The GOP Fight Against Voting Rights

[Skynet]

“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

~David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

It’s no secret that the Republican Party has been taken over by authoritarian extremists for quite some time. Prior topics have gone over their leadership’s moral failings or the stochastic terrorism they enable among many other issues. But I wanted to touch upon a more specific subject, one which runs counter to democratic values and which the Republican Party as an institution has been seeking to undermine long-term.

Voting Laws

A recurring piece in the news lately has concerned various US states rolling out more restrictive laws in regards to voting. This hit mainstream coverage during the 2020 Presidential Election when President Trump engaged in a conspiracy theory that the results were going to be fraudulent despite engaging in the very thing of which he accused his enemies.₁ So across the country Republicans pushed through various laws, from voter ID to banning mail-in voting, all under the pretext of fighting voter fraud. Their lack of concern about their former leader’s actions should confirm their lack of good intentions, but sadly that push is but the latest surge of attempts at preventing poor and minority voters from exercising their right to vote.

Several years ago North Carolina got a lot of news in regards to its voter ID laws, also championed by conservatives for the same reasons as above. But it had nothing to do with fighting voter fraud. By specifically identifying patterns of how African-Americans voted, the North Carolina branch of the GOP created new laws to make it harder for them to vote. Through countless stacks of evidence, local courts have proven and ruled time and time again that the Republicans intentionally pursued racist means of voter suppression. Yet the GOP keeps trying to push it through._{2 3 4} Similar events happened in Texas this year as well.₅

The ease of access for voting differs widely across the country. Certain forms of identification are needed in order to vote, but not all IDs are accepted, and they are not free to get if you do not have the right one. Such a process can cost hundreds of dollars and require a lot of time spent at the Department of Motor Vehicles or other governmental facilities. These places aren’t omnipresent across the country, and thus necessitate a long drive for citizens in more rural and sparsely-populated areas. There’s an additional problem for older generations of people of color. Before the 1960s many state and local governments didn’t bother with monitoring non-white populations save when it came to imprisoning and killing them. So those who were born before the Civil Rights Movement never had things like birth certificates. ₆ Additionally the United States has no holiday set aside for people to go out and vote, meaning that exercising one’s Constitutional rights can be weighed against the necessity of earning a living wage for the working poor. There’s also the fact that polling places in primarily African-American neighborhoods are less-equipped to handle a quick and efficient process, meaning that time spent waiting in line is longer than in predominantly white neighborhoods.₇

During the COVID-19 pandemic mail-in voting became more popular than ever. In many cases it was literally life-saving, for being able to fill in forms and drop them off at the nearest polling station minimized face-to-face contact. Unlike voter ID laws this method of voting was something many Republicans didn’t fight fiercely against in the past, although that changed during 2020 when the Trump Administration created fears that this too can create voter fraud. Given that Republicans are the least likely to change their personal living habits in the face of the pandemic, it was judged that mail-in voting would be a form preferred by Democrats. Given the huge amount of people who voted early or absentee in 2020 (the latter of which is a vote cast by those unable or unwilling to attend an official polling station), they were right in this regard.₈

And it’s not just by mail or identification forms. A significant amount of Republicans are also against making Election Day a holiday to allow people time off from work to vote, or to allow for a window period of “early voting” for those whose schedules conflict with voting on Election Day.₉

Gerrymandering

Beyond just attempts at restricting people from voting, Republicans have also utilized the redrawing of the maps of local districts to influence the voting power of citizens._{10 11 12} Although it is not solely a Republican tactic, in recent decades it’s been used mostly by that party on a nationwide level. District lines are often drawn not in line with logical population distribution, but for partisan reasons which results in very odd-looking districts in terms of geographics. In 2018 the daughter of Thomas B. Hofeller, a widely influential voice in the Republican Party for gerrymandering, discovered electronic drives among her father’s personal effects upon his passing. The contents detailed studies on ways of using gerrymandering to reduce the voting power of Democratic voters._{13 14} This data was also used by Republicans to help pass the aforementioned restrictive voter ID laws. The increasing racial diversity of the United States is another factor in the use of gerrymandering, and overwhelmingly Republicans redraw district maps with the effect of reducing the voting power of people of color.₁₅

As long as the redrawing of districts remains a partisan political issue (it wasn’t always), it will be abused to dilute the power of non-Republican voters and people of color in general._{16 17}

The Electoral College

In the United States, the popular vote does not determine who wins the Presidency. Instead that is determined by appointed individuals known as electors who are determined by the winner of a plurality of popular votes for individual states. Whichever candidate has the majority of electors, with a minimum of 270 out of 538, becomes President of the United States. What this means is that the popular vote is not the prime determinant of the Presidential election. Five Presidents have been appointed in such a manner, and two of those are within living memory: the victory of George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.₁₈ In combination with the above cases of gerrymandering, the Electoral College is another means of ensuring that Republicans win more with just a minority of votes.₁₉ Additionally US territories that aren’t States such as Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands lack their own electors as well as Congressional representation in general. There have been various movements to grant these places Statehood and the representation that comes with taxation, but predictably Republicans are against such measures._{20 21}

"We're a Republic, Not a Democracy"

There are various kinds of democratic forms of government. Two such types are direct democracy and representative democracy, the latter being more common in modern nation-states. Direct democracy is where the populace as a whole votes on every issue, while representative democracies make use of elected candidates to vote in an assembly on behalf of their constituents’ interests.

The claim in the above title goes around in conservative circles quite a bit. Specifically it redefines representative democracy as a republic, and direct democracy as democracy. Like many ideological discussions this can be technically correct depending on the definition of words being used, but a few Republicans who make this argument such as the Heritage Foundation insinuate something else: that the Founders didn’t intend on making everyone able to vote, so attempts at granting voting ability to more people should be resisted, especially if it comes under the auspice of “equality.”₂₂ That this is an entirely separate issue on whether or not there's a need for representative candidates is besides the point: the downplaying of the word “democracy” is being done in a disingenuous way. In fact, a member of the Heritage Foundation was found bragging on a leaked audio that “it can’t be that easy” in making it harder for people to vote. ₂₃Another Republican claimant of democracy being bad makes the statement that it inevitably leads towards Communism, which is why Gorbachev and Mao advocated for it.₂₄ Nevermind that Gorbachev’s reforms led to a decrease in Soviet authoritarianism and the political autonomy of colonized Eastern European and Eurasian countries via the USSR’s downfall.

By invoking the Founding Fathers’ desire for representative democracy, they ignore the very fact that the United States was referred to as a democracy even during the late 18th century.₂₅ The intent is to criticize and downplay trust in the importance of voters in the democratic process, which is then further used to blunt criticism of programs and initiatives which do just that.

And that section image I used? It’s from the John Birch Society, an infamous group of conspiracy theorists formed from the ashes of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s fanbase. They allege that Communist agents are at every level of political power in the US, and their definition of Communism is broad enough to include anyone who isn’t on the far-right. During the Civil Rights Movement they claimed that anyone who desired racial equality was a Communist in disguise.₂₆ They helped segregationist governments create highly-difficult “literacy tests” to grant one the ability to vote, and were sufficiently difficult that only people who studied US law in higher learning had a reasonable chance of passing.₂₇

Voting: A Right, Not a Privilege

All of these anti-democratic tactics would not have as much support among conservative voters were it not for the additional blunting of the importance of voting. The fact that voting is a right, not a privilege, is not up for discussion on a legal basis. The Constitution itself refers to voting as a right not once, not twice, but five times.₂₈ Further laws made over the centuries for more specific instances have solidified this further, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 being the most well-known one among broader society.

And yet, the answer to whether or not votes are a right or a privilege in the United States is starkly partisan, with far more Republicans likely to view it as a privilege. Only 32% of Republicans view it as a right in comparison with 78% of Democrats.₂₉ This is all the more galling when Republican rallies, politicians, and media enterprises talk up the Constitution, the legacy of the Founding Fathers, and freedom so much.

In Conclusion

The Republican Party and its allied organizations in practice do not care about the principles of democracy, and are actively chipping away at it. The attempted insurrection on January 6th was its most obvious and violent demonstration, but even after that dreadful day Republican politicians and their supporters remain undeterred in weakening this cherished American institution in more subtle ways. Voter suppression efforts are but the most obvious issue at the forefront, but the other tactics and systems illustrated above show their massive extent and scope.

So what is to be done? There are various ways to ensure the sanctity of voting rights at the individual level.

Vote Republicans Out of Office: Be they local candidates or governors and Senators, the GOP as an institution has sought to undermine democracy and contribute to economic inequality and the stripping of rights, particularly for non-Christians, people of color, and women. Getting non-Republicans in more Congressional seats, town councils, and other positions of power limits their influence.

Give Employees Time Off to Vote: This applies if you’re an employer with fixed business hours. Have the time they spend at the polls count as business hours or treat it as a bonus vacation day. That way they aren’t pressured between job security and exercising their rights as American citizens. 30 US States have laws mandating this, but they differ by state.

Support Organizations that Protect Voting Rights: The American Civil Liberties Union is the most well-known, but there’s also the League of Women Voters and the Brennan Center for Justice. You can of course provide work and services by working for them, but they also accept donations.

Know Your Rights: Knowing the local laws of the land is helpful, but not everyone has legal training to truly understand them. This FindLaw article has a good layman’s outline for how to deal with various difficulties and challenges one may encounter preventing one’s right to vote.

Sources Cited

₁https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-georgia-brad-raffensperger-election-influencing-transcript-republicans-2021-01
₂https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/17/north-carolina-judges-block-voter-id-law-saying-it-discriminates-against-black-people.html
₃https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487935700/u-s-appeals-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-voter-id-law
₄https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/15/528457693/supreme-court-declines-republican-bid-to-revive-north-carolina-voter-id-law
₅https://theconversation.com/texas-voting-law-builds-on-long-legacy-of-racism-from-gop-leaders-166807
₆https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html
₇https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smartphone-data-show-voters-in-black-neighborhoods-wait-longer1/
₈https://www.vox.com/22346839/republicans-attacks-on-mail-voting-research-studies
₉https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/republican-early-voting-opposition-not-fraud-suppression.html
₁₀https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-4dIImaodQ
₁₁https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY
₁₂https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A
₁₃https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-files-of-the-master-of-modern-republican-gerrymandering
₁₄https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-question-hofeller.html
₁₅https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/gerrymandering-could-limit-minority-voters-power-even-after-census-gains.html
₁₆https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-gerrymandering/2018/03/08/f9d1a230-2241-11e8-badd-7c9f29a55815_story.html
₁₇https://www.businessinsider.com/partisan-gerrymandering-has-benefited-republicans-more-than-democrats-2017-6
₁₈https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote
₁₉https://www.vox.com/2021/1/11/22224700/electoral-college-joe-biden-donald-trump-bias-four-points-one-chart
₂₀https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article232778782.html
₂₁https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/04/21/these-are-the-wildest-republican-arguments-against-dc-statehood/?sh=d3212aa5bf7f
₂₂https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/america-republic-not-democracy
₂₃https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/13/us-conservative-group-heritage-action-video-voting-restrictions
₂₄https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/republic-democracy-mike-lee-astra-taylor.html
₂₅https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed14.asp
₂₆https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/16m9hr/whats_wrong_with_civil_rights_cold_warera/
₂₇https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/human_rights_vol32_2005/spring2005/hr_spring05_act/
₂₈https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
₂₉https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/22/wide-partisan-divide-on-whether-voting-is-a-fundamental-right-or-a-privilege-with-responsibilities/

[Skynet]

Speak of the Devil.

A Trump supporter shared the passwords of voting machines on social media. The calls for voter fraud are coming from inside the house!

This week, a Colorado judge barred Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from overseeing the county’s upcoming November election in relation to a leak of voting machine BIOS passwords. Peters, who tweeted in support of former President Donald Trump’s election conspiracy theories, invited a man named Gerald Wood to a meeting involving a “trusted build” software update that was meant to ensure the security of the county’s voting machines. Peters claimed Wood was an “administrative assistant” transitioning to her office, but then later described him as a “consultant” she hired to copy information from the computers.

Ahead of the meeting, Belinda Knisley, Peters’ deputy, sent an email to staff asking that they turn off the security cameras in the Election Department and not turn them back on until after August 1st. Knisley didn’t explain the reason for her request, but it was carried out either way. On the day of the meeting, Wood photographed a spreadsheet that contained the passwords to the machines and copied over their hard drives. Following the meeting, the passwords were publicly posted to an “online social media site.”

“Peters directed the creation of the images of the hard drive, which was not authorized by law and which directly led to the decommissioning of Mesa County’s voting systems, facilitating the leak of sensitive data and exposed the county’s voting system to compromise,” Judge Valerie Robinson wrote in a decision spotted by Ars Technica.

[Annaamarth]

weeps in formerly-Republican

[Skynet]

A mass exodus of election officials are quitting their jobs due to doxxing and death and bomb threats. Many of those responsible for the threats are quite clearly using right-wing language.

[Skynet]

Senate Republicans block voting rights bill for the third time this year.

All 50 Democrats and independents supported bringing the Freedom to Vote Act to the floor, but all 50 Republicans voted against doing so, maintaining a stalemate over a proposal that Democrats say is needed to counter efforts in Republican-controlled states to impose new restrictions on voting in the aftermath of the 2020 elections.

The bill would set federal standards for early and mail-in voting and make Election Day a national holiday, among other provisions. It would also mandate that voters provide some form of identification before casting a ballot, a requirement that many Democrats had previously resisted, although it would be far less restrictive than similar measures that Republicans have imposed.

The compromise was struck to win the support of Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the sole Democrat to oppose a more expansive voting rights bill passed by the House in August. Mr. Manchin has spent weeks trying to win Republican support for the pared-back version but was unsuccessful, giving Democrats hope that he might become more amenable to weakening the filibuster to advance a measure he helped write.

[GloomCookie]

I think the problem here is that it's the Federal government setting mandates for something that has traditionally been a state right. States define what their requirements are for voting. That and the compromise about identification... does it state what those provisions are? Is it just simply "I have a picture of me" or is it a state/federal issued ID? I feel like that makes a huge difference.

Also I'm not a fan of that last line. Weakening the filibuster. That's a dangerous move since it is one of the few protections the Senate minority had to prevent bills being rammed through. I feel that needs to be maintained.

[Skynet]

When the laws in place for a state fail to maintain the basic rights of citizens, the Federal government should step in to enforce the Constitution. This happened most famously during Jim Crow and Reconstruction. The Constitution has been abrogated, but the checks and balances are there to make sure that when one group (be it a State, Congress, etc) oversteps their authority, other branches and factions of the government can then reign them in.

The links in my sources go into detail on the specifics of voter IDs. In many cases they're far more than just pictures proving that it's you.

As for the filibuster, it is disadvantageous when it causes Congress to be unable to pass laws, and in this case laws that can help the decay of democratic processes. In some cases a filibuster may be used to help such institutions, but historically it has been used to prevent the passage and enforcement of civil rights, not the other way around. It is thus a tactic that is primarily favored by white supremacists and authoritarians in general. This is why Republicans love the filibuster; it helps better prevent not only the will of the people from being heard, it can help maintain their institutional power even if they no longer represent the majority of Americans. Here's a good article that covers this and other issues about the filibuster:

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2019/12/05/478199/impact-filibuster-federal-policymaking/

The one issue for which the filibuster proved a major obstacle in the decades that followed was civil rights. From the late 1920s through the 1960s, the filibuster was primarily used by Southern senators to block legislation that would have protected civil rights15—anti-lynching bills; bills prohibiting poll taxes; and bills prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing, and voting.16 These anti-civil rights filibusters were often justified with “inflated rhetoric about an alleged Senate tradition of respecting minority rights and the value of extended debate on issues of great importance.”17 But belying this rhetoric, conservatives during this period generally refrained from engaging in filibusters on issues other than civil rights.18

Some of the most notorious filibusters in American history were against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964. During the filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, then-Democratic Sen. Strom Thurmond set a record by holding the Senate floor continually for 24 hours and 18 minutes.19 Seven years later, the ultimately unsuccessful effort to obstruct the Civil Rights Act of 1964 lasted a total of 74 days and received major ongoing news coverage—ultimately helping to galvanize the public and break through the Southern opposition to civil rights.20

In the early 1970s, the filibuster became more common and was used to block a broader range of legislation.21 There had never been more than five filibusters in a single year prior to 1966, but there were 10 each year from 1971 to 1973 and 18 filibusters in 1974.22 This created renewed pressure for reform. Some reformers, including Democratic Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota, wanted a cloture rule that required only a majority vote.23 Mondale, however, along with Kansas Republican Sen. James Pearson, ultimately proposed a bipartisan compromise to reduce the threshold for cloture from a vote of two-thirds of the chamber to a vote of three-fifths—the current 60-vote threshold.24

The filibuster empowers a minority of senators who may represent a surprisingly small percentage of Americans. Each state is assigned two senators regardless of population, so the most populous state, California—home to nearly 40 million people—has the same number of senators as Wyoming, which has fewer than 600,000 residents. That means that Wyoming voters have 68 times as much representation in the Senate as Californians. By comparison, when the Constitution was ratified, Virginia had almost 13 times as many people as Delaware—the largest disparity at the time.31

Consider that the 21 states with the fewest residents, who collectively have enough Senators to filibuster legislation, make up only 11 percent of the total population. Of course, in most cases, it is unlikely that the smallest states would all band together to filibuster because some small states predominantly elect Democratic senators and others predominantly elect Republicans. But the problem is not alleviated by taking into consideration the partisan leanings of states.

For example, the 21 least-populous states currently represented by two Republican senators—enough to sustain a filibuster—represent less than 25 percent of the U.S. population. Democrats currently have two senators in 18 states, and those states represent about 41 percent of the U.S. population.32 If you include five additional Democrats from the least populous states that have one Democratic senator—enough to sustain a filibuster—then they would represent about 46 percent of the population.33 Also, consider that many voters do not support the winning candidate in their state. The implication is that, at any time, a very small percentage of the population can elect enough senators to block the will of a much larger majority of Americans.

Note that because senators represent uneven numbers of Americans, even the majority in the Senate may not quite represent a majority of Americans. In those cases, the filibuster can be used by a minority of senators to prevent an outcome that itself lacks majority support among the American people.

[Skynet]

As for the filibuster, it is disadvantageous when it causes Congress to be unable to pass laws, and in this case laws that can help the decay of democratic processes.

Correction: meant to say "help prevent the decay of democratic processes."

[TheGlyphstone]

Personally, I'd like to bring back the 'talking fillibuster' at least in theory. In the current state, it requires no effort to maintain, which means the people fillibustering have no incentive to compromise or flex, they can just blockade whatever they don't like indefinitely. They don't even have to show up to work, and still get paid in the process. Add back even the small cost of requiring someone to physically stand on the floor and talk, and I bet we'd see a lot more negotiation on the finer points of bills.