is still Voter Suppression, Governors Hutchinson (Arkansas), Kemp (Georgia), Reynolds (Iowa), and Cox (Utah) and all the other governors’ pens at the ready!
On February 2, I posted a topic on Voting Rights. Voter suppression is another step in this infamy against democracy and our democratic Republic. “By March 24, lawmakers had introduced 361 restrictive election bills in 47 legislatures, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which has been tracking the legislation.” NBC News, 4/1/2021 They have passed in Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, and Utah.
There are several ironies and horrors in this news. One of the ironies is that 843 bills expanding voting rights have been introduced in a slightly different set of 47 states. Another is that the majority of suppression bills hamper absentee and early voting, yet research shows this has not historically affected one party over another, although it clearly did in the 2020 election, but that may well have had to do with the extreme choices voters had and that the majority of voters did not want Trump in office again.
The most horrific element is that the basis voter suppression relies on is the Big Lie by many who know it to be untrue. Trump did NOT win the election. Even William Barr, Trump’s puppet Attorney General, for once speaking for justice, stated there was no evidence of voter fraud that would have changed the course of the election outcome. To continue feeding this falsehood to the susceptible willing to believe it is a monstrous dereliction of power and a travesty and serious threat to our form of government. It should not be taken lightly.
One of the strangest and most petty of the voter suppression bills already passed is in Georgia’s version making the following in Section 33 illegal for: “…any person [to] give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector….” Note the clever way they stuck in “food and drink” after “money or gifts,” which one wouldn’t argue with. Another is the reason given to shorten the 9-week timeframe for runoffs is that they are “exhausting for candidates, donors, and electors.” (Italics mine.)
The photo op that Georgia’s Governor Kemp created for the signing of the bill was significant as he is surrounded by 6 suited, masked (of course because of Covid and black masks, not white hoods) white men, while he is seated at a desk under a painting of a house on the Callaway Plantation in Washington, GA, known for its harsh treatment of its slaves, where over 100 Blacks had been enslaved. “In 2021, the irony of Kemp signing this bill—that makes it illegal to give water to voters waiting on the sometimes 10-hour lines that state policies create in mostly Black precincts—under the image of a brutal slave plantation is almost too much to bear,” Tweeted Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. At the same time as the signing, Georgia Democratic lawmaker Rep. Park Cannon was arrested, handcuffed, dragged off, and jailed for knocking on the door to the room where Kemp was signing the bill. She wasn’t trying to break in; she was just knocking.
Another ironic side note is that in July 2020, Kemp made it illegal for localities to require wearing masks and actually sued the Democratic Mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, for doing that. The suit was later withdrawn, and Kemp slightly reversed his position recommending mask wearing.
I have a downloaded pdf copy of the complete Georgia law, so if you would like a copy, leave me a comment with your email address, and I’ll send it to you, or click here for the full text of Georgia’s law from the New York Times.
The danger of voter suppression is not that Republicans may win more elections, although that is what these laws hope to initiate; it’s that they defy the Constitution, its Amendments, and all the values on which our country is based. They are subtly and not so subtly changing our form of government, without our permission or participation. We all need to be vigilant as to what is happening in our own states. Whether you contact your members of Congress frequently or have never done this, voting rights and voter suppression are issues to become active about. There are certainly aspects of voting laws that have been in place and need to continue, such as purging voter rolls of voters who have died. Careful and thorough bipartisan and judicial examination of our past several elections have shown no record of wide-spread fraud, and practically no fraud at all.
The history of voter suppression in the United States is fascinating. It was this very reason that the Ku Klux Klan was originally formed (and continues to this day, but less obvious). Both parties contributed to voter suppression over the years. Interestingly the reasons why don’t vary quite as much: keeping people of color from voting. Poor whites have also been targeted in the past. For an excellent summary of that history with several of its fascinating side stories click here to read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American for March 28.
Courtesy Governor Kemp’s Twitter feed
