GOP election lawyer. The world should be ashamed of my party's voter suppression tactics

[EleanorR]

Link to tweet

Benjamin L. Ginsberg practiced election law for 38 years. He co-chaired the bipartisan 2013 Presidential Commission on Election Administration.

President Trump has failed the test of leadership. His bid for reelection is foundering. And his only solution has been to launch an all-out, multimillion-dollar effort to disenfranchise voters — first by seeking to block state laws to ease voting during the pandemic, and now, in the final stages of the campaign, by challenging the ballots of individual voters unlikely to support him.

Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I’ve worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered.

The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.

As he confronts losing, Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud. Absent being able to articulate a cogent plan for a second term or find an attack against Joe Biden that will stick, disenfranchising enough voters has become key to his reelection strategy.

“We have volunteers, attorneys and staff in place to ensure that election officials are following the law and counting every lawful ballot,” Justin Riemer, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, said Friday.

That’s not precisely true. The Republican challenging effort is focused almost exclusively in heavily Democratic areas. Signature mismatches will go unheeded by Trump forces in friendly precincts. This is not about finding fraud and irregularities. It’s about suppressing the number of votes not cast for Trump.

My party is destroying itself on the Altar of Trump. Republican elected officials, party leaders and voters must recognize how harmful this is to the party’s long-term prospects.

My fellow Republicans, look what we’ve become. It is we who must fix this. Trump should not be reelected. Vote, but not for him.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Power corrupts. . . . nt

[DonaldsRump]

2. Ginsberg is a bit of a hypocrite

He, James Baker, and Ted Olson were the principal architects of the Florida recount "strategy" in 2000 that gave us that wonder whom we refer to as "W".

Thank you, Mr. Ginsberg, for your sanctimony. Now go back and practice "law."

[C_U_L8R]

3. Didn't Ginsberg show them all how it's done?

There's a lot to atone for

[robbob]

4. Why should the world be ashamed?

It’s you and any Republicans of conscience (assuming there are any left) who should be ashamed. Trump and his ilk (Lindsey, Mitch) are no longer capable of feeling shame. Voter suppression has been a reThug party platform for decades now. What they are only capable of feeling is the all consuming lust for power. The world, and the majority of Americans can only look on, aghast.

[DonaldsRump]

5. Excellent point

The world is not to blame for Trump. It is people like Ginsberg himself.

[Caliman73]

6. I call BULLSHIT!

He's trying to pin this all on Trump when his goddamned party has been doing this since at least Nixon's time. The Southern strategy was an attempt to build coalition with racists to gain power. Republicans have been trying to disenfranchise people since Reagan using drug laws and voter ID laws. Every chance they get they try to gerrymander districts and steal elections.

Don't give me this bullshit that Trump is an aberration. What Trump is, is the mask being ripped off of what the Republicans have been doing for the past 50 years!

[DonaldsRump]

9. K&R to the infinite power n/t

[madaboutharry]

7. Ben Ginsburg is trying to jump on the redemption band wagon.

In 2000, he helped disenfranchise the Democratic voters of Florida in the phony case republicans brought to the Supreme Court. He is a terrible person. Now he is trying to get membership in the “redeemable ex-republican” club.

He is an ugly partisan hack. He is trying to find a seat at the table in post-Trump conservative politics.

I don’t know if he has been anti-Trump all along. Maybe he has. But talking about disenfranchisement now simply reeks of opportunism.

[MyMission]

8. The GOP should be ashamed

The world, and US already ashamed of their tactics, appalled by their actions.

The fact that the GOP is not ashamed is to be expected, and very discouraging.
But the fact that people are leaving the GOP, and or voting for Biden is encouraging.

[niyad]

10. No, you ass. You and your party should be ashamed. The world is horrified.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. The wolf in sheep's clothing begs pity for the slaughter.

[Laurelin]

12. Speaking for my limited

number of Dutch friends, they're all pretty shocked by US voter suppression. Apparently in the Netherlands people are automatically registered to vote.

[Cha]

13. Rt!