Free Elections Are Falling to the Rise of Voter Suppression

An analysis of about 250 state laws proposed by republican lawmakers indicates that a massive push to suppress voting nationwide is well underway. These laws are going to pass in states controlled by the fascist GOP (FGOP). They will not pass in states that democratic lawmakers control. The analysis indicates that 116 million people, about 73 percent of the electorate, cast their ballots before Election Day on Nov. 3, 2020. The most common measures impose limits on early and/or absentee voting. Such proposals are pending in 33 states. The Washington Post writes:

The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men, a Washington Post analysis has found.

In 43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to data compiled as of Feb. 19 by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. Even more proposals have been introduced since then.

Proponents say the provisions are necessary to shore up public confidence in the integrity of elections after the 2020 presidential contest, when then-President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud convinced millions of his supporters that the results were rigged against him.

But in most cases, Republicans are proposing solutions in states where elections ran smoothly, including in many with results that Trump and his allies did not contest or allege to be tainted by fraud. The measures are likely to disproportionately affect those in cities and Black voters in particular, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic — laying bare, critics say, the GOP’s true intent: gaining electoral advantage [that is, FGOP advantage gained by voter suppression].

In many states, Democrats are trying to make those expansions permanent — and broaden voting access in other ways. Congressional Democrats are also pushing a sweeping proposal to impose national standards that would override much of what Republican state lawmakers are trying to constrict, including measures that would provide universal eligibility to vote by mail, at least 15 days of early voting, mandatory online voter registration and the restoration of voting rights for released felons. The measure has passed the House but faces steep opposition in the evenly divided Senate.

Republican state legislators, meanwhile, echoing Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him, are pushing hard in the other direction.

The outcome of dueling efforts will vary depending on partisan control of statehouses. The same party controls both legislative chambers and the governorship in 38 states — 23 of them Republican and 15 of them Democratic. Many of the most restrictive proposals have surfaced in states where the GOP has a total hold on power, including Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and Florida. (emphasis and commentary added)

WaPo goes on to comment that scholars and historians believe that the proposed restrictions would lead to a dramatic limit on ballot access, comparable to the late-19th century, when Southern states subverted the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on denying voting based on race. Those states enacted poll taxes, literacy tests and other restrictions. Almost all Black men were disenfranchised. The FGOP is doing the same all over again, but now wants to exclude a much broader swath of voters, i.e., democrats, racial minorities and hated out-groups, especially the LGBQT community.

From here on out, at least for the foreseeable future, the FGOP will contest presidential elections that a democrat wins. That assumes that a democratic candidate can win the White House if the proposed FGOP laws pass -- Biden won by a mere 43,000 votes spread among three states. These voter suppression laws could suppress tens of thousands in each affected state. That party and its still-toxic ex-president have, for many Americans, successfully undermined public trust in elections on the basis of no valid evidence. The magnitude and importance of that accomplishment of dark free speech cannot be overstated. That lie has opened a gaping wound in American democracy, politics and society. The FGOP can and will throw salt on that open wound at will as it deems fit.