The Republican War on Voters
The onslaught on voting rights, occurring in Republican strongholds since the last presidential election, is altogether unprecedented. For perspective, over 360 bills have been introduced across the country by Republican state legislatures that would restrict voting rights and therefore make it more difficult to vote.
There are various rationales for these actions– for example, they may be made out of interest in voting security or out of interest in removing confusion from election results. Yet if that were so, one could perhaps expect some Republican Congress Members to have an interest in investigating Trump's attempts to overturn the election results that resulted in him attempting a coup and distributing documents so inflammatory as to cause him to physically tear them to shreds or flush them down the toilet. Unless of course, they have no such interest at all and simply want to restrict voting access in order to increase their chances of winning an election.
States like Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Texas have launched their greatest attacks on voting rights yet, attacking and attempting to limit access to the use of mail-in voting boxes, despite them having no link to any sort of voting fraud. Furthermore in Texas, the legislature is now trying to criminalize any minor mistakes voters might make in the process, as well as give Republican poll watchers excessive access, to the point of being able to record and survey voter behavior while at the polls. In Georgia and Arkansas, Republican legislatures are in the process of making it illegal to provide water and supplies to people waiting in line to vote, which is difficult to understand the rationale for unless the GOP is uninterested in people being able to vote comfortably.
Meanwhile, Republicans across the nation have been intensely engaging in gerrymandering, a process in which congressional maps are divided in a biased manner to ensure a political party is guaranteed to win. Due to the nature by which voting occurs, the majority of party votes in any given district all but ensures that the gerrymandered district will go to the majority party. Interestingly enough, this issue has grown so blatant and immense as to lead to federal courts rejecting Republican redistricting maps as being completely undemocratic in two different states already and to a Democratically-drawn redistricting map being rejected by a State court in New York last month (it is being appealed at the Appellate Court.)
In March, Biden responded to Republican attacks on voting with a modest but firm executive order that expands access to voting. Beyond this, Biden and the Democrats have been stymied in their attempts to pass a new voting rights bill due to a lack of congressional votes. This bill, formerly known as the For the People Act, would have dramatically expanded access and the ability for Americans to vote nationwide. That being said, Republicans, as well as “Democrats In Name Only” Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have voted against this bill and prevented its passing, despite concessions having been made on Manchin's behalf at more than one point in time.
The stage has been set for the Republican assault on democracy. In fact, the first strike has been made; the rejection rate of the last round of ballots in Texas, which tends to be around 0.8% nationwide, was 13%. The problem lies with the newest verification method, which required a voter ID number that was hidden under the envelope flap. That same voter ID number was also required to be the same one you put on your ballot application. Further, as several critics pointed out, ballots cast by African American voters were disproportionately disqualified. In total, a figure numbering almost 30,000 ballots–roughly 17% across 120 counties– were rejected for minor variations not in accordance with a new law.
In brief, if there is any picture of voter suppression in the US, it’s in Texas. Their second salvo so far, if upheld by courts in Texas, targets minority voters specifically. The attack is twofold, as it aims to effectively nullify Section 2 of the voting rights act, which prohibits discriminatory voting procedures and practices that deny voters of color an equal opportunity to participate in elections. Firstly, the Texas attorney general is arguing that Section 2 does not apply to individuals and therefore private individuals, as well as civil rights groups, have no standing to pursue lawsuits regarding violations of it, leaving enforcement in the hands of only the political party in power. Further, it argues that Section 2 doesn’t apply to redistricting issues in the least.
Republicans in Texas aren’t the only ones waging a war on voting and therefore democracy. They’re just among the first ones to get away with it so far. While biased redistricting efforts in Florida were just rejected due to the efforts of judges dedicated to the preservation of equity under the law, voting rights remain under siege. It’s up to us everyday citizens to realize that our vote counts. The fight must be in every state where legislation attempts to strangle the vote of people because of their fear of losing power. For if people remain indifferent, the day may come where there really will be no point in voting or in a democracy at all.
Jay Pade is a writer interested in democratic ideals such as equality of opportunity and equal representation and is a self-proclaimed leftist thinker. He is a proponent of culture and politics and can often be found examining how they intertwine.