It’s difficult to determine why Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Duke University School of Medicine grad, believed that legal voting by Democrats somehow equated to stealing elections, but according to a recent tweet by the senator, that’s exactly what he thought. 

Good thing that wasn’t on a test to become a senator. Fail! 

Referring to an article published in the uber-conservative Washington Examiner, Paul accused Democrats of “stealing” elections by persuading people to vote for them—of course, that is exactly how democracy works last time we checked. 

Paul’s tweet read: “How to steal an election: ‘Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.’”

Responses to Paul’s tweet were fast and bitingly accurate. 

Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, tweeted: “This is what we call— wait for it— voting.” 

CNN reporter John Harwood responded with: “Convincing potential voters to cast legal ballots is the how you win elections in a democracy.”

Georgetown University political scientist tweeted: “They really believe it’s a scandal to help legal voters who might oppose them to participate in democracy.” 

But Paul’s tweets aside, as ridiculous as they are, address head-on the vital need for President Joe Biden’s administration to get the voting rights bills enacted ASAP. 

Remember, Paul has denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election and regularly hawked anti-election conspiracy theories. 

Is it possible that Paul is unsure what “steal” means? 

The article he referenced was simply American democracy at its best. Democrats target a battleground state, Wisconsin in the case of the article, a state that Dems have won in eight of the last nine presidential election cycles, using strategies to mobilize voters. 

Meanwhile, both pieces of voting rights legislation (Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act ) have continued to be jammed by Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats have so far refused to change the rules requiring 60 votes for bills to move forward. The Senate is currently split at 50-50.

At least 19 states have enacted 33 laws to disenfranchise American citizens. And the GOP is laying the groundwork as we speak for more voting restrictions and blocks to the ballot in next year’s legislative sessions.