You Cheat, You’re Cheating Me!
LBJ: It is from the exercise of our right to vote that all other rights flow.
On condemning the crime of voter suppression— and yes, it’s a tacit crime against the Constitution— I’ve been off the grid hiking and cycling in stunning southern Utah, so I’m a little late to the party. But this is a crime that should have no statute of limitations.
Woodrow Wilson explained why in his State of the Union address more than a hundred years ago: “The instrument of all reform in America is the ballot.”
Who could argue with that?
Well, now we know the answer: die-hard pro-Trump Republicans in the legislatures of more than forty American states.
It culminated this past week with the signing of an unconscionable law in Georgia, but as the Brennan Center for Justice has documented in the wake of last year’s election, there already are more than 250 proposals out there across the country for “voting reform,” which is an underhanded euphemism for “voting repression.” What every one of them has in common is, although you’ll find a trace of common sense provisions, overall they would make it harder for American citizens to vote, not easier.
Of course that’s not what their Republican apologists say. Last week, when Georgia’s governor Brian Kemp became the first to sign a voter repression bill into law, he put it the other way around: the law will “make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
Easier, as in allowing fewer convenient drop boxes to deposit your paper ballots (which makes it harder for poorer voters without cars), less time to cast your vote (which makes it harder for poorer voters who work multiple shifts, or can’t afford extra child care), and maybe most egregious of all, making it a crime— a crime— to distribute water to citizens waiting in long lines to fill out their ballots (in case you’re wondering who that affects, Georgia Public Broadcasting found last year that the average wait time to vote was six minutes in precincts at least 90% white, 51 minutes in precincts at least 90% non-white).
When you see the photo though of Governor Kemp signing the new law, surrounded by other white men in suits— under a painting of a plantation, no less— I guess you can see why none of these guys has to worry.
But conflating “easier” with “harder” is not Kemp’s only alternative set of facts. In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, Kemp shamelessly charged that Democratic opponents of his version of voter reform “are determined to destroy the sanctity and security of the ballot box.”
This from a governor whose own appointed election officials and commissions swore by the sanctity and security of the election last year. And declared, no fraud.
The trouble is, in that election, the Republican candidate for President lost. The Republican candidates for the Senate— one of whom Kemp had personally appointed— lost too.
Can’t have that. Gotta change the rules. In Georgia, in Michigan and Arizona and virtually every state where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, can’t let that happen again. Gotta change the rules.
What’s worse, unless Democrats deal with a filibuster and succeed in passing a federal law that invalidates repressive laws passed in Georgia-like states, there also will be more congressional districts gerrymandered to guarantee partisan majorities by separating some populations with like-minded citizens (translation: Democrats) and packing others together (translation: Republicans). I once produced a documentary where we visited two districts, each gerrymandered on the flimsiest of grounds: in Illinois, nothing more than a stretch of freeway was concocted to tie together two ethnically related but geographically divided populations; in Arizona, the contrivance to connect two populations divided by distance is the Colorado River coursing through the Grand Canyon. If you’re on the water, you’re in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District; if you’re on either riverbank, you’re in the 2nd.
Manipulations like this make a mockery of the Constitution.
So I’ve got news for Governor Kemp and his fellow travelers. Sad to say, you’ve got the right in local and statewide races where there is no spillover on us in other states to run elections as corruptly— within legal limits— as you like. But where there is spillover— meaning, the way you rig the election has impact on not just every Georgian but every American— you should be held to account.
Why? Because when you’re sending someone to Washington and you cheat, you’re cheating us too.
And you are cheating. What’s more, you’re justifying it.
Parallel case in point: the arrest at Georgia’s capitol of a Democratic state representative when she persistently knocked on Kemp’s office door as he signed the new law. She was arrested for committing two felonies: obstruction (basically stomping on a Capitol policeman’s foot as she was being dragged away), and disruption (which amounted to knocking hard on the governor’s door).
A dire threat to democracy.
Contrast that with the insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6th. You know, the one committed by traitors who got a high-five from Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a compliment from Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson as “people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement,” and of course then-president Trump’s infamous intimation of fondness, “We love you.”
Thursday night, the Georgia state rep hurt an officer’s foot. On January 6th, five people died.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
A joke has been going around on Facebook about Georgia’s new law. What is says is, if your principles are good enough for elections, they’re good enough for guns too:
“You can only purchase a gun one time every two years. It can only be a Tuesday in November. You must go and wait in line. There is only one place in your county. You must have multiple forms of ID. No one can give you water while you wait.”
But what’s happening today is no joke.
When President Lyndon Johnson promoted the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he quoted Thomas Jefferson’s portrayal of the vote as “the ark of our safety,” and he echoed Woodrow Wilson with his own perspective on the primacy of our right to vote: “It is from the exercise of this right that the guarantee of all our other rights flows. Unless the right to vote be secure and undenied, all other rights are insecure.”
Republicans in most state legislatures would weaken that guarantee. It is pivotal to our democracy that they not get away with it.
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For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his essays also are published— with images— on BoomerCafe.com.
It’s so outrageous...but there isn’t enough outrage.
Greg, Spot on again! I live and work in ATL and it is fascinating to say they least to cover political, racial and social justice issues. Thanks for saying what I can't ;-)