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In
the US, the right-wing voter suppression efforts reached a level not
seen since the era of segregation, when white supremacists in the
South had passed laws to deny Black Americans the right to vote and
threatened everyone who dared to resist with violence.
The
nation is now divided between people who want a multiracial democracy
in which every American is allowed and encouraged to vote and those
who yearn for an anti-democratic system in which an extremist white
minority has unchecked control over everyone else. The latter group
is represented by the Republican Party, which is brazenly waging a
cold civil war by pushing for unprecedented voter suppression
measures targeting minority and marginalized communities.
In
response to the Democratic Party’s victory in the 2020
presidential and congressional elections, Republican-controlled state
legislatures have proposed 253 bills in 43 states that aim to prevent
millions of Americans, and especially Americans of color, from voting
in federal and state elections.
In
Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp signed a law on March 25 that will,
among other things, curtail early voting, shorten the length of
runoff elections – such as the two Georgia Senate runoff
elections in the past election cycle that allowed the Democrats to
control the Senate – and make it a crime to provide food or
water to people waiting in line to vote. In predominantly Black and
Brown Georgia communities, voters waited in line for up to eight
hours in the 2020 elections, so these new measures could leave
thousands of them unable or unwilling to vote in future elections.
The
law also makes producing a photo ID mandatory for absentee voting and
gives the Republican-controlled state legislature more control over
the administration of elections. According to critics, by expanding
the state legislature’s influence over the election process,
and making it easier for them to remove state and local election
officials refusing to collaborate with them, the law makes it easier
for the Republicans to overturn legitimate election results that are
not favorable to their party and agenda.
Similarly,
Florida Republicans are pushing for perplexing voting restrictions,
which are trying to fix “problems” that do not exist.
Senate Bill 90, the main vehicle for Republican-led voter suppression
in the state, for example, proposes to ban the use of ballot drop
boxes, to prohibit anyone other than an immediate family member from
helping a voter return a mail-in ballot, and to make a request for a
mail-in ballot valid for only one election cycle instead of two.
Republicans claim all these measures are necessary to prevent
election fraud, even though they themselves admit that none of these
has ever caused any significant irregularities in voting in past
elections. If this bill becomes law, however, it is clear that it
would disfranchise many Black and other minority voters, and give the
Republicans an advantage.
In
Wisconsin, whose prior voter suppression measures have impacted Black
and student voters in urban areas, the Republicans are floating a
bill that would change requirements for indefinitely confined voters,
institute stricter voter ID laws, and bar election funding from
private organizations, among a variety of other things.
In
Texas, once again under the guise of protecting “election
integrity”, bills have been proposed to increase the use of
“poll watchers” – something that raises the specter
of state-sanctioned voter intimidation. These bills also aim to limit
mail-in and curbside voting, restrict officials from offering
unsolicited ballots and require people with disabilities to produce a
note from a doctor or a government agency to vote absentee –
measures that would disproportionately affect voters who are more
likely to vote against the Republicans.
In
Arizona, a Republican lawmaker, Shawnna Bolick, introduced a bill
that grants the legislature the ability to revoke the secretary of
state’s certification of the presidential election results at
any time before the inauguration of a new president. Democratic
lawmakers said if the Republican legislature passes the bill, they
will work to defeat it by public referendum. The state already has
laws in place that restrict minority communities’ ability to
vote. The Democrats already took two voting provisions – a
policy that requires an entire ballot to be thrown out if the ballot
was cast at the wrong precinct and a state law that bans the
collection of ballots by third parties, sometimes called “ballot
harvesting” – to the Supreme Court claiming that they
discriminate against racial minorities in the state.
Iowa,
too, enacted a law to preserve “election integrity” and
combat election fraud, despite no widespread election fraud being
witnessed in the state in recent history. The law reduces the early
voting period from 29 days to 20 days, closes polling sites at 8pm
rather than 9pm, and requires that mail-in ballots are received by
Election Day, rather than postmarked by that day. And voters who do
not vote in a single election are purged from the voter roll if they
fail to reregister or report a change of address.
Only
federal intervention can stem this tide of voter suppression and
thwart the efforts of numerous states to undermine the electoral
process and democracy.
The
Democrats in Congress are already pushing for a federal voting rights
bill that would expand federal control of local election rules.
The
For the People Act aims to introduce universal same-day and automatic
voter registration, ease voter ID requirements and expand voting by
mail and early voting. The act would also end the gerrymandering of
congressional districts, and reform campaign finance and government
ethics laws. Another bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement
Act – named after the late civil rights leader and member of
Congress – will restore the Voting Rights Act and combat voter
suppression and racially discriminatory election laws. “We are
witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights
unlike anything we’ve seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim
Crow in new clothes,” said the recently elected Senator Raphael
Warnock of Georgia, while urging his colleagues to pass this
legislation.
Endangering
the passage of this crucial bill are the antiquated, undemocratic
rules and strictures of the US Senate, which amplify the power of
rural, less populous and former slaveholding states.
Specifically,
a senate rule called the filibuster, which requires 60 votes rather
than a simple majority to pass legislation, is being used by the
Republicans to block Democratic efforts to prevent state-level voter
suppression. In the past, this rule was used by white supremacist
lawmakers to uphold slavery and racial segregation, deny the rights
of Black Americans and block anti-lynching laws. Now it is the most
efficient tool they have to stop the Biden administration from
passing the For The People Act. Democrats must change this rule if
they have any chance of implementing a pro-democracy, pro-voting
rights agenda. President Joe Biden recently lambasted the filibuster
and depicted it as a relic of the Jim Crow era in the once-segregated
South. Yet it is still not clear whether he will be able to annul
this rule.
Republicans
are intent on holding on to power at all costs, like the Afrikaners
in apartheid South Africa. The former party of Abraham Lincoln and
emancipation has decided that the best way of dealing with the
country’s changing demographics and the growing rejection of
their core policies is to deny basic citizenship rights to large
swaths of the population. And they are not even trying to hide the
fact that they only want a specific subset of Americans, who support
them and their discriminatory policies, to have a say in the
country’s future.
Earlier
this month, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, for example, criticized
Democratic efforts to expand access to voting by baselessly claiming
that such moves would provide voting rights to “illegal aliens”
and “child molesters”. He then revealed the real reason
behind his objection: If that happens, he said “[the Democrats]
will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the
Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century.”
Around
the same time, in a Supreme Court hearing on Arizona voting
restrictions, a lawyer representing the Arizona Republican Party
explained why the suppression measures are necessary. “Because
it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,”
said lawyer Michael Carvin. “Politics is a zero-sum game. And
every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section
2 hurts us, it’s the difference between winning an election
50-49 and losing an election 51 to 50.”
America
travelled down this dangerous path before.
There
were hopes for the establishment of multiracial democracy in America
in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. In 1868, only three years
after the end of the Civil war, South Carolina became the first US
state to have a majority-Black state legislature. By 1877, when
Reconstruction ended, it is estimated that as many as 2,000 Black men
were holding public office across the country. But the country did
not remain on this promising path for too long.
White
supremacists swiftly retook control of the South through the
anti-Black domestic terror, lynchings and assassinations of Black
political leaders, and voter suppression laws including poll taxes
and literacy tests. In some states, in order to vote, Black people
had to answer ridiculous questions like how many bubbles were on a
bar of soap or how many jelly beans were in a jar. Black people were
denied the right to vote in the South until the civil rights movement
led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Now,
the US is repeating the mistakes of history. A right-wing mob tried
to take over the US Capitol and deny the winner of a legitimate and
just election the presidency. They failed, but now their lawmaker
allies are trying to overturn the will of the people through
legislation and deny millions of Americans the right to vote. The
future of America is at stake.
This
commentary was originally published by Aljazeera.com
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