General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I do not understand how Republicans can lie and get away [View all]JHB
(37,160 posts)For instance, for longer than I've been alive conservatives have nursed a grudge over the 1960 election, claiming that Kennedy stole the election by fraud, winning Illinois by Mayor Daley of Chicago stuffing ballot boxes with "votes" by dead people.
However, even if that did happen, the election didn't hinge on Illinois. Even if he state had gone for Nixon, Kennedy still would have won the election.
Let's also note that Republicans have always just assumed there was fraud in Chicago (granted, considering Daley's reputation, isn't particularly far fetched), they've never tried to prove it. They even try to dress up that lack of investigation as something noble, that Nixon let it drop "for he good of the country". The real reason Republicans got him to drop it was precisely because it wouldn't change the outcome of the election, and an investigation might expose Republicans' own electoral machinations in other areas of the state.
But that hasn't stopped them from waving it as the bloody shirt of Democratic "voter fraud" for half a century. It's too useful, laying the groundwork for their current fraud claims to justify voter suppression.