If you can’t win, cheat
Voting rights are being attacked again. Ari Berman at Mother Jones:
Georgia Republicans have already introduced an avalanche of new laws that would radically limit voting options in the state. On Monday—the first day of Black History Month—Republicans in the state Senate introduced nine bills to restrict access to the ballot, including eliminating automatic voter registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and mail ballot drop boxes, as well as prohibiting third-party groups from sending mail ballot applications, and banning people who move to Georgia after the general election from voting in runoff elections. Many of the bills were sponsored by Republicans who backed Texas’ unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Supreme Court to throw out election results from Georgia and other states carried by Biden. These bills come on the heels of another bill that would require voters to submit physical copies of photo identification twice to vote by mail, once when they request a mail-in ballot and again when they return it.
We’ve been through all this. It’s voter suppression, and it’s wrong. The Voting Rights Act made it illegal, but then the Supreme Court said “never mind” in 2013.
“I will not let them end this [legislative] session without changing some of these laws,” Alice O’Lenick, the GOP chair of the board of elections in Gwinnett County in suburban Atlanta, which Biden carried by 18 points, said last month. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.”
A shot at winning by suppressing the vote, that is. That’s not a shot “we” are supposed to have.
And to make it harder for Democrats to get elected.
This is absolutely the truth, and not even hyperbole. I believe that their official justification was that “voter discrimination and intimidation is no longer a problem” or something similar–all evidence to the contrary. It rang about as generally true as the Trump voter in the gated community who claimed that “I don’t know anyone who voted for Biden”.
Yep that was the argument. It’s allllllllllll better now, no problem, no longer any need for all this intrusive federal meddling.
Yes, RBG had a wonderful analogy on it. She said it’s like deciding you don’t need your umbrella in a rainstorm because you aren’t getting wet…so you get rid of the umbrella.
This is fucked up.
To change laws “so we have a chance of winning” is a bogus rationale for changing laws. And it’s bullies law.
iknklast@3:
Great analogy. Sigh. RBG, you are sorely missed.