Rand Paul Inadvertently Tells The Truth About Republican Voter Fraud Claims

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of the Republican Partys staunchest devotees to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, continued to spread such claims this week and in the process delivered one of the more honest statements about voter fraud and stolen elections any Republican lawmaker has made this year.

How to steal an election, Paul tweeted Monday night, before quoting an article from The American Conservative. Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.

The attached piece, which purportedly described Democrats and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergs efforts to steal Wisconsin for President Joe Biden last year, failed to provide any proof of nefarious behavior: Instead, it documented efforts to encourage and Increase Absentee Voting and dramatically expand strategic voter education & outreach efforts, particularly to historically disenfranchised residents.

How to steal an election: Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.https://t.co/LwE3MdeWeG

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How to steal an election: Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.https://t.co/LwE3MdeWeG
Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 27, 2021

As Pauls tweet helpfully noted, all of these efforts were perfectly legitimate: The phrase legally valid is prominently featured in the sentence he chose to excerpt. Routine audits of Wisconsins elections, meanwhile, produced no evidence of fraud or irregularities in last years contest.

But proof of fraud is not the point of this claim or any other Paul, Trump and various Republicans have made over the last year or, really, over the last decade. As Pauls tweet stated more clearly than Republicans typically do, their claims about voter fraud, stolen elections and election integrity are merely euphemisms for the GOPs actual belief that people voting for Democrats is enough to render an election entirely illegitimate. A Democratic victory is, by definition, the result of theft.

This is the core belief of the modern Republican Party , which reacted to the 2020 election by spreading lies about election fraud, attempting to overturn Trumps loss, and fomenting a riotous insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, all because Trump lost what numerous Republican, Democratic and independent election observers have repeatedly called the safest, most secure and most audited election in American history. When that didnt achieve their desired result, they institutionalized the aims of the insurrection , passing more than 30 new laws to restrict voting rights and asserting new levels of partisan control over local and state election systems ahead of the next presidential contest.