The top two voting issues for Americans, according to Pew Research Center, were the economy and terrorism, followed by foreign policy, health care, gun policy and immigration. During his campaign, Trump called for building a wall at the Mexican border, draining “the swamp” (meaning ending corruption in Washington, D.C.) and opposing free trade deals. Clinton’s campaign centered on health care, rights for women, minorities and LGBT and fair taxes.
But in a battle of slogans—"I'm With Her" vs. "Make America Great Again”—both campaigns were fraught with scandals and negative attacks.
Trump opponents were fueled by reports of sexual misconduct, including a leaked "Access Hollywood" recording of him bragging about groping women. Opponents also focused on Trump’s controversial comments and Tweets on immigrants, race and more, his attacks on the news media and violent protesters who lobbied for his election.
Clinton opponents, meanwhile, rallied around chants of "Lock her up," citing an ongoing FBI investigation into possible improper use of her personal email server during her time as secretary of state. The FBI concluded in July 2016 that no charges should be made in the case, but on October 28, then-FBI Director James Comey informed Congress the FBI was investigating more Clinton emails. On November 6, two days before the election, Comey reported to Congress that the additional emails did not change the agency’s prior report.
Going into election night, Clinton led in nearly all final polls. According to The New York Times and based on exit polls, Trump's win was attributed to his ability to not only consolidate the support of white voters (especially those without college degrees), but with minority and lower-income groups, as well (Editors 2-3).
A final dramatic interlude would give ulcers to her [Hillary’s] supporters. Twelve days before the election, the FBI’s Comey sent a letter to Congress saying that the investigation into the sexting habits of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner led to the discovery of e-mails from Clinton’s server, likely sent or received by Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest personal aide.
The letter shocked the media and launched a breathless reassessment of her chances. Though the announcement contained no real content, and a week later, Comey would come forth to say that no new e-mails were found, the news provided traction to fears that Clinton’s continued political career would continue to be a never-ending parade of investigations and leaks. Republican-leaning independents and outright partisans came home to Trump, perhaps experiencing flash-backs to the 1990s and the media’s public obsession with Clinton scandals.
Indeed, Comey’s role in the campaign underscored how little attention traditional policy issues received compared to hyped-up scandals. Trump’s agenda promises little real help to those voters who backed him, but plenty of assistance to wealthy Americans. Yet there was a single issue in this race that dominated everything else, and it was this: Who is an American?
Trump’s flirtation with white supremacists, the anti-semitic nature of his campaign rhetoric, his constant bashing of immigrants generally and specifically Mexicans, his treatment of women and vision of their role in society, all made him a throwback to a time before the US debate over the virtues of social diversity.
In his criticisms of political correctness and depiction of an apocalyptic America, Trump found a constituency—of white voters in communities threatened by the all too real changes facing the United States—that Republicans had represented before but never with such alacrity. Their reaction to a changing America, catalyzed by Trump’s demagogic appeals, generated an electoral firestorm that few foresaw. Clinton’s more optimistic vision that emphasized the new picture of America clearly didn’t resonate with working class white voters who once reliably pulled the lever for her party’s previous nominees.
For all the demographic changes the United States has seen in recent years, white voters remain the largest single constituency and now, in the words of one electoral analyst, they are voting like a minority group. Trump’s ability to drive them out echoes the leverage of enthusiasm used by Obama to deliver his majorities in 2008 and 2012. The question that will haunt Democrats, at least into 2020, will be whether a different candidate—one without Clinton’s unique and overbearing history—could have held the center (Fernholz 13-14).
When Donald Trump claimed, "the election's going to be rigged," he wasn't entirely wrong. But the threat was not, as Trump warned, from Americans committing the crime of "voting many, many times." What's far more likely to undermine democracy in November is the culmination of a decade-long Republican effort to disenfranchise voters under the guise of battling voter fraud. The latest tool: Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.
The data is processed through a system called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which is being promoted by a powerful Republican operative, and its lists of potential duplicate voters are kept confidential. But Rolling Stone obtained a portion of the list and the names of 1 million targeted voters. According to our analysis, the Crosscheck list disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters – with some of the biggest possible purges underway in Ohio and North Carolina, two crucial swing states with tight Senate races.
Like all weapons of vote suppression, Crosscheck is a response to the imaginary menace of mass voter fraud. In the mid-2000s, after the Florida-recount debacle, the Bush administration launched a five-year investigation into the allegedly rampant crime but found scant evidence of wrongdoing. Still, the GOP has perpetuated the myth in every national election since. Recently, North Carolina Board of Elections chief Kim Strach testified to her legislature that 35,750 voters are "registered in North Carolina and another state and voted in both in the 2012 general election." … Yet despite hiring an ex-FBI agent to lead the hunt, the state has charged exactly zero double voters from the Crosscheck list. Nevertheless, tens of thousands face the loss of their ability to vote – all for the sake of preventing a crime that rarely happens. So far, Crosscheck has tagged an astonishing 7.2 million suspects, yet we found no more than four perpetrators who have been charged with double voting or deliberate double registration.
On its surface, Crosscheck seems quite reasonable. Twenty-eight participating states share their voter lists and, in the name of dispassionate, race-blind Big Data, seek to ensure the rolls are up to date. To make sure the system finds suspect voters, Crosscheck supposedly matches first, middle and last name, plus birth date, and provides the last four digits of a Social Security number for additional verification.
In reality, however, there have been signs that the program doesn't operate as advertised. Some states have dropped out of Crosscheck, citing problems with its methodology, as Oregon's secretary of state recently explained: "We left [Crosscheck] because the data we received was unreliable."
In our effort to report on the program, we contacted every state for their Crosscheck list. But because voting twice is a felony, state after state told us their lists of suspects were part of a criminal investigation and, as such, confidential. Then we got a break. A clerk in Virginia sent us its Crosscheck list of suspects, which a letter from the state later said was done "in error."
The Virginia list was a revelation. In all, 342,556 names were listed as apparently registered to vote in both Virginia and another state as of January 2014. Thirteen percent of the people on the Crosscheck list, already flagged as inactive voters, were almost immediately removed, meaning a stunning 41,637 names were "canceled" from voter rolls, most of them just before Election Day.
We were able to obtain more lists – Georgia and Washington state, the total number of voters adding up to more than 1 million matches – and Crosscheck's results seemed at best deeply flawed. We found that one-fourth of the names on the list actually lacked a middle-name match. The system can also mistakenly identify fathers and sons as the same voter, ignoring designations of Jr. and Sr. A whole lot of people named "James Brown" are suspected of voting or registering twice, 357 of them in Georgia alone. But according to Crosscheck, James Willie Brown is supposed to be the same voter as James Arthur Brown. James Clifford Brown is allegedly the same voter as James Lynn Brown.
And those promised birth dates and Social Security numbers? The Crosscheck instruction manual says that "Social Security numbers are included for verification; the numbers might or might not match" – which leaves a crucial step in the identification process up to the states. Social Security numbers weren't even included in the state lists we obtained.
We had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."
Swedlund's statistical analysis found that African-American, Latino and Asian names predominate, a simple result of the Crosscheck matching process, which spews out little more than a bunch of common names. No surprise: The U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. If your name is Washington, there's an 89 percent chance you're African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there's a 94 percent chance you're Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there's a 95 percent chance you're Asian.
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Every voter that the state marks as a legitimate match receives a postcard that is colorless and covered with minuscule text. The voter must verify his or her address and mail it back to their secretary of state. Fail to return the postcard and the process of taking your name off the voter rolls begins.
This postcard game amplifies Crosscheck's built-in racial bias. According to the Census Bureau, white voters are 21 percent more likely than blacks or Hispanics to respond to their official requests; homeowners are 32 percent more likely to respond than renters; and the young are 74 percent less likely than the old to respond. Those on the move – students and the poor, who often shift apartments while hunting for work – will likely not get the mail in the first place.
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In January 2013, [Kris] Kobach [Kansas Secretary of State] addressed a gathering of the National Association of State Election Directors about combating an epidemic of ballot-stuffing across the country. He announced that Crosscheck had already uncovered 697,537 "potential duplicate voters" in 15 states, and that the state of Kansas was prepared to cover the cost of compiling a nationwide list. That was enough to persuade 13 more states to hand over their voter files to Kobach's office.
In battleground-state Ohio, Republican Secretary of State John Husted's Crosscheck has flagged close to half a million voters. In Dayton, we tracked down several of the suspects on our lists. Hot spots of "potential duplicate" voters, we couldn't help but notice, were in neighborhoods where the streets are pocked with rundown houses and boarded storefronts. On Otterbein Avenue, I met Donald Webster, who, like most in his neighborhood, is African-American.
Crosscheck lists him registered in Ohio as Donald Alexander Webster Jr., while registered a second time as Donald Eugene Webster (no "Jr.") in Charlottesville, Virginia. Webster says he's never been a "Eugene" and has never been to Charlottesville. I explained that both he and his Virginia doppelgänger were subject to losing their ability to vote.
… Robert Fitrakis, a voting-rights attorney, … examined our Crosscheck data. I showed him Donald Webster's listing – and page after page of Ohio voters. Fitrakis says that the Ohio secretary of state's enthusiasm for Crosscheck fits a pattern: "He doesn't want to match middle names, because he doesn't want real matches. They're targeting people with clearly defined ethnic names that typically vote for the Democratic Party. He wants to win Ohio the only way he knows how – by taking away the rights of citizens to vote."
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Kobach's Crosscheck purge machinery was in operation well before Trump arrived on the political scene – and will continue for elections to come. Low voter turnout of any kind traditionally favors the GOP, and this is the party's long game to keep the rolls free of young people, minorities and the poor. … (Palast “GOP’s” 1-3).
We should not be blind to the fact that Republican-controlled states have continued to use old and improved upon disenfranchisement tactics. The League of Women Voters recently outed thirteen guilty states.
This year, and for several years, there has been a concerted effort in many states to stop some voters from voting, or to make it much harder for them to participate. Since the Supreme Court rolled back key provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, elected officials have purged existing voters from the rolls, made cuts to early voting, reduced polling places, put in place strict voter photo ID laws and levied onerous voter registration restrictions.
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Tight margins in some key elections show that suppression may play a role.
In Wisconsin, President-elect Trump beat Secretary Clinton by roughly 27,000 votes, however according to federal court, 300,000 registered voters lacked the proper photo ID.
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In 2016, the League [of Women Voters] worked to make sure voters impacted by new laws were aware of these restrictions. In Ohio, the League made thousands of phone calls to inform voters about that state’s purge. In Virginia, the League conducted outreach so voters knew about the new ID law. In Kansas, the League worked to register voters and provide them information. Across the country League members volunteered as non-partisan poll observers.
What states rigged their elections? Here’s the list of 13 states with new voting restrictions in effect in the 2016 election:
1. Alabama saw a new restrictive photo ID requirement in 2016. There is ongoing litigation that could require voters to provide more burdensome documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
2. Arizona for the first time had limitations on mail-in ballot collection. This law made it a felony to turn in another voter’s completed ballot. This practice is popular for rural and Native American communities that do not have access to reliable transportation or postal offices.
3. Indiana now permits election officers to demand voters provide proof of identification. This law subjects voters to an additional and duplicative voter identification requirement that did not exist before the law was enacted.
4. Kansas continued attempts to require documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote by mail and at the DMV. Courts overturned these requirements but many voters who tried to register were put on a suspense list.
5. Mississippi passed a restrictive photo ID requirement that was allowed to go into effect after the U.S Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.
6. New Hampshire enacted a new photo ID law, requiring voters without acceptable ID to be photographed at the polls, and the photograph to be affixed to an affidavit.
7. Ohio made cuts to early voting and changed absentee and provisional ballot rules. The Buckeye State also eliminated the period known as “Golden Week”, when voters can register and cast a ballot on the same day. The Secretary of State also purged more than 1 million Ohio voters from the registration rolls.
8. Rhode Island voters needed to provide a valid photo ID to vote this year. Voters without ID could only cast provisional ballots.
9. South Carolina for the first time required voters who have photo IDs to produce them in order to vote in this presidential election. Voters without ID needed to sign an affidavit at the polls and could only cast a provisional ballot.
10. Tennessee lawmakers made the photo ID law already in place more restrictive by limiting acceptable IDs to only those issued by the state or federal government. The state conducted an illegal purge of voters who hadn’t recently voted.
11. Texas instituted one of the most restrictive photo ID laws in the nation, but was blocked in the courts. The state then required voters with ID to produce it, and individuals lacking the official ID could vote only after showing a different form of identification and signing a declaration.
12. Virginia limited voter registration by civic organizations and required restrictive photo ID for the first time.
13. Wisconsin reduced early voting hours on weekdays and eliminated them entirely on weekends. Voters also were required to show photo IDs for the first time (Courtney 1-2).
Then there is this revelation that Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary for Bill Clinton, revealed on Facebook September 28, 2020.
A news outlet in the United Kingdom has obtained the massive database used by the Trump campaign’s digital operation in 2016. Their investigation found that 3.5 million Black voters were sorted into a “Deterrence” category — voters the campaign wanted to stay home on Election Day.
The campaign used an algorithm to sort nearly 200 million voters into one of eight categories, which it then targeted with tailored Facebook ads. Black voters overwhelmingly made up the “Deterrence” category: in Georgia, for instance, Black people make up 32 percent of the population but comprised 61 percent of the Trump campaign’s “Deterrence” category. It was the same story across multiple swing states: the Trump campaign used its vast database to disproportionately target Black voters on Facebook and other social media with negative ads designed to discourage them from voting.
Make no mistake: this is digital voter suppression. And thanks to Facebook’s practically nonexistent rules on political advertising at the time, no complete public record exists to examine the ads used by the Trump campaign or the audience lists it used to target voters. That means we have no way of knowing how much money Facebook raked in through the Trump campaign’s attempts to suppress the votes of Black Americans. Time and again, Mark Zuckerberg has shown he cares more about profits than protecting our democracy. Even now, multiple scandals later, his new rules for political advertising and misinformation are woefully insufficient and arbitrarily enforced. He hasn’t changed one bit (Reich 1).
Reich’s post is based on this article: https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-millions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016?fbclid=IwAR2NWQW0zbaAXtBdRCPpAxvCA8qbZwbBZU5zT3D47mRb8tyFwvs2oYGKZWA
Works cited:
Courtney, Sarah, “The 2016 Presidential Election Was Rigged.” League of Woman Voters, November 23, 2016. Web. https://www.lwv.org/newsroom/press-releases/2016-presidential-election-was-rigged
Editors of History.com, “The 2016 US Presidential Election.” History, August 5, 2019. Web. https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/us-presidential-election-2016
Fernholz, Tim, “How Hillary Clinton Blew It.” Quartz, November 8, 2016. Web. https://qz.com/831141/2016-presidential-election-results-how-hillary-clinton-blew-it/
Palast, Greg, “The GOP’s Stealth War against Voters.” Rolling Stone, August 24, 2016. Web.https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-247905/
Reich, Robert, Facebook entry, September 28, 2020.
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