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www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of the authors and Parikh Worldwide Media does not officially endorse, and is not responsible or liable for them. tied after Democrats went home, but his party continues making gains in voter registration. “It was favoring us, and it’s more competitive now,” he said in an interview. “What she got is sort of a dead-cat bounce.” Top Democrats acknowledge privately that they would have been blown out in down-ballot races had Biden limped to Election Day. That’s the real reason former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) kept ratcheting up pres- sure for him to go. “It wasn’t Biden or Trump but Biden or the couch,” said a Democratic strategist. Trump lost California in 2020 by an overwhelming margin; but because of its size, the state still gave Trump more votes - 6 million - than any other. That’s larger than the population ofWisconsin. Even with Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket, Republicans believe the statewide environment is five to seven percentage points more favorable for Trump than four years ago. That doesn’t put the Golden State’s electoral votes in play, but it creates pickup opportunities for the House GOP. Democrats floundered in California and NewYork during the midterms because crime and inflation proved more potent than abortion. Down-ballot candidates struggled with backlash to high taxes and liberal over- reach enabled by one-party rule in Sacramento and Albany. Abysmal turnout in heavily Latino agricultural districts in the Central Valley helped Republican incum- bents. Five California Republicans won House districts in 2022 that had backed Biden two years earlier. Baugh’s wasn’t one of them, but he lost by just three points to Rep. Katie Porter (D), despite being outspent $28.5 million to $3 million. Porter gave up the seat to run for Senate this year but finished third in the March primary. (This is one of three seats nationwide that Democrats are spending heavily to hold because the incumbent sought statewide office. The others are being vacated by Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is running for Senate in Michigan, and Abigail Span- berger, who is running for governor of Virginia.) Baugh supports Trump, but the former Republican leader in the state assembly really isn’t a MAGA type. He launched a humanizing ad last week about his brother’s 2020 overdose death from fentanyl. The House GOP super PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, plans to go on television with commercials supporting Baugh in the coming days. A poll from the University of Southern California released Tuesday put Baugh ahead by 3.7 points, which is within the margin of error. Min says he’s preparing for this race to both determine control of the House and for the outcome to be decided by a few hundred votes. Asked during his visit to the retirement community how he plans to changeWashington, Min replied that he’d be “one of the lowest people on the totem pole” and didn’t want to overstate his potential impact, a rarity for a politi- cian. “The most important thing I’d do,” he said, “is elect Hakeem Jeffries as speaker.”. James Hohmann is a Wash- ington Post editorial writer and columnist specializing in domestic policy and politics. He is also chief commentator for The Post’s video team, offering analysis during all live coverage. And he is a Stanford University lecturer, teaching courses on campaigns and Congress. -TheWashington Post - Continued From Page 3 Democrats Hope ToWin AHouseMajority OnHarris’s California Coattails Commentary News India Times (September 28 - October 4, 2024) October 4, 2024 4 The Big Lie Of 2024: Illegal Immigrant Voting M AGA Republicans are already laying the groundwork for the 2024 edition of election denial. Their latest favorite election lie: Un- documented immigrants are being allowed to vote. If their candidate loses, they will blame illegally cast votes. This might sound familiar. Former president Donald Trump cooked up the excuse for losing the popular vote in 2016: Millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton! Just as his “investigation” of that spurious accusation turned up no evidence of undocumented immigrants voting en masse, the absence of any evidence in case of their defeat in November probably will not stop Repub- licans from crying foul, filing specious legal challenges, refusing to certify results, claiming that the election was rigged and trying to overturn the results. [BEGIN ITAL]Undocumented immigrant voting has never been an actual problem.[END ITAL] “On the heels of Trump’s first campaign for president in 2016, the Bren- nan Center for Justice examined about 23.5 million votes in 42 jurisdictions, looking for evidence of the illegal vot- ing by noncitizens that Trump had claimed was preva- lent,” Axios reported. “It found about 30 suspected illegal votes.” Likewise, the libertarian Cato Institute debunked a bogus study in 2020 attempting to show that large num- ber of undocumented immigrants voted. CNN has also debunked the noncitizen voting lie. “De- cades of data” have demonstrated that existing rules are “very effective at stopping noncitizens from registering and voting in federal elections.” CNN reported: “It happens almost never,” said David Becker, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. “Making something illegal doesn’t stop it from happening, but we know how often it happens, and it’s extremely rare. This is a problem that is very small. And it has almost always occurred because of a misunderstand- ing.” The right-leaning Heritage Foundation’s database of confirmed fraud cases lists less than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid more than one billion lawfully cast ballots.” Republicans apparently do not intend to let facts get in the way. The myth of illegal immigrant voting is back with a vengeance. “The discussion about noncitizen voting picked up steam in 2020, but it grabbed national atten- tion when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) and other Republicans started pushing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act - otherwise known as the SAVE Act,” Democracy Docket’s Courtney Cohn wrote in July. That bill passed the House but went nowhere in the Sen- ate. Republicans recently threatened to shut down the government unless Congress includes the measure to stop illegals - who already are barred from voting - in any continuing resolution. Once again, there is simply no evidence for Republican claims that undocumented immigrants (who logically would not risk detection and deportation to vote) are registered and planning to vote: “In a document outlining why the SAVE Act should be passed, Johnson only provided one piece of data back- ing up his noncitizen voting claims: a 2014 survey that studied the 2008 and 2010 elections. The survey, conducted by a few researchers at small universities, found that “some noncitizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes includ- ing Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections.” The researchers stated their “best estimate” was that over 6% of noncitizens had voted in the 2008 general election. Johnson did not provide any other evidence to cor- roborate this information. Even if the results of this ten-year-old survey are accurate, that does not prove that noncitizens are voting in elections now.” Meanwhile, “numerous reports and studies have shown that instances of noncitizen voting in federal elec- tions are extremely rare.” That will not stop the xenophobic election deniers. Even without data, MAGA election deniers may well seek to stall certification, citing some bogus study and/or con- cocting affidavits based on mere speculation. As we saw in 2020 - when Trump filed more than 60 lawsuits without substantiating instances of fraud - Trump may again try to sow doubt, implore his congressional allies to throw out electoral votes and even whip up another mob. The accusations already have triggered baseless investigations and false accusations. “Most commonly, naturalized citizens are erroneously flagged as nonciti- zens due to election officials cross checking voter rolls with old data,” NPR reported. “That happened to Roqué Marcelo, who was among more than 14,000 registered voters in Tennessee who received letters in June telling them their information ‘matches with an individual who may not have been a United States citizen at the time of obtaining a Tennessee driver’s license or ID card.’” The letter provided instructions to recipients regarding how to verify their citizenship, with an ominous warning that noncitizens who voted would be subject to two years in jail. Naturally, Marcelo and others felt intimidated. A similar episode occurred when “Alabama generated its list of more than 3,200 possible noncitizens by cross- checking the voter rolls with a database of people who had been issued noncitizen identification numbers from the Department of Homeland Security,” the NPR report said. Later, the state secretary of state conceded that many of these could have been subsequently naturalized U.S. citizens entitled to vote. The myth of illegal immigrant voters serves multiple purposes for an increasingly desperate MAGA Republican Party. It serves to stir animosity against immigrants. It may deter some legal immigrants (with “dreamers” in the family, for example) from registering and voting. It also provides an excuse for refusing certification (or worse, attempting to throw out votes incorrectly suspected to be illegally cast). And it might fuel another Jan. 6 confronta- tion and provides yet another rationale for claiming the election was “stolen.” Having signaled what they are up to, however, Re- publicans give authorities, courts and the public ample opportunity to prepare and “prebut” the 2024 big lie. Responsible public officials, including secretaries of state, need to publicly denounce the baseless accusations and reassure the public that noncitizens are not voting. The media must resist the urge to treat bogus claims as legiti- mate and must refuse to characterize the election as “in dispute” simply because Republicans refuse to accept the results. Democrats should uniformly begin now to call out Republicans’ latest attempt to undermine democratic elections. Finally, voters should resist spreading ground- less rumors and internet disinformation. If nothing else, the wave of baseless fearmongering about undocumented immigrant voting should remind the pro-democracy, anti-Trump coalition: If the election is not close, it makes it harder for Republicans to rerun the horror of 2020. Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion for The Washington Post. She is the author of “Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump” and is host of the podcast Jen Rubin’s “Green Room.” -Special to TheWashington Post By Jennifer Rubin Photo:TheWashington Post Photo:TheWashington Post