Voting Rights Under Threat

 The big lie of voting fraud and a stolen election (the Presidential election of 2021 was NOT stolen) prompted the second storming of the U.S. Capitol on 6 January. We are going to deal with the repercussions of that lie and that event for a long time to come. The #FormerGuy and his minions filed dozens of lawsuits in an attempt to have courts reverse the election results. #FormerGuy hoped that at least one of these would be heard by the Supreme Court where his three conservative appointees would (of course, in his addled thinking) side with him (loyalty to the brand) and put him back in office. That did not happen. 

The GOP does see the handwriting on the wall. They were beaten at the polls because voters who were tired of #FormerGuy turned out in greater numbers than the current personality cult that is the Republican Party. At the federal level, Congress is attempting to pass voting rights expansion to counteract the reversion in many states to laws that inhibited voting, especially after the Supreme Court sank much of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its Shelby County v. Holder decision of 2013. As noted by Vann R. Newkirk II in 2018, this decision, with its false declaration by Chief Justice John Roberts that “our country has changed” in regards to racism (it has not), sets the stage for new restrictions on voting rights and indeed, violence against the Fourteenth Amendment itself.

Bringing us to the present. In Georgia and many other states, legislatures controlled by Republicans and Republican governors, are moving ahead at flank speed to restrict the rights of voters -- expressing the fake idea that this will prevent fraud and therefore make elections “fair”. In truth, there are states that are working to expand voting rights, as well as restrict them. The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU has a great round-up as of February 2021 of what is in the works. At the Supreme Court earlier this week, in two different lawsuits that are an open attempt to disenfranchise voters of color, the attorney arguing for the Republican position gave the real game away. Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Michael Carvin, representing the Arizona Republican Party, “What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC here in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct voter ballot disqualification rules on the books?” To which Carvin replied, “Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us.” Despite this overt admission that the failure of the Republican Party is its policies and not voter fraud, observers at the Supreme Court believe that SCOTUS is likely to rule in favor of more restrictive voting laws.

Democracy in the United States hangs in the balance today. Restricting voting because your party has failed in its policies and sends people like #FormerGuy to the White House (remember who loused up the response to COVID-19?) is a sure road to autocracy. We must oppose such skulduggery now and forever.