I suspect people who go around sawing off catalytic converters probably install protective shields on their own cars because they’re afraid theirs will be stolen, too.
Abraham Hamadeh, 31, is the GOP candidate for Arizona attorney general. He doesn’t trust elections, and for a perfectly logical (if misplaced) reason: He voted illegally in the 2008 election.
His mother was a Ron Paul supporter. When he was 17 he changed her absentee ballot to a vote for Barack Obama. He’s now sorry he voted her ballot for Obama, and to make up for it, he promises to “prosecute crimes of the rigged 2020 election” if he’s elected state attorney general. (Read story here).
He shouldn’t be elected dogcatcher, much less attorney general, but that’s up to Arizona’s voters; and if he is, I suspect this promise might not be kept when he finds out all of the 2020 vote cheaters in his states were Republicans. But I do understand why he and other Republicans buy into the myth of rampant voting fraud. When you’re a thief, it’s easy to believe everyone else is a thief, too.
Take the case of Nevada voters Donald and Rosemarie Hartle. She died in 2017, but voted in 2020 anyway. “That is pretty sickening to me, to be honest with you,” her husband said, adding “it makes you wonder how pervasive this is.” Yes indeed, and Republicans across the country held up this case as proof that dead people voted. (Read story here.) He avoided prison time by pleading guilty to voting for Trump a second time using his dead wife’s ballot. (Read story here.)
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, maintains a database of voting fraud cases. Their database revealed “an astonishing fact: In every listed indictment and conviction for voter fraud or other malfeasance in connection with the 2020 presidential general election, when the culprit’s political affiliation is known he or she turns out to be a Republican or unabashed conservative.” (See story here.)
Beyond these anecdotes lies a deeper truth. The Bulwark.com (profile here), a neoconservative website and my source for some of the quoted material above, says, “A breakdown of the constraints of law occurred under the bombarding messages of Donald Trump and his enablers. Among Trump’s followers, the end—one party under Trump—apparently justifies the means of breaking the law to vote for him twice.” That pattern was repeated across the country.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that some Republicans voted twice in the 2020 election. And, like the catalytic converter thieves, they think everyone else is a thief, too. Therefore, they’d better safeguard elections.
But only against nonexistent Democratic thieves.