Voter suppression becomes delegitimation when fused to fraud conspiracy claims

Evidence

Delegitimation of the opposition party is also carried on by disenfranchising its partisans. Partisan efforts to create structural electoral advantage for themselves have a long history. But voter suppression today is justified in conspiracist terms. The mechanisms of disenfranchisement include creating obstacles to registration, narrowing windows for voting, reducing the availability of polling places, requiring specific forms of identification, and purging voter rolls. These measures are meant to legally disenfranchise voters or to create voter confusion and intimidation. The moves are strategic—to entrench Republican majorities—but the effort is now inseparable from the conspiracist claim that unnamed forces are delivering millions of fraudulent voters to the polls. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 209

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishes ordinary strategic structural advantage-seeking (long-standing partisanship) from conspiracist voter fraud claims that recast opponents as illegitimate — relevant to comparing democracies facing comparable claims. — connects to: Scapegoating fuses immigrant groups, voter fraud, and partisan opposition into one conspiratorial target — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 143; Claims of routine unconstitutional overreach convert normal contestation into delegitimation. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 205; Conspiracist delegitimation frames electoral defeat as existential national transformation — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 206 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Voter suppression targets the political power of liberal and nonwhite majorities. #expands (0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 660