Ten days ago, I posted an article about the disagreement between the U.S. Democrats who stress social equality and the Republicans who stress religious freedom. This post is about the Republicans’ emphasis on “voting integrity” and the Democrats’ emphasis on voting rights.
The Ongoing Charge of Voting “Wrongs”
As you all know, the vast majority of
Republicans, led by the former President, claim that President Biden was
elected because of voter fraud. They insist that the election was “stolen” and
the voting “wrongs” of 2020 must be corrected by new voting legislation.
In an Economist/YouGov poll taken two weeks
after last November’s election, 88% of Trump voters said that Biden did not
legitimately win the election. He won because of voter fraud, which I am
calling voting wrongs.
Perhaps that percentage is lower now, four
months after the election, but a poll taken of the CPAC attendees at the end of
February indicated that 62% of them thought the most important issue facing the nation is “election integrity,” that is, elections free from fraud.
Accordingly, more than 250 bills have been
introduced in state legislatures to revise voting laws. All of these are
ostensibly for the purpose of eliminating voting wrongs such as were seen, it
is claimed, in the 2020 election.
The March 13
issue of The Economist has a major article about the “election wars” in
the U.S. It is titled, “Heads we win, tails you cheated,” expressing their view
of the Republican position.
Incontrovertibly, a large segment of U.S.
citizens is far more concerned with eliminating voting wrongs than protecting voting
rights. This widespread concern must be taken seriously.
The Ongoing Demand for Voting Rights
In spite of the charges of voting wrongs by the Republicans and largely
because of what is seen as a concerted effort to constrict/suppress voting rights,
the Democrats in Congress are actively working for expanding those rights.
In the House, the For the People Act of 2021 (H.R. 1) was passed on
March 3 by a vote of 220-210, with all the Republicans and one Democrat voting
Nay.
To no one’s surprise, President Biden is in favor of the House-passed
bill becoming the law of the land. He stated, “The right
to vote is sacred and fundamental—it is the right from which all of our other
rights as Americans spring. This landmark legislation is urgently needed to
protect that right.”
On
March 4, the inimitable Heather Cox
Richardson summarized major provisions of H.R. 1:
The measure streamlines voter registration with automatic and same-day voter registration. It restores the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act gutted in 2013 by the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision. It allows early voting and mail-in voting. It curbs dark money in elections and ends partisan gerrymandering by requiring independent redistricting commissions to draw state districts. It gets rid of insecure paperless voting.
Nevertheless, on March 3 before the House
vote, former Vice President Pence wrote
in a piece titled “Election Integrity Is a National Imperative” that H.R. 1 “would
increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, further
erode confidence in our elections, and forever dilute the votes of legally
qualified eligible voters.”
Citing Pence, among others, the editorial
board of the Washington Post wrote on March 4, “Republicans’ rhetoric on H.R. 1
is apocalyptic. Are they that afraid of democracy?”
It certainly seems so. The next day, Dana
Milbank, a noted Washington Post opinion journalist, posted “Republicans aren’t
fighting Democrats. They’re fighting democracy.”
The Ongoing Need to Protect Democracy
Make no mistake about it: the Democrats who passed H.R. 1 are mainly seeking to protect democracy. They are NOT for any sort of election fraud, such as
* people voting more than once in the same
election
* dead people
voting
* non-citizens
voting for nationwide or statewide candidates
* some ballots
being destroyed or not counted
* some ballots
being counted more than once
* voters being registered in
illegal ways or more than once
They just
want every citizen to have the right to vote. That is foundational for democracy.
_____
* Here is the link to the
maiden speech of Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on March 17. In that address, he
speaks out strongly in support of H.R. 1, which is now S. 1, and ardently appeals
for the protection of democracy by the passage of the voting rights bill. I hope
you will take the time to listen to Sen. Warnock.
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Here are significant comments received a few minutes ago from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for your comments about election integrity.
"There is almost no evidence of voter fraud in U.S. elections; the Republican effort to limit voting rights is essentially an attempt by Republicans to steal future elections. Many, probably a large majority, of U S voters do not seem to be aware of the many safeguards in place to prevent voter fraud. It is almost impossible today to steal an election through voter fraud, despite Chicago's checkered history in this regard.
"Every living U S citizen age 18 or older should be permanently registered to vote. Early voting and mail-in balloting should be available to all voters. Polling places should be easily accessible by voters. When Kris Kobach was the Secretary of State for the state of Kansas, he said he was devoted to preventing voter fraud in Kansas, of which there were about five cases, but he never mentioned the fact that 800,000 Kansans, who were eligible to vote, failed to do so. To me, this is a perverted set of priorities. We should be finding ways to increase, not decrease, voter turnout.
"And Senator Warnock is correct in saying that Republican voter suppression efforts constitute Jim Crow in new clothes."
Thanks so much, Eric, for sharing these comments that seem so evidently true to me. It is always puzzling to me how things that seem so patently correct, such as what you wrote here and such as Sen. Warnock said in his Senate speech, can be seen by some people to be completely wrongheaded.
DeleteComments have been slow coming in on this Saturday morning, but about an hour ago I received the following email from Thinking Friend Andrew Bolton, a former greater Kansas City resident who now is living again in England, his home country.
ReplyDelete"This blog is very welcome. Thanks for writing it.
"I have regularly voted in person and since coming to the UK by postal ballot, including the recent presidential election.
"The overseas postal ballot system is available for all US citizens overseas including military members.
"This week my request to have postal ballots for this year’s elections was denied. The new official, emailing from Liberty, said that there was no evidence I had ever lived in Missouri despite having been in Independence since July 1998, have a Mid-Continent Library card, paying property taxes, state taxes and being employed by Community of Christ up to 2016.
"I emailed back attaching a photo of an old, battered voter ID card and have been reinstated. However, I was nearly defrauded of my right to vote. Are Republican politicians in Missouri intentionally making it difficult for those of us overseas to vote in local, state and Federal elections."
Thanks, Andrew for sharing this. I was appalled to hear about your nearly being defrauded of your right to vote, and I can't say whether this was something deliberately done or not. But it seems quite evident that states with Republican leadership all across the country are actively seeking to restrict/decrease access to the polls.
DeleteYesterday I received the following comments about "the voter mess" from Thinking Friend Truett Baker in Arizona:
ReplyDelete"I don't understand the voter mess. Several investigations were pursued that came up with little evidence of voter fraud, which has always been present to some degree. We live in a 'fallen' world that will always experience incidents of abuse of good things. That will never change and no amount of legislation will diminish our penchant to pervert good things. What concerns me more than the election matter is the fact that Donald Trump has confused traditional standards of right and wrong, and worse still, is the fact that a large portion of our population have bought into it.
This morning these comments from Thinking Friend Dick Horn in Texas came to my email inbox:
ReplyDelete"Leroy,thank you for calling attention to the ongoing battle against democracy.
"I think it is of extreme importance that HR-1 be passed this year. Our state is already gerrymandered to the point that it is virtually impossible for us to change the balance at the State level. We do well at the local levels but without voting being seen as a right for all citizens there is no hope of us changing the status and fairly representing the citizens of our state."
Just about the only person in the United States who is likely to face felony charges related directly to the election (as opposed to the insurrection) is Donald Trump himself. So he is threatening to have the Republican Secretary of State in Georgia primaried for not caving in to Trump's voting threats. It has been a long time since the GOP has behaved like "loyal opposition" when out of power, or even like a governing party when in power.
ReplyDeleteThe battle flag of the Confederacy never waved in the US Capitol during the Civil War, yet it did during the Trump insurrection. Forget the elephant, the Confederate battle flag is the emblem of the GOP until it earns the right to something else. The GOP has declared war on democracy and on the people of the United States. The "United" States is a house divided against itself; plutocracy against people. Could even Lincoln find a way to preserve this union? Can Biden?
Thanks for your comments, Craig. They are quite negative but are probably also quite realistic.
ReplyDeleteHere are comments on the March 19 online post of "Democracy Now"(link at end), which is directly related to your comments and my article in general:
Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, whose election in January helped bring the chamber under Democratic control, used his first speech on the floor of the Senate this week to assail Republican efforts to restrict voting rights. He called the raft of voter suppression bills being introduced in states across the country “Jim Crow in new clothes,” denounced false claims of voter fraud spread by Donald Trump and others, and called on Congress to pass the For the People Act, also known as H.R. 1, a sweeping voting reform bill that would greatly expand access to the ballot. “Make no mistake: This is democracy in reverse,” said Warnock, who is the first Black senator elected in Georgia. “Rather than voters being able to pick the politicians, the politicians are trying to cherry-pick their voters.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/19/raphael_warnock_first_senate_speech
This is a great postt thanks
ReplyDelete