Longtime Republican Election Lawyer Confesses: Systemic Voter Fraud Is GOP’s ‘Loch Ness Monster’

AP Photo/Steve Karnowski

Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican who practiced election law for nearly forty years, says his party is “destroying itself on the altar of Trump” when it comes to its “multi-million dollar effort to disenfranchise voters.”

In an op-ed in The Washington Post on Sunday, Ginsberg says this strategy is “as un-American as it gets.” He writes:

Trump has enlisted a compliant Republican Party in this shameful effort. The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases around the country this year. In exactly none — zero — are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers.

Ginsberg acknowledges that these lawsuits revolve around a “mythical fraud claim” which stems from the reasoning that “an expanded electorate means Trump loses.”

He explains:

This attempted disenfranchisement of voters cannot be justified by the unproven Republican dogma about widespread fraud. Challenging voters at the polls or disputing the legitimacy of mail-in ballots isn’t about fraud. Rather than producing conservative policies that appeal to suburban women, young voters or racial minorities, Republicans are trying to exclude their votes.

As an example, Ginsberg cites Texas Republicans’ attempt to throw out nearly 127,000 ballots already cast at a drive-through voting center in the state’s most populous county, and a Democratic-friendly one at that. That effort was rejected Sunday by the state Supreme Court, although a similar lawsuit is underway in federal court, with a hearing set for Monday morning.