Republicans Suppress Votes While Democrats Fight For Voting Rights

The Republican controlled legislature in Georgia passed new voter suppression measures aimed at minority voters a few weeks ago under to the guise of protecting against vote fraud. If that’s really what it was about they wouldn’t have included measures such as criminalizing handing out bottles of water to people standing in long lines to vote. The Texas legislature said “hold my beer” and is poised to pass the onerous SB 7 which included a provision to make it harder for the disabled to vote by mail by requiring that they provide a note from their doctor declaring them disabled and therefore worthy of a mail in ballot, until a last minute amendment to strike that language sponsored by Senator Judith Zaffirini (D) was passed. None of the other amendments to remove restrictions or clarify language were accepted the bill to pass the Senate on a party line vote.

While Republicans claim that the bill is fair and applies equally to everyone in reality several provisions in SB 7 focus on increased voting regulations in only urban areas. There are restrictions specifically targeting Harris County where Democrats have won nearly all seats in local and state offices recently. The legislation also sets specific rules for the distribution of polling places in only the handful of counties with a population of at least 1 million, most of which are either under Democratic control or won by Democrats in recent national and statewide elections.

The Texas House, not wanting to be outdone, is working on HB 6 another highly discriminatory bill that drew criticism against it from a number of prominent corporations, including Dell, American Airlines and Microsoft, as well as former House Speaker Joe Straus (R), who tweeted: Major Texas employers are stepping up and speaking out against voter suppression, and for good reason. Texas should not go down the same path as Georgia. It’s bad for business and, more importantly, it’s bad for our citizens. #txlege

It isn’t just Georgia and Texas, nearly all states where Republicans control the state legislatures are working to pass similar voter suppression laws in an effort to stem in-roads by Democratic candidates. This is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0 using the myth of voter fraud as the excuse. Since they’ve found in many states and localities that they can’t or soon won’t be able to win free and fair elections Republicans are changing the rules to disadvantage voters most likely to vote for Democrats.

Moving in the other direction the U.S. House recently passed H.R. 1, The For The People Act which includes measures such as voter registration modernization, prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, and require candidates for president and vice-president to disclose their tax returns among other measures.

Modernizing voter registration is important since roughly a quarter of eligible Americans are not registered to vote. H.R. 1 promotes internet registration because the current manual transfer of handwritten information to computerized voter rolls is costly and prone to error. The bill requires states to implement automatic voter registration such that when eligible citizens provide information to government agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles, they are automatically registered to vote or have their existing registration information updated unless they affirmatively decline. The bill also requires same day voter registration for federal elections which helps safeguard against registration system errors, cyber-attacks, and wrongful purges.

Democrats are fighting to make our elections better and increase citizen participation while Republicans are scrambling to suppress voter participation in an effort to squeeze out victories even when their policies are not supported by the majority of voters.