Leonard Pitts Jr.: If Republicans couldn't cheat, they couldn't win

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Leonard Pitts Jr.: If Republicans couldn’t cheat, they couldn’t win


My only object here is to express the exhausted frustration one feels as an African American with people constantly asking you to “prove” racism to them — like it’s some UFO hoax, like you’re an unreliable witness to your own experience, like you don’t know what you know, haven’t seen what you’ve seen or lived what you’ve lived. It’s a recurring theme. Someone always seems ready to inform us that what seems terrible, really isn’t.

Honestly, Tony, my first instinct was to ignore you.

That’s become my go-to when readers ask me, as you did in a recent email, to prove to their satisfaction that, “Republicans are keeping Black people from voting.” When I didn’t respond promptly enough, you said this strengthened your feeling “that this is a fabricated issue with no real merit.”

Lord, where to begin? Tony, I’m not your research assistant. Moreover, there’s this new invention called Google, which, with a few keystrokes, can point you to the arguments I and others have made about GOP voter suppression. If, that is, you really want to know. I don’t think you do.

And as I say, I’d have deleted your email except that it roughly coincided with the release last week of a heart-rending video by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times of Florida ex-felons being arrested for alleged voter fraud. This, courtesy of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ so-called Office of Election Crimes and Security, a force putatively tasked with combating voter fraud.

Except, of course, that there’s virtually no such thing in this country — certainly not of such magnitude as to sway an election, much less justify a strike force. So Gov. DeFascist’s election cops are but the latest GOP effort to suppress opposition voting. Otherwise, they’d have to face the fact that they are simply not very popular: losers of seven of the last eight presidential popular votes, stranded on the short end of public opinion on everything from guns to LGBTQ rights to abortion. If they couldn’t cheat, they couldn’t win. ..........(more)

https://www.sunjournal.com/2022/10/23/leonard-pitts-jr-if-republicans-couldnt-cheat-they-couldnt-win/