For people who wonder why there's so much right-wing energy around "vote fraud," (a virtually nonexistent phenomenon) should glean a lesson from Southern history. During the rise of Jim Crow, it was necessary to disfranchise Black voters in the South./1

In order to do this, they came up with the argument that Black voters were poor and ignorant and were either bribed or duped to vote as a bloc against their "true friends."/2

This came to be called "fraudulent" voting--the idea being that no genuine choice was being made. At one point in the South during Civil Rights, a county judge convened a grand jury to haul Black people in and demand to know why they all voted for the same candidate./3

If that has a familiar ring, remember that as a US Attorney Jeff Sessions had elderly black voters arrested and brought before a grand jury to explain why their registrations *weren't* "fraudulent."/4

I knew Jesse Helms and he was not self-conscious about assuming that votes in Durham County (high Black population) were "fraudulent."/5

So the attempt to shut down counting in Detroit isn't really useful for Trump to _win_ (he's already ahead) but to create a legend that votes in Detroit (hmm, what's special about Detroit?) were "stolen" and that's why he lost./6

As Faulkner said, the past isn't dead, it's not even past./7