It has been rightly noted that such laws and their more extreme variants are predicated, in many ways, on Trump’s “big lie” of a supposedly stolen election. But beyond that, we have the appropriation of the “big lie” terminology. And advocates of such changes have made clear in many cases that their motivations were built upon the impact of a “big lie,” if not a “big lie” itself. If one side says the “big lie” was Trump’s voter-fraud allegations and the other side says the “big lie” is the pushback against voting-law changes predicated on them, a natural equivalence — or at least something of a comparison — is drawn in some people’s minds. And Republicans would like something — anything — to change the subject from the idea that their voting bills are premised on a “big lie.”

Source: Washington Post April 05, 2021 16:30 UTC