GOP congressman pushes lie that 'illegal votes' in Texas could hurt Trump

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) took to the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to fearmonger about nonexistent voter fraud, wrongly claiming that voter fraud is so bad that it’s possible Donald Trump will lose Texas.

“We have got to have every one of you either volunteer to chair a precinct, be a poll watcher, cause there is going to be cheating going on,” Gohmert said without any evidence.

Gohmert went on to say that “we don’t know how many tens of thousands of people will vote illegally in Texas.”

“We don’t know how many votes will be changed from Republican to Democrat after they vote, especially after voting early,” Gohmert again said without evidence. “We have to have people properly trained on what the rules, what the law is, to make sure that cheating doesn’t happen.”

Gohmert’s remarks echo those of Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed that he lost states such as New Hampshire because of rampant voter fraud. Trump even started a voter fraud commission that wound up finding no instances of voter fraud before it was shut down.

That’s because despite what people like Gohmert and Trump say, there is no evidence whatsoever that there are thousands of people casting illegal ballots in any U.S. elections.

According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, the incidents of voter fraud are so low that there is a bigger chance an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

In fact, in the last presidential election in 2016, it was Republicans who were found guilty of election fraud in a North Carolina House contest.

Texas’ law already says that voters must possess one of a limited selection of acceptable forms of photo identification to vote in person in Texas elections — the kind of voter ID law that Republicans have pushed for across the country, which they say is supposed to prevent the kind of voter fraud Gohmert alleges will take place.

Gohmert’s fact-free fearmongering came a day after he voted against a bill to designate lynching as a federal hate crime.

In his speech on Thursday, Gohmert seemed to lament criticism of that vote.

“They want to call you a racist if you just want the rule of law to be applied across the board,” Gohmert said.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.