (screengrab)