Voter Suppression Another Indicator Of Anti-Democratic Stance Of GOP

The New York Times finally has a front page story about the raft of voting restrictions in place for this election and the difficulty the judiciary is having in enforcing some of their rulings on voting rights. Of course, many of these voting restrictions are put in place by Republican legislatures and some of them have shown a clear intent solely to suppress Democratic voters. A federal court ruled North Carolina’s voter ID law unconstitutional, saying the law’s provisions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” In Wisconsin, a legislator bragged that the new voter ID laws would reduce minority and youth votes and make the state more difficult for Hillary Clinton to win. Just yesterday, a local Wisconsin election official turned down a request by eight different student groups, including the Republican and Libertarian ones, at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay to open an early polling place on the campus. The official reasoned (if you could call it that) that “I have heard that that students lean more toward the democrats and he [the state representative] is a democrat.” In an Orwellian twist, the official believed that her ruling was perfectly fine because “I was reading the statutes and read: No site may be designated that affords an advantage to any political party.” And, as the Times’ story indicates, even after a judicial ruling, many of the states are simply openly ignoring the judge and/or dragging their feet in rectifying the problems. And, even as judges rule certain parts of the law unconstitutional, the resulting confusion makes it even easier to provide misleading information that restricts voting. As Ari Berman point out, of the nearly 900,000 eligible voters in Wisconsin and Texas who need to have voter IDs, less that 2,500 have actually been issued. Whether or not these people even intend to vote is really irrelevant – it is simply disenfranchisement on a massive scale.

Well over half of Republican voters in a number of polls believe that Hillary Clinton can only win the election through voter fraud. Donald Trump taps into that belief when he refuses to say he will accept the outcome of the election. There is a huge swath of the Republican party that no longer believes in democracy. Rather, they believe the whole system is corrupt. If you believe the whole system is corrupt, the voting for someone like Trump who will admittedly blow everything up makes sense. If you sincerely believe Democrats are stuffing ballot boxes, then suppressing Democratic votes via gerrymandering and voting restrictions is only fair game. Of course, most responsible GOP officials know that voter fraud is virtually non-existent but, playing to the fears of their base and instituting these measure,s allows them to keep their jobs and their power.

Over at the New Republic, Jeet Heer looks how much of the right has started to give up on democracy and the forces that are driving them. For the white nationalists, it is the realization that minorities will soon be the majority in this country and that they are facing a demographic doom. For social conservatives, evangelicals, and the Christian nationalists, it is the belief that the political system has become so secular that it needs to be overthrown. They also see that the Judeo-Christian hegemony over the nation is increasingly under attack and potentially doomed. Finally, the free-market libertarians believe that the increasing enfranchisement of “takers” who do not understand or necessarily believe in the “free market” is destroying the country. For all these groups, a return to what conservative writer Byron York describes as “a test for voting, limited-participation elections” provides an answer to their worries. Essentially their argument is that “we will be OK if we can just limit voting rights to those traditional American voting blocks.” David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist, has called for “weeding out millions of irresponsible voters who can’t be bothered to learn the rudimentary workings of the Constitution, or their preferred candidate’s proposals or even their history” so that “we may be able to mitigate the recklessness of the electorate.” He continues that this will not lead to a return of Jim Crow laws because the test “would ensure that all races, creeds, genders and sexual orientations and people of every socioeconomic background are similarly inhibited from voting when ignorant.” Of course, who determines that ignorance is left unsaid. Please read the whole article to show just how far many thinkers on the right have gone in rejecting democracy.

This rejection of the democratic process has been building in the Republican party for years and it also goes hand-in-hand with the refusal of the GOP legislators to abide by the governing norms that have existed for decades. Impeachment, government shutdowns, birtherism, the refusal to even give a hearing to Merrick Garland, the voting suppression, and much more are just additional attacks on our democracy. As their base shrinks and becomes more extreme, Republican elites become even more fearful about attacks from their right. They all fear being the next Eric Cantor, unseated by a tea party extremist. That explains Ryan’s and McConnell’s refusal to repudiate Trump. In doing so, they have allowed the party to truly become anti-democratic and a threat to the foundations of America. This will not dissipate when Trump loses the election – it will only get worse. This radical, reactionary, anti-democratic party will probably become even more extreme. The white, Christian nationalists will not go quietly into the night. And it will take all our strength to fight them off and save democracy as we know it.