It’s straightforward to see the evident hypocrisy of Brian Pritchard, the Republican official in Georgia and outspoken election denier, who was discovered responsible this week of voting illegally 9 instances. A decide apparently didn’t purchase Pritchard’s claims that he had been unaware that his probation from felony forgery fees had not ended when he illegally forged his vote. All that is ironic contemplating voter fraud is a permanent conservative boogeyman regardless of scant proof that such rampant fraud exists.
But any schadenfreude that could be derived from Pritchard’s voting violations, which resulted in an order on Wednesday to pay a $5,000 effective and obtain a public reprimand, is short-lived. It appears stunted by one other piece of headline-making voter fraud information this week: A Texas court docket of appeals reversed a five-year jail sentence for Crystal Mason, a Black lady who voted illegally in 2016 after unintentionally casting her poll whereas technically nonetheless a felon underneath Texas legislation. (The state bars convicted felons from voting till a supervised launch has been accomplished.)
Within the easiest phrases, the reversal is nice information; it’s onerous to not really feel emotional studying Mason’s assertion celebrating that she’s going to stay a “free Black lady.” However the wildly disparate punishments handed to Mason and Pritchard—a white man—over extremely comparable offenses as soon as once more underscores the deep flaws of a system borne out of a push to repair a just about nonexistent drawback. That Mason’s ordeal occurred underneath the watch of Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton, who led the warfare on voter fraud whereas underneath indictment for securities fraud, provides to the dissonance. However for conservatives who’ve lengthy relied on voter fraud fears to dam poll entry, that whiplashing dissonance is exactly the purpose. As my colleague Pema Levy wrote in 2019:
Elevating fears of fraud so as to make it tougher for folks—notably folks becoming sure demographic profiles—to vote didn’t begin with [the Trump] administration, and even up to now 100 years. As Harvard College historian Alexander Keyssar lays out in his 2000 e-book, The Proper to Vote: The Contested Historical past of Democracy in america, the tactic dates again to the early a long time of the nineteenth century. All through US historical past, politicians and activists ginned up tales about fraud so as to preserve their opponents from the polls. “Legislative debates have been sprinkled closely with tales of poll field stuffing, miscounts, hordes of immigrants lined as much as vote because the machine instructed, males trooping from precinct to precinct to vote early and sometimes,” he writes.
Put one other method, these legal guidelines have been by no means meant to harm Brian Pritchard. This week, we have been reminded of that after once more.