Someone I know, who is a good man, recently sent me some propaganda meant to convince stupid people that H.R. 1, a voting rights bill introduced in Congress in January 2019, is some sort of leftist plot to undermine our Constitutional democracy.
On the contrary, H.R. 1 is proposed legislation to ensure that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that citizens’ right to vote “cannot be abridged or denied by the United States or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, remains viable.
That the current Congress would feel the need to enact this legislation 150 years after the matter was presumably settled by the 15th Amendment is testimony to the ongoing, insidious efforts of many States and political parties to undermine said Constitutional right.
Ironically, the political party that ramrodded the 15th Amendment through in 1870, following the Civil War, is the same party (Republican) that is now doing its damnedest to render the Amendment ineffective. Abraham Lincoln would be appalled.
As it has come to pass, “people of color” now make up a significant voting bloc in many States which have long been Republican Party-dominated. This threatens the G.O.P., and the Party has instigated various “voter suppression” schemes over the years to negate the rising political power of minorities. Voter suppression is designed to make voting by Black American citizens difficult, thus it is one more example of systemic racism in American society.
Voter suppression schemes include: reducing the number of polling places, so voters have to wait hours in line to enter the polling place; reducing the number of voting booths within polling places to increase wait times; placing restrictive conditions on absentee voting; reducing opportunities for “early” voting; placing polling places in distant locations not served by public transit, thereby limiting voting by those without a vehicle; placing a polling place in a police station to intimidate potential voters; scrubbing voter registration rolls of potential voters just before an election; instituting voter I.D. requirements; and gerrymandering district boundaries to diminish political opposition.
The 2020 election saw more Americans voting than ever before. This was made possible by the expanded use of absentee/mail-in voting, which was necessary due to the social distancing precautions enacted for the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, this type of voting, by design, precludes the need to physically cast a vote at a polling place. A by-product of mail-in voting was that many of the voter suppression schemes historically employed in Red States to hamper in-person voting by minorities were rendered moot.
As a result, outcomes in some Red States were upsetting to the G.O.P. voter suppression design teams.
The “stolen” election that President Trump complained about was the election that he would have won if the various voter suppression schemes had not been negated by mail-in voting. It was a “rigged election”, like he predicted, but the G.O.P. rigging didn’t work this time due to the peculiar circumstances.
The President was particularly dumbfounded by the election result in Georgia, where voter suppression has been an art form since the Jim Crow era. This explains his telephone conversation with the Governor and Secretary of State (which later become public), wherein he begged, and then threateningly insisted, that they change the results to his favor, because he was sure he’d won there. He hadn’t, and neither had the Republicans won the two Senate seats, giving the Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.
These were bitter pills to swallow for Republicans nationwide.
In the aftermath of the election, something like 250 bills have been introduced by G.O.P. legislators in various States to re-rig the system so that minority voting power is once again reduced.
All of this proposed legislation is being marketed under the label of “improved election security”, playing off of voter concerns (stimulated by President Trump) that there was massive voter fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election.
It is a Red Herring of the highest magnitude.
As we all know by now, the ex-President and his armada of lawyers were not able to prove this allegation in more than 60 court cases. There was no evidence whatsoever presented that sustained the allegations. Some of these cases even went as far as the Supreme Court, where they were dismissed for lack of proof of any wrongdoing, illegal voting, improper counting, etc.
Since there was no fraud or irregularities proven in any State, it is obvious that the 250 bills introduced by Republicans are not aimed at fixing a real problem (because none exists) but, rather, designed to fix the G.O.P. political problem of…too many Democrats voting.
H.R. 1 is meant to curtail this anti-Constitutional gamesmanship which has gone on now for 150 years.
When one lives in a democratic republic, like the United States, a logical goal to be achieved would be having more cirizens vote so that the people are better represented (“majority rule”). Almost 25 million more Americans voted for President in 2020 than in 2016: this should be an accomplishment worth celebrating.
Apparently, the Republican Party views voting as a crime (if you don’t vote Republican).
