How Republicans win presidential elections, according to Republicans: We are the party of middle American morals and values, and the Democrats are the party of amoral weirdos and un-American radicals, so voters naturally prefer us.

How Republicans win presidential elections, according to the mainstream media: Republicans speak more effectively to real Americans, who are mostly white, Christian people in small cities and towns who are more authentically American than those big-city coastal elitists could ever be.

How Republicans win presidential elections, according to the factual record: They cheat.

This has been true in most elections in recent American history, as I’ll detail below. But let’s start with a few examples from this election.

Last week, young voters in Wisconsin (it’s not known how many) received a text message that read: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.” Those are sections of Wisconsin law that refer to absentee voting and the consequences of election fraud, but they could have been about jaywalking. The point was just to scare college students from out of state into thinking they can’t vote.

This is an old GOP trick. When I was a young reporter in New York, I remember instances of fliers being tucked under parked cars’ windshield wipers with messages like “WARNING: If you aren’t up to date on your utility bills, it is illegal to vote.” In Black neighborhoods, naturally. I’d imagine we’ll see a lot of this kind of thing come Election Day.

But this year, we’ll see far worse than that. Election workers, as we know, are terrified. A recent Brennan Center survey found that 38 percent of election workers had received some kind of threat. In Durham County, North Carolina, they’re installing bulletproof glass at election headquarters and equipping poll workers with panic buttons. Will armed MAGA vigilantes be showing up at polling places in Black neighborhoods in the major cities of swing states? I’d be shocked at this point if some don’t. I hope the police are ready.

Cheating takes many forms. Russian........

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