VOTING RIGHTS: The future is on the line for US democracy
OK of ‘Freedom to Vote Act’ in Senate could save the Republic – or not!
There is nothing as fundamental – even sacred – in our democracy as the right to vote for our representatives in government.
It was the reason for the American Revolution: Colonists objected to being taxed by the British Parliament in which they had no direct representation.
More than 200 years later, it remains the core social contract: It is a right that must be defended against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
In the current political environment, the most dangerous enemies of democracy are all domestic. We are engaged in an epic struggle for the most fundamental of all human rights.
If we lose this battle, we have lost them all.
That is why the vote scheduled for this week in the US Senate on the “Freedom to Vote Act” is so vital.
The future of our democracy may indeed depend upon it passing. But it may not even get a vote – if Republicans mount a filibuster.
The reason we are facing such a dire moment can be traced back to the landmark Supreme Court decision of 2013 which, in effect, gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
That Act was passed to ensure state and local governments do not pass laws or policies that deny American citizens the equal right to vote based on race.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, in Shelby County v. Holder on June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court swept away a key provision of this landmark civil rights law.
“The Supreme Court ruled that the coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act – which determines which jurisdictions are covered by Section 5 – is unconstitutional because it is based on an old formula. As a practical matter this means that Section 5 is inoperable until Congress enacts a new coverage formula, which the decision invited Congress to do.”
On the day of the decision, the Brennan Center issued a stark warning in Section 5 Stands, Now Congress Must Strengthen Voting Rights Act “The Supreme Court’s decision is at odds with recent history. The Voting Rights Act was vital in 2012, not just 1965.
“For nearly five decades, it has been the nation’s most effective tool to eradicate racial discrimination in voting. And it is still critical today. … There is a path forward. Section 5 stands. Congress now has the duty to upgrade this key protection and ensure our elections remain free, fair, and accessible for all Americans.”
It did not happen then, and it has not happened since then. Yet!
The proximate cause for the current debate centers on the 2020 presidential election and the so-called “voter fraud” Big Lie that it was “stolen”.
This Big Lie has gained widespread traction in the US despite thoroughly convincing evidence to the contrary.
Just a week after the election, the federal agency charged with election security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a statement about the voting:
“The Nov. 3 election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.”
At that time, because of the close results, many states were re-counting ballots.
“All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary,” the statement said.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” it concluded. (emphasis added)
“We can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”
Federal bureaucrats seldom talk in such plain-spoken language. How could anybody misunderstand these words?
Well, it seems like several million Americans did not get the message. They totally misunderstood – or remain willfully ignorant.
In a poll published July 22, Wide partisan divide on whether voting is a fundamental right or a privilege with responsibilities the Pew Research Center reported that a majority of Americans (57%) say voting is “a fundamental right for every adult U.S. citizen and should not be restricted in any way.”
But a significant minority held the opposite view. About 42% express the view that “voting is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited if adult U.S. citizens don’t meet some requirements.”
Digging a bit deeper, one finds that the results were extremely lopsided between the two main political parties.
“Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly say voting is a fundamental right that should not be restricted in any way – 78% hold this view,” Pew reported.
On the other hand, “Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners say voting is a privilege that can be limited if requirements are not met.”
It is against this background that in the last nine months a large number of states have passed laws which would restrict access to the polls by millions of people, especially minorities.
In its compilation of the restrictive voting laws passed by the states this year, Voting Laws Roundup: October 2021 the Brennan Center for Justice said: “The 2020 federal election drew the United States’ highest voter turnout in more than a century, breaking records despite the Covid-19 pandemic and efforts to undermine the election process with the Big Lie of a stolen election.”
The report continued: “In a backlash to this historic voter participation, many state lawmakers have proposed and enacted legislation to make it harder for Americans to vote, justifying these measures with falsehoods steeped in racism about election irregularities and breaches of election security. (emphasis added)
“Between Jan.1 and Sept. 27, at least 19 states enacted 33 laws that make it harder for Americans to vote.”
However, Congress has the power to protect American voters from the kinds of restrictions enacted so far this year, it said. “The Freedom to Vote Act, which is currently before the Senate, is a comprehensive package of voting, redistricting, and campaign finance reforms,” the Brennan report said. “It includes national standards for voting that would ensure access to the ballot across state lines.”
If you remain unconvinced that federal action on voting rights is urgently needed, look no further than what is currently happening in Wisconsin.
After the farcical so-called “audit” of the Arizona 2020 presidential election by the “Cyber Ninjas,” Wisconsin is on track to outdo Arizona.
Over the summer, Republican members of the state Legislature appointed former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to conduct an investigation into the 2020 presidential election in the state.
What were his qualifications for the job?
Gableman is a “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorist who tried to undermine public confidence in the election by peddling nonsense. Gableman was also an appointee from the 45th president's post-election lame-duck period.
What could possibly go wrong?
We began to find out in a statement by the Wisconsin attorney general on Oct 11. Attorney General Kaul Statement on Election “Investigation” by Former Supreme Court Justice Gableman Don't miss the quotation marks around the word “investigation.”
“This is not a serious investigation,” said Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul. “Even if an investigation like this were justified – and it’s clearly not – this one suffers from glaring flaws that destroy any credibility that its results could have.
“This investigation is irrevocably tainted by bias. It was announced at a partisan political event, and it was significantly expanded after (Wisconsin State Assembly) Speaker (Robin J.) Vos’s airplane meeting with [the] former President.”
It just continues to go downhill from there.
Gableman acknowledged that he doesn't have “any understanding of how elections work.” He also issued strange subpoenas, demanded materials that are already publicly available, sent error-filled requests to the wrong local officials, and invited officials to participate in private meetings at a location he shares with a liposuction clinic.
Remember the “Cyber Ninjas” from Arizona? Wisconsin is orders of magnitude worse.
According to the attorney general, “Justice Gableman has also made statements indicating that he had pre-judged the outcome. His false claim shortly after the 2020 election alone – that the election was stolen – should have led him to decline to participate in this investigation.”
The AG is not pulling any punches. “No serious investigator would conduct an investigation under these circumstances. And no one should treat the results of this investigation as credible,” he said.
Here’s the bottom line:
“This fake investigation is an abuse of the legislature’s authority. And Wisconsin taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for this beginner’s guide to election administration and investigations. This is corrosive to our democracy.
“My request to Speaker Vos is simple: shut this fake investigation down.”
Fat chance of that happening. If anything, the fake investigations are about to spread to other states where Republicans control the legislatures and where President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
All of this underlines how vitally important the debate in the US Senate will be on the “Freedom to Vote Act” – if there is a debate!
As if to confirm this in stark terms, the headline to Charles Blow’s column in the print edition of The Yew York Times on Monday was “Last chance to save Democracy.”
His closing paragraph said it all: “Protecting ballot access is the only thing that matters right now.”
Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer is no dummy. The vote he has scheduled is aimed directly at the one holdout who was one of the sponsors the legislation but is going to see it doomed to failure: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va).
Manchin claimed he could obtain bipartisan support for this compromise bill. But the minority leader has made it absolutely clear that Republicans will have none of it.
Sen. Mitch McConnell called the legislation “a solution in search of a problem” and promised that Republicans “will not be supporting it,” dooming its chances unless the Senate changes its rules.
There is only one guaranteed solution, as we said as long ago as Sept. 9 in:
“This obsolete, arcane relic has huge negative impact on all Americans.”
A filibuster of the “Freedom to Vote Act” is almost a certainty. There will never be the 60 votes required to even open debate on the bill.
The Senate Democrats might be on the losing side of this battle, but the entire country will be the ultimate loser when our democracy fails.
Tell Sen. Manchin to get aboard or get out of the way. Click the link below.
What is going on at the state level with Republicans asserting control over the mechanics of voting is nothing short of a slow motion coup d’état!
They are setting things up so that no matter which candidate wins in 2022 and more importantly 2024, they will have all the levers of power to just throw out the results and appoint whoever they want.
Everyone, in particular the major news media in our country, is not sounding the alarm nearly loud enough.
The fiasco in Arizona is being followed by something even worse in Wisconsin – can Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan be far behind?
We need to wake up before it's too late. There will be no second chances.
Thank you Warren for your excellent research and reflections of the current effort to deter voting among largely Black populations. As someone who in my younger days wore a pin that stated, “Don’t Vote. It only encourages them,” my view of electoral politics and rule of law is quite cynical. No real change comes from voting which is the least important of all political activism. Trump certainly did some real damage—tens of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths alone are his legacy. However, from their neo-liberal perspective (Biden the current torch bearer), elites want a stable electorate who believes voting is the only political act; for the most part, electoral politics, the two-party system etc have served capital very well in the past 40 years. The Bushes, Clinton and Obama all played their part in the ghastly masquerade. National elections are an opiate for the masses.
Now it’s true that Trump threatened neo-liberal complacency and stimulated an outcry from the streets. BLM and its allies agitated in record numbers in 2020. A recent book by Frenchman, Frederic Gros, entitled DISOBEY! strikes the right note. Gros wonders that given the long list of abuses waged by elites against the rest of us, why haven’t there been more street disobedience and more militant activism. This is once again Antonio Gramsci’s great question. Why do workers, the precariat, the unemployed, the homeless etc. not rise up? His answer—hegemony, the control of consciousness of the oppressed. Trump woke up so many young urban activists who largely don’t vote. They know the great con.
Now having said that, the continued humiliations like anti-abortion efforts, the curtailing of voting, the ongoing police violence, racist thugs and fascist contingencies, the growing gap between the ostentatious rich and the rest of us, all serve to provoke angry activists. Will there be a trigger like the George Floyd case? Only time will tell.