Latinos in Nevada waited in line for 2 hours to vote. Republicans smell a conspiracy.

What Donald Trump really means when he says the election is “rigged.”

On Friday, the last day of early voting in Nevada, the Cardenas Market (a Mexican supermarket) on Bonanza Road in Las Vegas was supposed to be open for early voting until 8pm. But as evening approached, hundreds of voters (who happened to be overwhelmingly Latino) were standing in a line that had snaked through the supermarket and outside to the sidewalk. Voters were waiting two hours to vote. And more kept coming.

So the Clark County Elections Department officially extended voting until 10pm, as a way to ensure that everyone standing in line at 8pm would be able to vote early. “We will not turn people away,” a spokesperson said.

Latinos don't vote? Don't tell that to NV Latinos. The line at Cardenas keeps on growing. Voting goes til 10. #JuntosSePuede #NVTogether http://pic.twitter.com/1nivjcwoPz

— Jennifer Molina (@JenMolina_v) November 5, 2016

Democracy at Cardenas. h/t @Jneri312 http://pic.twitter.com/xcaURdaFMo

— Tim Hogan (@timjhogan) November 5, 2016

These photos were taken by Hillary Clinton campaign operatives, who had electoral reasons to be happy about high Latino turnout in a key state.

But it seems like something everyone who cares about democracy ought to celebrate: Hundreds of people put their lives on hold to wait for hours to vote in this election, and their faith was rewarded.

Unfortunately — and infuriatingly — that is not, in fact, how everyone saw it. Within 24 hours, the extension of voting hours in Cardenas had been taken up by Republicans in the state (and Donald Trump himself) as evidence that the state of Nevada had tried to rig the election by allowing people special voting privileges because they belonged to “a certain group.”

It’s the most racially explicit accusation that Republicans have gotten in their increasingly strenuous dog-whistling about election rigging and voter fraud in 2016. And it’s another reminder that large groups of nonwhite citizens exercising their right to vote is, to some people, an inherently suspicious act.

“You feel free right now? Think this is a free or easy election?”

Donald Trump held a rally in Reno on Saturday, where he was introduced by the head of the Nevada GOP, Michael McDonald. McDonald — who attested earlier this year that his party had “a great relationship with all minority communities” — used his speech to warn attendees that free elections in America were under threat because “a certain group” had been given extra time to vote

“Last night, in Clark County, they kept a poll open till 10 o’clock at night so a certain group could vote. It wasn’t in an area that normally has high transition. The polls are supposed to close at 7. This was kept open till 10. Yeah, you feel free right now? Think this is a free or easy election?”

This is wrong on the facts (the polling place was supposed to close at 8). It’s wrong on the merits (the polling place wasn’t kept open deliberately because of who was trying to vote). It’s wrong on the law (it is perfectly legal to keep a polling place open, and therefore no threat to a free election).

Most importantly, of course, it’s implying that there ought to be something inherently suspicious about a polling place that usually doesn’t attract a lot of voters attracting a lot of voters — and that it’s especially suspicious when those voters are members of “a certain group.”

This isn’t new. It’s the core of the myth of voter fraud — that nonwhite voters don’t have any agency or investment in the election of their own, and that they’re instead being used as pawns by Democrats to create illegitimate majorities. This is the logic behind many forms of voting restriction (like the law in Georgia being used to prosecute African-Americans who drove relatives to the polls).

Because Donald Trump has never seen a subtext he can’t make text, he claimed outright that the voting had been “rigged” in “certain key Democratic polling locations in Clark County.” He said the polls had been kept open so that Democrats could bus in people to vote against him.

There were no buses at Cardenas Market. What Trump is referring to, instead, is a persistent meme among a certain strain of Republican: that Democrats bring bus-fulls of unauthorized immigrants to polling places to cast illegal votes. (In some versions of the meme, these immigrants are being imported directly from Mexico.)

It’s an easy slippage for Trump to invoke: many of his followers tend to conflate “Latino” with “immigrant,” and “immigrant” with “illegal immigrant.” But the reason it’s persisted so long — and the reason it could so easily be used to turn “Democrats allowed a certain group to vote” into “Democrats brought a certain group to vote” — is the assumption that nonwhite Americans don’t care enough to vote, and wouldn’t show up at the polls if they weren’t being used as Democratic shock troops.

Nonwhite Americans are working twice as hard for democracy to get half as much respect

Logically, of course, it makes perfect sense that Latino voters would be particularly motivated to turn out to defeat a candidate who’s spent the last 17 months insulting them. But that appears not to be the way that McDonald and Trump think about it.

Instead, they persist in believing that nonwhite voters (at least the ones who don’t support them) have neither a mind of their own nor a genuine stake in democracy; that they would never take the volition to show up and represent their own interests, and instead dumbly vote the party line.

There is no way for nonwhite Americans to participate in democracy in a “legitimate” way under this logic.

When nonwhite Americans don’t vote — or even vote in slightly lower levels in one election than the last — they’re blamed for apathy. If too many of them vote, it’s evidence of fraud.

When nonwhite Americans protest peacefully, those protests are either ignored or covered as if they’re violent. When they protest disruptively, they’re regarded as dangerous thugs.

When nonwhite Americans don’t assimilate into their communities, they must be a terroristic “fifth column”; when they show a desire to assimilate, they must be trying to cover up their terroristic aims.

The line at Cardenas Market wouldn’t have been as long as it was if early voting hadn’t ended the Friday before the election. But Nevada, like many states, restricts early voting the weekend before the election, which has the impact of making it harder for people who work during the week to vote.

Many Republicans wave off accusations of “voter suppression” when this sort of thing happens, saying that if people really care about democracy enough to vote, they will find a way to do so. Not “caring” enough to get around an impossible work schedule apparently disqualifies you from democracy. But what we learned this weekend at Cardenas Market (once again) is that caring too much is suspicious, too.

Source: http://ift.tt/2eMKFiH