Copeland's Corner: August 10, 2023

Trump's plot to overturn the 2020 election hinged on the disenfranchisement of people of color.

A few days ago, I sat down and read the Department of Justice indictment against Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. It was late on Friday night. I was tired and planned on reading just the first ten pages of the forty-five-page document and finishing it over the weekend, but once I started it, I couldn’t put it down. It’s both riveting and disgusting the way that this man and his sycophants attempted to thwart the Constitution to keep him in power. I read the whole thing in one sitting and I was struck by something that isn’t getting a lot of media play: this plot hinged on the disenfranchisement of people of color.

In the indictment, Trump is accused of knowingly conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise of and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States—that is, the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.” This is a violation of one of the so called Ku Klux Klan laws put into place in the 1870s when the klan was on the rise due to freed slaves being given the right to vote. Klansmen intimidated, threatened, harassed, lynched, and killed free blacks who dared to attempt to cast a ballot in the South. These laws gave the federal government the right to go into the region and guarantee that blacks were not restricted in exercising this Constitutionally guaranteed right. Minus the hoods and the actual cross burning, Trump and his allies tried to do exactly that.

Trump’s bogus claims of voter fraud hinged on his falsely arguing that there had been various nefarious schemes to either stuff the ballot box, count ballots from ineligible voters or switch ballots from Trump to Biden in a handful of battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Let’s look at what he alleged in some of these states.

In the state of Arizona, it was alleged that a large number of “noncitizens” voted. The claim was that the number of ineligible voters was enough to be determinative as to which candidate won the state (in reality Biden) and that the ballots should be thrown out, thus making Trump the winner, receiving Arizona’s electoral college votes. Arizona has a large Latino population. The word “noncitizen” in the context of Arizona is code for “Mexicans.” The plan was to disenfranchise Mexican American voters, most of whom voted for Biden, and the state would go in the Trump column. The Republican Secretary of State in Arizona found no evidence of voter fraud of any kind in that state and rejected Trump’s claim.

In the state of Georgia, Trump claimed that he had evidence of poll workers in Fulton County stuffing the ballot box. He claimed that there were suitcases filled with Biden ballots that were counted in the middle of the night when no one was watching. This is a lie that gained widespread traction in the right wing media sphere. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, made a presentation to a committee of the Georgia state legislature in which he showed a snippet of video from election night that appeared to show the poll workers behaving in a nefarious manner.  

There were no “suitcases filled with ballots.” The claim was totally fictitious. As for the video, it was a snippet taken out of context. When the legislature and others viewed the entire video, it showed nothing out of the ordinary and that the handling and counting of ballots was conducted precisely in the manner dictated by state law. The was no fraud.

The most egregious part of the Georgia hoax was the lie that two African American women working at the Fulton County polls, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, had engaged in stuffing the ballot boxes in predominantly black Fulton County for Biden. Rudy Giuliani told state officials that Freeman and Moss were “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine.” Giuliani repeated the lie on television. Trump told state officials that the women were known “vote scammers” and fraudsters. He too repeated the lie on television multiple times. As a result, Freeman and Moss, who did nothing but volunteer their time to make sure that the election process moved smoothly, were threatened and harassed by the MAGA cultists. Their lives and family were threatened. It got to the point where the women have had to go into hiding for their own safety. They are currently suing Giuliani for defamation and Giuliani has admitted that the statements he made were false. The Georgia exercise was an attempt to throw out the ballots of African American voters.

In Michigan, the Trump clan claimed that there was a late night “ballot dump” in Detroit that consisted of bogus ballots for Biden. It was explained to Trump that because ballots were coming to the location of the alleged “dump” from all over the state, they were often not delivered for counting until late at night. Trump persisted in the lie anyway. Detroit has a large black population.

In Pennsylvania, Trump claimed that there was massive voter fraud in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a city with a large African American population. Ditto Milwaukee, another city with an exceptionally large black population, where Trump claimed falsely that there were thousands of unlawful votes and middle-of-the-night ballot dumps. State officials in both states found no evidence of voter fraud.

In Nevada, the claim was the same as it was in Arizona that thousands of “noncitizens” voted. Again, after an investigation by state officials, no evidence of voter fraud was detected.

The Trump plan to overturn the 2020 election was anchored by the racist attempt to disenfranchise black and brown voters. They were deliberately targeted. For that reason, I find it to be poetic justice that there are a number of people of color who are holding Trump accountable for his various alleged crimes. African American New York Attorney General Letitia James, black District Attorneys Alvin Bragg in Manhattan and Fani Willis in Georgia and Jamaican-born Judge Tonya Chutkan, who will preside over the trial resulting from the latest indictments.

Trump’s plan was a direct and calculated attack on the voting rights of African and Mexican Americans. He must be held accountable for this.