Trump Supporter Charged With Vote Fraud, Grammar Infraction [Greg Laden's Blog]

How can you tell what a megalomaniac is really up to? You find out what the megalomaniac is accusing everyone else of. That’s what they are up to.

While the just barely brighter than dim press and pundits are focusing on Trump’s call for his followers to carry out voter suppression in African American and Hispanic neighborhoods on November 8th, or before at early voting elections, and accusing the Democrats of voter fraud (suppression and fraud are different, sort of opposite, things) something different is actually happening.

This is how dog whistles work. Dog whistles, usually used by conservatives, are thought by liberals to be a way of saying things that you can’t actually say because they are obnoxious or illegal. But no, that is not how they actually work. Dog whistles are much more subtle and nuanced than that. The recipients of the message unwittingly (but not unwillingly) adopt opinions or, in some cases, carry out acts, directed by constantly repeated well placed dog whistles.

The dog whistles are not explicit instructions. The are cues that set up a mind set that leads to a desire to act or think in a certain way.

Think about it. If you tell people who hate Democrats and Hillary Clinton that Democrats and Hillary Clinton are going to carry out voter fraud, again, and again, and again, what are they going to do? They are going to a) carry out their own voter fraud and b) do so with the justification that they are afraid that the other side is busy carrying out voter fraud.

So, from the Huffington Post, on reporting several apparent cases of voter fraud in Iowa:

Police in Des Moines, Iowa, said Friday that they had arrested Terri Lynn Rote, 55, on suspicion of voting twice in the general election.

Rote, a registered Republican, allegedly submitted ballots at two different early-voting locations in Polk County, Iowa…

She said she feared her first vote for Trump would be changed to a vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

As expected.

There are two other individuals in the same area being looked at, neither has been arrested yet.

Apparent voting felon Rote is known to have commented, “I wasn’t planning on doing it twice. It was a spur of the moment,” a comment for which charges from the local grammar police are expected soon.