Stealing elections, voter fraud, gerrymandering and suppression has always been a problem in democracies. Everybody knew it happened, and it was considered bad manners. It was a shameful little secret done when they thought no one was looking.

It was bipartisan, and usually a local problem, typically down at the municipal or ward level. After the Civil War, in the South, the practice was extended by Southern Democrats at the State level to disenfranchise blacks. Today, it has become a widespread, nationwide problem by an increasingly racist and nativist Republican Party gradually sliding into minority status.

It is now no longer something done in back rooms or smoke filled precinct houses. They're doing it out in the open now, they're proud of it! They feel they owe it to their constituents to show how they are doing everything they can to keep "unAmerican" people, like blacks or ethnics or Liberals or "citified elites" from taking over "their" country.

Remember how Conservative posters here on the Zone used to solemnly tells us "Every democracy in history has always restricted the franchise." Now you know what they really meant, and why.