Harvey Wasserman: The All-Out GOP War on Voting Rights Has Gone Nuclear. The Democrats Must End the Filibuster and Pass HR 1 in the Senate to Save Democracy.
March 6, 2021
The GOP is accelerating its voter suppression laws at the state level, but it really is voter theft, Republican crime (Susan Melkisethian)
By Harvey Wasserman
The GOP Trump Cult has lost the American public.
So now it’s denying citizens of youth and color the right to vote.
That war now rages in the US Congress and in states gerrymandered for White Supremacy.
It’ll soon light up the US Supreme Court.
Whoever wins will run America for a long time to come.
It goes like this:
Yesterday (Wednesday, March 3rd) the Democrat-controlled House passed (220-210) the most sweeping omnibus voting rights bill in US history.
HR-1 codifies and protects many of the key procedures by which Americans voted in 2018 and 2020, and in the Georgia US Senate runoffs of 2021.
Those elections were swung by huge turnouts among voters of youth and color. They could cast ballots – and have them counted – thanks to protections prompted by the pandemic and by America’s powerful grassroots Election Protection movement, which has exploded since the stolen vote of Florida 2000.
Waiting in the wings is HR-4, inspired by the recently deceased Rep. John Lewis.
The Trump Cult hates and fears protected elections. They mean tens of millions of citizens of youth and color can safely vote … and have those ballots reliably counted. As The Donald put it in 2020, “they had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
The rising Millennial generation – 85 million citizens – represents the biggest demographic cohort in US history. In 2020 it rejected Trump by more than 60%. The Gen Z Zoomers just now beginning to vote are even more diverse and further to the left.
Massive rises in the African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American, Islander, and Indigenous populations mean the US will be less than 50% white by 2050, probably earlier. California, Texas, and Florida lead a demographic tsunami that White Supremacists really can’t handle.
According to the Brennan Center, the Trump Cult is pushing some 253 separate voter-suppression bills in 43 states. Their principal purpose is to prevent those constituencies of youth and color from having a say in our government.
The GOP controls a majority of state legislatures because of gerrymandering. Perpetrated largely in 2010, the GOP lost numerous state popular votes by large margins while rigging enough swing districts to take supermajority control of Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida, Missouri, Texas, Arizona, and other key legislatures.
Using Koch Brothers money, GOP operatives like Karl Rove mapped out a coup d’état that the White Supremacists are now using to abolish voting rights for all but the reliably reactionary.
Across the country, new GOP proposals severely restrict vote-by-mail, eliminate drop boxes, make voter registration virtually impossible for broad swaths of the population, demand voter ID that’s impossible to get (in Texas, gun licenses are allowed, but student IDs are not), make it easier for election officials to destroy ballots, eliminate early voting, ban voting on weekends, limit election day availability, and much more. A proposed Georgia bill would make it illegal to bring food or water to those waiting in line to vote.
Because the GOP controls the gerrymandered majority of American legislatures, many of these Jim Crow restrictions are likely to pass. They could lock up most of America’s state legislatures, worsening gerrymandering and thus threatening control of the US House. Fascist legislatures would have free reign to attack democracy on all possible levels.
HR-1 addresses many of these restrictive attacks. The 800-page bill guarantees early voting, voting by mail, expanded use of drop boxes, protected registration rolls, a ban on gerrymandering, extended access to the polls, the right of ex-felons to vote, and much more.
Though much in HR-1 is absolutely essential to the survival of American democracy, one section is a cynical assault on third parties, making barriers to their signature-gathering and fundraising virtually insurmountable. Those clauses come from Democratic operatives who hate the Green Party and other third parties.
HR-1 is now headed to the Senate. HR-4 could come to the House soon. It would require the federal government to “pre-clear” state restrictions on voting rights. This was part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but was voided in the infamous 2013 Shelby decision written largely by current Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts opined – with a straight face – that racial discrimination was no longer a factor in American politics.
HR-1 will face a Senate filibuster from fearful Republicans who know their fate depends on preventing blacks, young people, and others from voting. HR-4 will soon follow.
Hundreds of bills mirroring and exceeding the pro-democracy provisions in HR-1 and HR-4 are now up for grabs in virtually all state legislatures; they have little chance in the ones controlled by the Republicans.
But one thing is certain: at the US Supreme Court, the Trump Cult’s entire anti-democracy assault will soon smash into the Election Protection movement.
There they’ll face a 6-3 Republican majority led by a John Roberts whose entire career has been built on crushing democracy.
He might recall that on January 6, armed White Supremacists tried to seize physical control of our government. Their would-be dictator lost control of the US House in 2018 and the 2020 presidential election by more than 7 million votes.
Those hoping something like that might happen again had best prepare for a long, hard, nonviolent grassroots struggle to save and uplift what’s left of American democracy.
The definitive decision is upon us.
Harvey Wasserman co-convenes the weekly Election Protection 2024 ZOOM. His People's Spiral of US History is at www.solartopia.org.
Reader Supported News is the publication of origin for this commentary.
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