Republican Attacks On Voting Rights Assures Their Minority Party Status

Terry McAuliffe’s executive order in April providing clemency to all Virginia’s convicted felons and essentially nullifying a provision in the Virginia State Constitution that barred felons from voting for life has put Republicans once again in the position of fighting to restrict the voting rights of primarily minority voters.  This constitutional provision was primarily introduced and used to deny the voting rights of African Americans in post-Civil War Virginia, as well as in some other former Confederate states. A research group estimates that 20% of Virginia’s African American voters were currently ineligible to vote due to felony convictions.  Virginia Republicans have filed a lawsuit that challenges the Governor’s ability to restore these voting rights with such a sweeping executive order and the Virginia Supreme Court will take up their case in a special session in July.

For those who have served their time and re-integrated back into society, the restoration of voting rights offers another opportunity to become truly part of their community once more. And Republicans short-sighted efforts to restrict their voting rights for political gain in the near term will end up costing them dearly in the long term. As the demographics of the country change, Republicans can no longer count on winning elections with just white voters – they will eventually need to bring some minority voters back into their camp.  Kevin Drum had a post yesterday about how the rise of the non-white population in California closely tracked the rise in the Democratic share of the vote, turning that state from solidly red to blue. When the Democrats essentially threw the old segregationists out of the party in the 1960s, they spent over twenty in the political wilderness when it came to Presidential elections. The Republicans gladly took those disaffected Democrats and gained political dominance for nearly a generation.  But, as the Democrats found out back then and Republicans are finding out now, eventually that nativist core is like a cancer on your party.  Gerrymandering and the small state bias of the Senate will only slow the inevitable. Until Republicans can find a way to speak to minority voters not only with respect but also with definitive, proven policies that solve the problems those communities face, they will increasingly become the permanent minority party.