Voting Rights Are Good For All, Including Republicans
It appears that the new voting rights bill (Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act) is dead, given that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has given her impassioned but ridiculous speech saying she supports voting rights but can’t in good conscience override the Senate 60-vote rule for legislation. One would think voting rights would be more important than an arbitrary Senate rule (not part of the Constitution) that is waived frequently. Make no mistake: if Republicans get a slim majority again, they will eliminate the filibuster for their own legislative agenda, as they have done before.
The first voting rights bill came up last June and the Senate’s Republicans all voted against it. It was tabled and reworked by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who swore he could come up with a version Republicans would support without banishing the filibuster rule. Guess what, Joe? You lost. Again.
But while much of the Left’s ire has been directed at these two senators, and with good reason, where is the outrage at the Republican senators? Don’t Republicans, who claim to be so pro-America (while by and large refusing to condemn a right-wing insurrection last year), realize that voting access, better oversight on administration of elections, and stricter rules around campaign finance are good for all Americans? Republican-led states certainly have rural voters, elderly voters, disabled voters, and students who could benefit from an Election Day holiday or mail-in ballots.
Mail-in ballots became an issue in 2020 because of the pandemic, and Trump seized on that fact as a reason to claim The Big Lie, that somehow that led to a fraudulent outcome. It is worth noting that well before 2020, eight states conducted all their elections via mail, with nary a complaint. Fifteen other states allow counties to decide or allow it for smaller elections. And, of course, absentee ballots for students, members of the military, and overseas workers are conducted by mail.
Can’t we all benefit from standardized election laws for federal elections across the country? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to worry about partisan groups like the Cyber Ninjas conducting their own audit more than six months after the election has been certified by electors and judges, who presided over frivolous lawsuits? (The Cyber Ninjas actually found a few more votes for Joe Biden and, to my knowledge, no ballots made of Chinese parchment paper.)
Certainly, don’t we want to extend protections for election workers, who have been harassed and threatened this past year? So many of them are volunteers, our brothers, sisters, parents, children, just giving their time and effort to be a part of democracy in action.
If you don’t believe me, look at the egregious case of Ruby Freeman in Georgia, a retired boutique owner, who was called out by name in a rally by Trump as being corrupt (he likes to project his own issues onto others, natch). Freeman and her daughter, another volunteer, have been given death threats and have had to flee their homes. A video of them moving boxes of ballots (exactly what they were supposed to do) has been shown and distorted by the likes of Guiliani to insinuate that something nefarious was going on. Zero evidence.
Let me call a few of the senators out. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida: Your state full of retirees couldn’t benefit from easier access to voting? Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska: Don’t you have a lot of contract workers and military that could benefit from mail-in ballots? Tim Scott of South Carolina: Surely you are aware of the chiseling away at the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that has made it harder for plaintiffs to claim discrimination at the polling place and easier for partisan gerrymandering to work around districts of mostly black voters. Ben Sasse of Nebraska: You are trying to carve out a more progressive path for yourself in the Republican party. So do something brave. Surely there are Nebraska workers who have long commutes and could benefit from an Election Day holiday or mail-in ballots instead of driving miles to a polling place. Susan Collins of Maine: Wouldn’t it be nice if Maine could have 15 days of optional early voting in case your state gets one of those rather common Halloween or early November snowstorms? Mitt Romney of Utah: Many of us appreciate that you twice voted to impeach Trump. Why not solidify your moral standing by actually taking action on voting rights so that claims of voter fraud (and then January 6th) don’t happen again?
If any of these Republicans had a conscience and some sense of duty beyond what might get them re-elected, we could get to sixty. But we are no longer dealing with a Congress that can work together to do the right thing.
It’s sad to face this defeat around the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
In the end, democracy survives and thrives when elections have maximum participation. We should be thrilled, not angry, that over 158 million people voted in 2020, an uptick for both Democrats and Republican voters and, at 62%, the highest rate of voter turnout since 1960, when Kennedy barely prevailed over Nixon. Every vote counted then, and it still does, as long as we can keep elections fair.
For now, let’s get these Senators on the record about where they stand today. No more hiding.
And let’s get our butts out of our stay-at-home pandemic seats and vote big like never before in the midterms this year. It’s been said before and by others, but it bears repeating: Our democracy depends on it.
