Black voters fear Trump campaign efforts to overturn election have targeted them



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When Michigan and Pennsylvania certified their election results this week, they proved that our democratic processes are resilient, able to withstand the onslaught of lawsuits and other steps President Trump and his legal team have taken to reject claims. votes.

But voting rights advocates and activists still fear that even if the president’s efforts to undermine voting in majority black communities have not been successful, they could still have a negative impact in the long run.

The Trump team’s questioning of the legitimacy of votes in cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Atlanta without presenting any evidence of large-scale illegal voting in court “is truly a dangerous and racialized account of the electoral fraud, ”says Monique Lin-Luse. , an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who filed a lawsuit against the Trump campaign on behalf of black Michigan voters.

The message these efforts send is that “the will of these voters should not be seen as legitimate; their political will expressed at the ballot box does not have the same weight,” Lin-Luse said. “It’s antithetical to a functioning democracy where every vote is supposed to count.”

The DFL complaint last week argues that efforts by Trump’s legal team to pressure local officials not to certify election results violated provisions of the rights law. 1965 ballot, which prohibits the intimidation, threats and coercion of voters.

The president called a Republican member of the Wayne County canvassing board who initially refused to certify the results before approving them, then tried to reverse his approval. “It changes the outcome of the election in Michigan if you take out Wayne County,” Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Guiliani said at a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters.

Mr. Trump has also invited the Republican leaders of the Michigan State Legislature to the White House in an extent seen as a possible attempt to interfere with the way the state allocates voters. But when the Michigan State Canvassing Board certified the results on Monday, House Speaker Lee Chatfield, who met with the president, said the legislature “will uphold the law and respect this result.”

The Trump team’s unverified allegations of electoral fraud have been dismissed by the courts. In Pennsylvania, US District Judge Matthew Brann excoriated the president’s case, which he said offered “unfounded strained legal arguments and speculative accusations, not substantiated in the operational complaint and unsupported by evidence.” He continued, “In the United States of America, that cannot justify the deprivation of the right to vote of just one voter, let alone all voters in its sixth most populous state.”

It is clear that the systems and infrastructure for the election also worked as they should have. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) called the 2020 election “the safest in American history.” (Days after that statement, Christopher Krebs, the agency’s chief, was sacked by Mr. Trump, who called his statement “grossly inaccurate.”) As the legal and electoral systems finally protected the votes, the president’s continued denigration of the process could still have an impact on some voters.

Election experts and voting rights advocates believe the president’s efforts and his campaign to change election results should not go unpunished.

“It’s not about whether they succeed in overthrowing the election,” Lin-Luse says. “It is important to establish the safeguards of our democracy during our elections.”

“It would be difficult to tell minority voters, especially African Americans in urban areas who have seen this happen before, who have heard the rhetoric, that they shouldn’t be worried. They should be worried,” says David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and contributor to CBS News.

Becker notes that Trump actually improved his numbers in Philadelphia and Detroit in 2020 compared to 2016. From Pennsylvania and Michigan, he said Mr. Trump “did not lose these states to black voters in Philadelphia. and in Detroit … he lost those states … to suburban voters. “

“Without a racial element in the targeting, it’s hard to see how the facts support targeting these areas,” Becker added.

“It was like, going back in time. I mean, it was literally a scenario where we watched elected officials argue over whether our votes should count or not,” said Reverend Charles Williams, pastor of King Solomon. Baptist Church in Detroit and president of the Michigan branch of the National Action Network. “It’s no different than having to count the number of candies in the jar before you can vote.”

Heading into the election, a CBS News / BET poll found black voters, especially younger ones, worried their votes were not being counted correctly. A majority said they were concerned about bullying at the ballot box.

Williams says efforts to undermine the results threaten to worsen underlying fears and could have a lingering impact beyond this election.

“With every election in the black community, we need to prime, coerce and engage people in a way that lets them know that their votes [count]”Williams said.” There is a bit of skepticism from people who don’t believe the process is fair. Not that the process is rigged, not that anyone is trying to cheat. But that the process is fair. And it’s unfair that cities like Detroit, cities like Milwaukee, cities like Philadelphia, cities like Atlanta… have to be targeted in such a way that our votes can be thrown out the window. ”

He is hoping the events of the past few days will prompt the Biden administration to urge Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The measure would reinstate provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013, which required states with a history of discrimination to seek federal approval to change voting laws.

“We’re going to make sure we get that message out loud,” Williams said. “But more importantly, we need to educate our community and make sure they understand that this can never happen again.”

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