Dr. Carol Anderson was recently cited in an article written for The Hill and titled “GOP voter suppression measures are working, despite Democratic wins.” Written by veteran journalist Al Hunt, the op-ed discusses how Republican-led efforts to restrict voting access in recent years appear to be decreasing the number of votes cast, especially in states like Georgia and among Black and Hispanic voters. Hunt references Anderson’s chapter on voter fraud in the newly-released collection of essays Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past (Basic Books, 2023). Read an excerpt from Hunt’s article below, along with the full piece.

Whether Georgia or elsewhere, the stated rationale is to “prevent fraud” — it’s just that when pressed, they can’t produce any. Ben Ginsburg, who for decades prior to Trump was the most prominent Republican election lawyer in America, suggests voting fraud is the “the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican party … People spend lots of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.”

This isn’t a new phenomenon. The 15th Amendment prohibited discrimination in the right to vote on the basis of race. After Reconstruction, southern segregationists found a new tact, writes Emory University historian Carol Anderson, in a chapter in a fascinating new book, “Myth America.”

Anderson writes: “The operatives and politicians camouflaged their discriminatory intent behind the charge of voter fraud to create the illusion that their primary concern was election integrity and democracy.”

Sound familiar?