How do we know the GOP wants to rig elections? Because they lie

On Tuesday, Larry Kudlow, the Fox personality and former Trump advisor, was on the TV.

You will be shocked to learn he lied. 

“I vote in the state of Connecticut. You don’t need a photo ID. You could vote if you just show them a credit card or a debit card, which anybody can get their hands on. I think it’s a scam."

The context was “election integrity” and voter-ID laws. At the time, the House was debating a bill that would nationalize elections to an alarming degree. (The so-called SAVE America Act passed the following day.) Kudlow’s “commentary” primed Donald Trump to respond. 

“Connecticut is an extremely corrupt voting place,” he said. “That's why a guy like [Richard] Blumenthal can keep getting elected. He admitted he cheated on the war. I went to Vietnam for a couple of days and I spent two more days than he did there. He was never there." 

All but one thing above, which I will get to, is a lie.

I also live in Connecticut. I vote in Connecticut. You cannot walk into a polling station, present a credit card and vote. I don’t know if that would be illegal. I do know it would fail. 

You are permitted to vote without photo-ID, but the documents you are required to produce are the same ones you are required to produce to get a Connecticut drivers license.

In other words, proof of legitimacy. 

According to today’s New Haven Register, those documents include:

a utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or government document that shows their name and address; a Social Security card; or any form of identification that shows the voter’s name and address, name and signature, or name and photograph.”

But Connecticut’s election laws don’t stop there. 

Even if you have photo-ID, or produce the same documents required to get photo-ID, you still have to go through an additional process. Volunteer poll workers find your name and address on a list of voters. That list is maintained by Republican and Democratic registrars. It is created via voter registration, a process that happens in advance of Election Day.

So there are at least two stages, registration and verification.

Here’s Connecticut’s top elections official with the rest of the details:

“Every community has both a Republican and a Democrat responsible for running elections. We use paper ballots. Our voting equipment is not connected to the internet. We conduct rigorous preelection testing and post-election audits. And when an issue is identified, it is investigated and addressed through law and not rhetoric."

What's an example of “when an issue is identified”? In 2023, the state's media was abuzz with news of an attempt to stuff mail-in vote boxes in favor of Bridgeport’s Democratic mayor, Joe Ganim. The perpetrators, all Democrats, were found, prosecuted and convicted. The state’s legislature, which is dominated by Democrats, tightened rules to prevent future abuse.

It’s safe to presume that Larry Kudlow knows the same things I know given that we both live and vote in the state of Connecticut. I think it’s therefore reasonable to conclude that not only is he lying, but that he knows he’s lying. And I think it's important to say that plainly.

A lot of time is spent fact-checking liars in a valiant effort to defend the truth, but the lies themselves are worth paying attention to. Without them, the true position of the GOP would be indefensible. Achieving their goals would be impossible without deceit.

The liars know that fraud is rare. States and localities have multi-stage vetting processes. They know that the rarity of fraud is due to laws that hold criminals accountable. The liars also know voters prefer tradition – that states and localities should be in charge of elections. 

What do the liars really want?

To stop the Democrats from winning.

To do that, the president and his allies need a system with rules in place that suppress the power of voters who favor the Democrats. To do that, they need to take away authority from localities and states. That’s the point of the SAVE America Act. (It is also the point of a lawsuit against Connecticut and other blue states to force them to turn over their voter rolls.) If successful, the effort would give the GOP a means of voiding Democratic victories. 

That’s what they want, but they can’t say that. So they lie. 

They ask “questions” about “election integrity,” as if manifesting the will of the American people were their highest value. They talk about “election security” as if threats by Russian or Chinese aggressors were of actual concern to them. They do this not to raise awareness of problems, or to search for good-faith solutions, but to sabotage trust in free elections. 

And they smear. 

Which brings me to Richard Blumenthal.

Before he ran for the Senate in 2010, he was Connecticut’s attorney general for 20 years. He was popular. Everyone knew running for the Senate was for him a foregone conclusion.

In the run up to Election Day that year, the Times ran a story documenting a few times when Blumenthal seemed to suggest that he served “in” Vietnam. He didn’t. He served stateside for six years in the US Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam War. But most Nutmeggers, as we sometimes call ourselves, were already familiar with his story. It was widely understood what Dick Blumenthal meant to say. The allegations of “stolen valor” fell flat and he won.

Donald Trump often comes back to this moment whenever Blumenthal makes headlines by criticizing him. This time, however, the president didn’t just smear Blumenthal. He smeared the whole state. After all, only an “extremely corrupt voting place” like Connecticut would keep electing a senator who “admitted he cheated on the war. … He was never there." 

"He was never there" is the only true thing Donald Trump said.

Otherwise, he lied, projecting onto his enemies his own criminal intent in the belief that his enemies will protect themselves rather than go on the offensive against him. 

Liars expect us to defend the truth.

They don’t expect us to attack them.