It's easy to laugh at this, both because you appreciate farce and because you need to do something to mask the pain, but there's an insidious sleight of hand here. It is true that there are dead people who are registered to vote, since most people forget to notify their county elections board of their death. It is also true that there are people—like Steve Bannon, Steven Mnuchin, and the president's own daughter—who, because they have lived in more than one state of late, still appear on more than one voter roll. To be clear, neither one of these true statements has any effect on the integrity of election outcomes, but they're at least...true. When it comes to this president, that's borderline cause for celebration.
Along with these two truths, though, President Trump throws in one outlandish, demonstrably false lie: that there are undocumented immigrants who illegally vote. This tinfoil hat fodder has been debunked by just about everyone you can imagine, but by sandwiching his lie between two truths to make it appear less egregious, he signals to Republican-controlled state governments that they have carte blanche to engage in voter suppression efforts, so long as they give it some septic, administrative-sounding label like "tidying up," "cleaning house," or "updating the voting rolls." Guess which registrations mysteriously and disproportionately disappear during exercises like these? Click if you want, but be honest: You already know.
Processing President Trump's democracy-destroying hijinks du jour has already become an exhausting exercise, because the man is committing his crimes against reality so quickly that there's scarcely time to dissect the horrifying implications of one before another comes along, short-circuits the alarm cycle, and starts it all over again. He is walking chaos theory: if he just keeps the hits coming fast enough, the very real danger is that the collective national outrage will first give way to apathy, and then to resignation.
The best way for Americans to fight these feelings of helplessness and hopelessness is to search out new, creative ways to channel their entirely justified fury toward some good, productive use. Midterm elections are less than two years away, but between now and then, President Trump has made it very clear that some bullshit of epic proportions is coming down the pike, so start with this: go make damn sure you're registered to vote.
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