After the defeat of former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Republicans across the nation launched investigations into alleged voter fraud. In six states, including Texas, those investigations overwhelmingly targeted Democrats and racial minorities according to a comprehensive analysis done by the Washington Post.
The Post looked at six states: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia, and Texas. In total, there were 136 prosecutions for voter fraud. The race and political party was apparent in all Florida cases and roughly half of those in Texas and Ohio. Each state records the information differently, but a consistent pattern emerges from what is known.
Registered Democrats made up 58 percent of those charged, while Republicans were only 23 percent. More disturbing, 76 percent of those prosecuted were Hispanic or Black. Only 24 percent were white.
There are two conclusions that can be drawn from this data. One, that Hispanic, Black, and Democratic voters simply commit more voter fraud than white and Republican voters or two, that Republican state governments instituted a racist and targeted crackdown.
In Texas, the latter seems far more likely. State Republicans have a long history of attacking the voting status of minorities and marginalized people who tend to vote Democratic. In 2018, they famously launched a mass challenge to the voting roles that targeted the homeless.
Of the 136 cases, 42 of them ended in dismissal, acquittal, or charges dropped. In three states, not a single guilty verdict was obtained. According to The Post, the “vast majority” of convictions involves minor offenses, which the defendants often argued were mistakes rather than intentional fraud.
Attorney Ken Paxton responded to the article by saying the report pushed a “false narrative” because race was only determined in half the Texas cases. Paxton did not offer The Post any more information to help them check their math.
Individual voter fraud is very, very rare. The states that were part of the analysis by The Post represent 38,455,312 votes cast. That only 136 cases were prosecuted out of that number clearly proves that there was no widespread or systemic voter fraud. In Florida’s case especially, at least some of the people charged simply thought they had the right to vote when they did not.
Texas Republicans’ attempt to prove election fraud in 2020 have mostly blown up in their faces. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was forced to shell out $25,000 after offering rewards for finding voter fraud. The person who collected it had witnessed a Pennsylvania Republican vote twice in one day, the second time as his son, a registered Democrat. Last year, Republican megadonor Steve Hotze was indicted for launching a private investigation than ended with someone holding an air conditioning repair man at gunpoint in order to prove a bizarre conspiracy theory about illegal vote harvesting. Meanwhile, Paxton has continued to hunt for voter fraud despite spending millions of taxpayer dollars to close less than thirty cases, none of which were felonies.
