Historians now generally recognize the 1876 crisis as the moment when white Northerners effectively abandoned multiracial democracy for the next 90 years. Reconstruction had ended; the long night of Jim Crow had begun. For Texas Senator Ted Cruz and several of his Senate colleagues, however, the moment also serves as a useful precedent. On Saturday, these senators called for another electoral commission to be created to investigate the false voter-fraud claims raised by President Donald Trump over the past two months.
“Accordingly, we intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed,” they explained. The proposal is nothing more than political cowardice and illiberal cynicism. It’s also a fitting reminder of how Reconstruction actually ended in 1876, as well as a sign of how some Americans remain hostile to multiracial democracy just 56 years after it was restored to American political life.
Cruz is proposing a solution in search of a problem. There is no evidence of serious or systemic voter fraud anywhere in the Union, let alone any fraud that would have altered the election’s outcome. Every federal court in the nation that has examined the “evidence” from Trump and his allies found it unpersuasive at best and deceptive at worst. Those rulings have come from judges appointed by every president, including Trump himself. Even Lou Dobbs, one of Trump’s most shameless devotees, complained this week that they “still don’t have verifiable, tangible support for the crimes that everyone knows were committed.” The irony of his statement appears to have eluded him.
So why push forward with an electoral commission if there’s no evidence to justify one? Cruz and the other senators noted that, well, actually, many Americans feel strongly that such evidence must exist. They highlighted a Reuters poll that found 39 percent of Americans and 67 percent of Republicans think the election was “rigged.” The senators cited this figure to show why more scrutiny is needed. “Whether or not our elected officials or journalists believe it, that deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear,” said the senators, sowing that very distrust. “It should concern us all. And it poses an ongoing threat to the legitimacy of any subsequent administrations.”
How could four in 10 Americans reach such an alarming conclusion? Cruz and the other senators say they have lost their faith because “the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.” The word “allegations,” as opposed to “evidence,” is crucial here. I’ll concede there have been more allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election than any other in modern history, mainly because Trump and his allies won’t stop making them without any proof. It also doesn’t help that other Republicans—including every senator who signed this statement—have chosen to encourage those claims instead of refuting them.