The Founding Fathers are often depicted in binary ways: saint or sinner, genius or shortsighted, bold or craven. Many of them were slaveholders and the women of their time had virtually no power, including even the right to own property. At the same time, the Enlightenment foundations of the country, the purported forward-looking habits of some of the Founders, and the elasticity built into our founding documents complicate the clarity with which we can evaluate the decisions these men made. Even though there are legitimate questions about our complicated past, which is ripe for debate, how we speak about and think about it is probably a conversation best reserved for a less critical time. Because we have an emergency in this country; our most basic right - the franchise, the right to vote - is under attack, more in some places than in others, and much more for some people than others.
Throughout our history, the right to vote has expanded in huge ways. Initially only granted to white adult male landowners, the right to vote was expanded to include non-property owners in the 1820s, former slaves in 1870, women in 1920, and 18-year-olds in 1971. And with each de juro expansion of voting rights, the powerful and the privileged have thrown up obstacles, passed intentional and illegal restrictions, and caused the courts to have to enforce de facto application of the law. So, to borrow a phrase from a great man, the arc of the moral universe HAS bent towards justice overall, but the powerful and entitled in our country - mostly male and mostly white - have resisted every degree of change that those fighting for progress have achieved. One of the greatest modern strides in protecting the franchise was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It provided desperately-needed monitoring and protections for the rights of voters - especially POC - in states with a history of voting rights violations. For nearly 50 years, the law was one of the primary forces protecting the right to vote. Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, invalidated key provisions of the law. And THIS is, at least in part, why we find ourselves where we are today.
Voter Suppression: A Primer
Literacy tests and poll taxes are a thing of the past. For a decade or more, the "new" voter suppression, just like the "new" racism, had been slick, tricky, and - usually - plausibly deniable. It had hidden behind reason, plausibility, and "rational" concerns about "securing the vote" or "voter fraud." Of course, any liberal or SJW worth his or her salt could link within seconds to article after article claiming, correctly it seems, that, for all the hyperventilating concern on the Right, voter fraud is, simply, not a thing. Yes, it happens. But it has never decided any election; even the most loosely defined list includes maybe 1,000 examples gleaned from the past few decades of voting. When Trump was elected and appointed Kris Kobach (whose middle name is William, though Kevin would probably make more sense) to a doomed voter fraud commission, the stated mission was to find the evidence for The Donald's claim that 3 million votes had been cast in 2016. Of course, the evidence the commission gathered did not do Kobach or Trump any good. The claims the Right had been using for decades had clearly worn thin, even with huge swaths of the American public.
So it is now, apparently, time for the old to be new again. Today's voter suppression is - again - like today's racism - more overt, obvious, and less apologetic thanks to Trump's normalizing of behavior only recently considered aberrant. Watch an actual news channel (or an hour or two on Fox - thanks, Shep and Chris) and you will see the stories. Brian Kemp, a sitting Secretary of State in Georgia running for Governor, is notorious for flagrant violations of voting rights. His opponent Stacey Abrams has already won a case against him. Kemp is having his hand forced by the courts, but he is fighting every step of the way. In the first few days of November, he has been forced to recognize the right to vote of brand new citizens and to stop invalidating registrations using an "Exact Match" system that has invariably disproportionately impacted Voters of Color.
While Kemp is the kingpin of modern voter suppression, he is by no means alone. Kansas's Kris Kobach (ah, there it is!) has a little place name Dodge City in his state (yes, it is THAT Dodge City) that has grown a lot substantially thanks to large meat-packing plants in the area; the workers in these plants are overwhelmingly Hispanic. The 15,000 voters of Dodge City used to vote in ONE polling place - which was already strange. This year, though, their polling place has been moved - outside of town, a mile away from the closest public transportation, because of "construction" around the former polling place - which both does not appear to be under construction (thanks, Maddow) and which has events schedule both before and after Election Day (11/6).
In North Dakota, a state which elected Heidi Heitkamp in part because of Native American vote, a new voter ID law demands that voters have an ID with a physical address, not a PO Box like many Native American reservation dwellers have (and have had for decades). Those in charge have thrown up obstacle after obstacle but are pretty clearly trying to disenfranchise voters. And these stories are just the biggest. Story after story details direct attempts to lower turnout, to limit voters, to cut voting days, and on and on and on. It is clear that the Republican Party has a vested interest in fewer people voting.
If You Can't Win, Cheat...
The bottom line seems pretty clear here. After the 2012 election, Reince Priebus tried to convince the GOP that it had to do something about its inability to truly become a "Big Tent" party - to appeal to minorities, the LGBT community, to women, etc. The findings were damning, detailing how the GOP had alienated subgroup after subgroup with policies and tone. The Republicans did basically nothing with this autopsy - and then Donald Trump happened. His win and the subsequent two years have been driven by the assertion that, contrary to the belief at the time, no reflection was needed. The grievance and anger that Trump had identified and exploited was enough. The base was enough. And, after all, if the reality is that your base is a shrinking population of angry people who feel threatened by considerable social changes, what better way to operate than to appeal to their base fears, solidify your support and ride the wave wherever it goes. And if you couldn't win, cheat. Take advantage of institutional advantages, both those inherent in our Constitution and those built in by gerrymandering and broad control of state governments. The principles of democracy, after all, matter far less than "winning."
And when the leader of your party is a man who lies habitually and seems to never be punished for it, a man who has embraced the offensive, the taboo, the unacceptable, how can you possibly resist the call of less than savory tactics that he sees as "just part of the game." The fact seems to be that the GOP has morphed from a party on the cusp of reflection to an all-in, balls-to-the-wall, grievance-filled engine of liberal-tear-savoring, tantrum-throwing man-children. So the question is what can we do?
Vote - SRSLY, Just Vote!
There is one reality of voter suppression tactics, which is pretty likely to hold, regardless of how dark of an age we seem to be experiencing. Sure, the GOP will suppress the vote a bit, here and there; it will rely on built-in quirks in the law; it will try to invalidate a vote or a few thousand. But what it will not do is wholesale, widespread, open discarding of votes. Even cheaters know that there is a limit. So, the solution? Vote. In large numbers. Together. As one. No purity tests. Just vote. Call your friends; nag them; drive them; poke them (digitally and, well, digitally). Vote in numbers so large the results can not be doubted. Defy the odds. Ignore the polls. Be the unlikely voter. Deliver a sweeping loss, an outright, damning indictment of Trump and the GOP. Show them your power; claim your mandate. Beat the institutional unfairness; work through the gerrymandering. It has been said that there are no "red" states - there are only states with low turnout.
So go out there. Vote. Bend the arc of history.
Throughout our history, the right to vote has expanded in huge ways. Initially only granted to white adult male landowners, the right to vote was expanded to include non-property owners in the 1820s, former slaves in 1870, women in 1920, and 18-year-olds in 1971. And with each de juro expansion of voting rights, the powerful and the privileged have thrown up obstacles, passed intentional and illegal restrictions, and caused the courts to have to enforce de facto application of the law. So, to borrow a phrase from a great man, the arc of the moral universe HAS bent towards justice overall, but the powerful and entitled in our country - mostly male and mostly white - have resisted every degree of change that those fighting for progress have achieved. One of the greatest modern strides in protecting the franchise was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It provided desperately-needed monitoring and protections for the rights of voters - especially POC - in states with a history of voting rights violations. For nearly 50 years, the law was one of the primary forces protecting the right to vote. Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, invalidated key provisions of the law. And THIS is, at least in part, why we find ourselves where we are today.
Voter Suppression: A Primer
Literacy tests and poll taxes are a thing of the past. For a decade or more, the "new" voter suppression, just like the "new" racism, had been slick, tricky, and - usually - plausibly deniable. It had hidden behind reason, plausibility, and "rational" concerns about "securing the vote" or "voter fraud." Of course, any liberal or SJW worth his or her salt could link within seconds to article after article claiming, correctly it seems, that, for all the hyperventilating concern on the Right, voter fraud is, simply, not a thing. Yes, it happens. But it has never decided any election; even the most loosely defined list includes maybe 1,000 examples gleaned from the past few decades of voting. When Trump was elected and appointed Kris Kobach (whose middle name is William, though Kevin would probably make more sense) to a doomed voter fraud commission, the stated mission was to find the evidence for The Donald's claim that 3 million votes had been cast in 2016. Of course, the evidence the commission gathered did not do Kobach or Trump any good. The claims the Right had been using for decades had clearly worn thin, even with huge swaths of the American public.
So it is now, apparently, time for the old to be new again. Today's voter suppression is - again - like today's racism - more overt, obvious, and less apologetic thanks to Trump's normalizing of behavior only recently considered aberrant. Watch an actual news channel (or an hour or two on Fox - thanks, Shep and Chris) and you will see the stories. Brian Kemp, a sitting Secretary of State in Georgia running for Governor, is notorious for flagrant violations of voting rights. His opponent Stacey Abrams has already won a case against him. Kemp is having his hand forced by the courts, but he is fighting every step of the way. In the first few days of November, he has been forced to recognize the right to vote of brand new citizens and to stop invalidating registrations using an "Exact Match" system that has invariably disproportionately impacted Voters of Color.
While Kemp is the kingpin of modern voter suppression, he is by no means alone. Kansas's Kris Kobach (ah, there it is!) has a little place name Dodge City in his state (yes, it is THAT Dodge City) that has grown a lot substantially thanks to large meat-packing plants in the area; the workers in these plants are overwhelmingly Hispanic. The 15,000 voters of Dodge City used to vote in ONE polling place - which was already strange. This year, though, their polling place has been moved - outside of town, a mile away from the closest public transportation, because of "construction" around the former polling place - which both does not appear to be under construction (thanks, Maddow) and which has events schedule both before and after Election Day (11/6).
In North Dakota, a state which elected Heidi Heitkamp in part because of Native American vote, a new voter ID law demands that voters have an ID with a physical address, not a PO Box like many Native American reservation dwellers have (and have had for decades). Those in charge have thrown up obstacle after obstacle but are pretty clearly trying to disenfranchise voters. And these stories are just the biggest. Story after story details direct attempts to lower turnout, to limit voters, to cut voting days, and on and on and on. It is clear that the Republican Party has a vested interest in fewer people voting.
If You Can't Win, Cheat...
The bottom line seems pretty clear here. After the 2012 election, Reince Priebus tried to convince the GOP that it had to do something about its inability to truly become a "Big Tent" party - to appeal to minorities, the LGBT community, to women, etc. The findings were damning, detailing how the GOP had alienated subgroup after subgroup with policies and tone. The Republicans did basically nothing with this autopsy - and then Donald Trump happened. His win and the subsequent two years have been driven by the assertion that, contrary to the belief at the time, no reflection was needed. The grievance and anger that Trump had identified and exploited was enough. The base was enough. And, after all, if the reality is that your base is a shrinking population of angry people who feel threatened by considerable social changes, what better way to operate than to appeal to their base fears, solidify your support and ride the wave wherever it goes. And if you couldn't win, cheat. Take advantage of institutional advantages, both those inherent in our Constitution and those built in by gerrymandering and broad control of state governments. The principles of democracy, after all, matter far less than "winning."
And when the leader of your party is a man who lies habitually and seems to never be punished for it, a man who has embraced the offensive, the taboo, the unacceptable, how can you possibly resist the call of less than savory tactics that he sees as "just part of the game." The fact seems to be that the GOP has morphed from a party on the cusp of reflection to an all-in, balls-to-the-wall, grievance-filled engine of liberal-tear-savoring, tantrum-throwing man-children. So the question is what can we do?
Vote - SRSLY, Just Vote!
There is one reality of voter suppression tactics, which is pretty likely to hold, regardless of how dark of an age we seem to be experiencing. Sure, the GOP will suppress the vote a bit, here and there; it will rely on built-in quirks in the law; it will try to invalidate a vote or a few thousand. But what it will not do is wholesale, widespread, open discarding of votes. Even cheaters know that there is a limit. So, the solution? Vote. In large numbers. Together. As one. No purity tests. Just vote. Call your friends; nag them; drive them; poke them (digitally and, well, digitally). Vote in numbers so large the results can not be doubted. Defy the odds. Ignore the polls. Be the unlikely voter. Deliver a sweeping loss, an outright, damning indictment of Trump and the GOP. Show them your power; claim your mandate. Beat the institutional unfairness; work through the gerrymandering. It has been said that there are no "red" states - there are only states with low turnout.
So go out there. Vote. Bend the arc of history.
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