For me, voting rights aren’t a partisan matter. They are a fundamental right that all adult citizens should enjoy without restriction. I don’t even think there should be such a thing as “getting out the vote” because I think all citizens should be required to participate, even if it is just to express their lack of endorsement for any candidates, initiatives, or referendums. People should get themselves to the polls and political parties should focus exclusively on winning over their support. That’s how I feel, but I recognize that access to the ballot has become a feverishly partisan issue. And, I wonder if restricting ballot access was actually successful enough in these midterms that it changed the outcome of some elections. Perhaps in North Carolina?
Voters in fourteen states faced new voting restrictions at the polls for first time in 2014—in the first election in nearly fifty years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. The number of voters impacted by the new restrictions exceeded the margin of victory in close races for senate and governor in North Carolina, Kansas, Virginia and Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In the North Carolina senate race, Republican Thom Tillis, who as speaker of the North Carolina General Assembly oversaw the state’s new voting law, defeated Democrat Kay Hagan by 50,000 votes. Nearly five times as many voters in 2010 used the voting reforms eliminated by the North Carolina GOP—200,000 voted during the now-eliminated first week of early voting, 20,000 used same-day registration and 7,000 cast out-of-precinct ballots.
The intention in placing these new roadblocks to voting was to change the outcome of elections. Only the worst dupe in the world thinks that the intent was to increase the integrity of the count. Even if these restrictions didn’t change any actual outcomes, the perception that they did in Republican circles assures that they will keep at it since they think it’s a winning strategy.
And it probably is.
Goodbye e pluribus, unum.
Hello, “Just win, baby.”
When you’re standing at Armageddon and doing battle for the Lord, there are are no fair means, or foul.
It’s like insurance to keep the GOP in power through the next round of gerrymandering as their most reliable and bigoted voters die off and just in case Democrats figure out before the next big economic crash that neoliberal economic policies don’t give them a large enough winning margin.
I was wondering what happened in Kansas and NC.
Without getting all philosophical, a “right” exists only to the extent that a court says it exists. Without legal recognition and protection, a “right” is pretty ephemeral.
One of the major events of the last decade is that the “conservative”-controlled Supreme Court has made clear it has no intention of protecting a citizen’s right to vote from absurd baseless burdens, while bending over backward to create and protect the (made up) right of plutocrats and CEOs to spend corporate treasuries to influence elections. The lower federal courts are required to follow suit, either enthusiastically or with resignation. Certainly the state courts of the states now controlled by the American fascist party will pose no obstacles. The playing field has thus been rigged in favor of the American “conservative” party.
To any objective person (here or in another country) the elections in states like TX and NC are now clearly illegitimate—the completely unnecessary and discriminatory burdens on voting which intentionally target the demographics that oppose(d) the party imposing the burdens make this clear. National elections which respect the rigged results in these states are now also illegitimate. By seating Tillis, our Congress is complicit in his illegitimate “election”.
Like abortion rights, voting rights no longer exist in this country. Totalitarian parties that subvert democracies all basically ensure that they cannot be voted out of power once they have obtained it. When a nation’s courts operate to favor the candidates and policies of one party, and uphold the dictates of that party over the people, that is also a universal feature of totalitarianism. They are thus no longer “courts” in any meaningful sense of the term.
The five conservative activists masquerading as justices are a critical component of the rising American fascism and its party, the Repubs. As with Weimar Germany, I think we can start to see that the courts are not going to protect us from the actions of the authoritarian nativist militarist party that is now taking control of the nation. The “rights” of minorities and lib’ruls are now expendable.
Our political and legal institutions have been effectively destroyed by the “conservative” movement. We are now an unfolding example for responsible democracies everywhere. They must not let what has occurred in the US happen to them.
I wouldn’t go quite that far. Voting rights are seriously threatened in this country, but the game isn’t over. For one thing, I wonder how the number of people who were blocked from voting compares to the number who could have voted but didn’t bother.
I’m not saying this to play down the damage done by voter suppression, but to point out that it’s the same problem either way: getting out the vote. Whether the problem is that people can’t vote or that they just don’t bother, you have to get organized and you have to reach them. If state legislatures are putting up hurdles, then you need to help people over those hurdles–help them get the proper ID or whatever it is. If they just aren’t motivated, then you have to motivate them.
That might be the bigger challenge, actually. It may be that voter suppression can only sway an election if turnout is low to begin with.
ALEC has been pushing these “model” laws, since the Obama campaign tapped new voters and energized the country. Then in 2013 the Supreme Court invalidated key components of the Voting Rights Act. Additionally, The Mainstream Media refuses to report on all these Jim Crow Jr. laws that have been enacted. I doubt that many people are even aware of these machinations. The Republican party is getting ready for 2016.
I think until we’re in a position of power complaining about voter suppression is doing more harm than good.
It’s quite possible that it is depressing turnout more since why would you vote if you weren’t sure it would count?
We should work on getting everyone to the polls within these stupid new rules and change it once we win.
We can still highlight them as a problem but then talk about the solution to work within the new law and what we think the law should be when we talk about this.
That’s the Catch-22 of a lot of what the Republicans have done. Talking about deepens the apathy instead enraging the public to change it.
The driving propaganda of corporatism is “There is no alternative.”
Yet there is an alternative we just need to find a way to maximize the difference. The only path there is by increasing turnout.