Wisconsin governor Scott Walker addresses members of the media from his office in Madison, Wisconsin, for the first time after failing to win re-election in the 2018 race. (photo: John Hart/AP)
06 December 18
What we’re witnessing in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina will disenfranchise voters for years to come
hree months have passed since that fleeting, anonymous New York Times op-ed
from a Trump staffer claiming that she or he was busy trying to save us
from the president’s agenda and “his worst inclinations.” The piece was
largely useless, but it was entertaining. Conservatives who have
remained silent about Republican disenfranchisement were inspired, in
their own way, to defend voting rights.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the House Majority Leader, declared in a letter to the Times that the writer was “thwarting the wishes of the legitimately elected president from within the executive branch.” The Federalist’s David Harsanyi,
a Libertarian, argued that the op-ed “celebrates the idea of nullifying
an election.” Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush’s press
secretary, wrote in his own op-ed
that “if the American people don’t like what Donald Trump is doing,
they can elect a Democratic House and-or Senate this fall,” adding that
this is “how our system was meant to work and be responsive to the will
of the people.”
There is often an inherent whiteness, maleness and
heterosexuality associated with the term “people” when Republicans use
the word. The party has only one demonstrated strategy for competing in a
browning America: Whiten it, physically and electorally. Republican cheating
has grown so pervasive that we have come to expect it, especially since
the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013.
We now expect
these abhorrent laws, and to see “Voter Fraud is a Felony!” billboards in black neighborhoods. The genius of their persistence is that we get used to this nonsense.
It is why we are failing, as a country, to show
concern about what is happening in Wisconsin, Michigan and North
Carolina right now. The voter disenfranchisement on display in these
three states is an extension of broader Republican efforts to reject the
will of those citizens who vote in ways they don’t like, the same
people who are most likely to block their path to power in future
elections. The devil takes many forms, as does voter suppression.
Mark Harris, a Baptist preacher who considers Islam to be “Satanic,”
won May’s GOP primary for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.
After the November 6th general election, the Associated Press
prematurely called the race in his favor.
Leading by a mere 905 votes over his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, Harris’ win seemed close but certain. However, the state’s Board of Elections has twice refused to certify the victory,
citing irregularities with absentee ballots. The board may order a new
election on December 21st when it meets to review the mounting evidence
that Harris and his campaign engaged in illegal activity that
disproportionately affected voters of color.
Further reporting revealed suspicious vote counts
favoring Harris in certain counties with large numbers of unreturned
ballots. Both Popular Information and WSOC reporter Joe Bruno
then revealed on Monday that Harris’ campaign used (and possibly paid)
workers to collect ballots, many of which were never returned. The mere
act of “harvesting” is against the law in North Carolina — something that apparently didn’t trouble L. McCrae Dowless, Jr.,
the Harris campaign political consultant and convicted felon who is
most directly linked to the illegal ballot collections. Harris did not
respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
If these allegations are true, we now have an example
of a Republican not just committing election fraud, but resorting to a
form of organized crime to help the party hold onto a House seat. What
is happening in Wisconsin and Michigan, though, is nothing less than a defecation on democracy.
In those states, there is no question who won. Voters
in both Wisconsin and Michigan elected Democrats to take over for their
appalling Republican governors: Tony Evers
to replace the anti-labor villain Scott Walker in Wisconsin and
Gretchen Whitmer to oust Flint disaster architect Rick Snyder in
Michigan. Yet the Republican-led state legislatures in both states were
kept in power by gerrymandered districts. Democrats netted nearly
200,000 more votes in Wisconsin last month, but state Republicans
increased their slight senate majority and walked away with 63 of the 99
assembly seats. A Michigan ballot proposal to reign in partisan
redistricting passed in November, but Republicans still retained
majorities in both houses.
Now, Republicans in Wisconsin have just passed legislation that amounts to an assault on the state’s rule of law.
It will strip Evers of powers that he doesn’t even have yet. It will
prevent the new governor and the incoming state Attorney General, Democrat Josh Kaul,
from withdrawing from litigation against the Affordable Care without
the permission of the Republican majority. The measure also usurps
Kaul’s job, giving many of his powers to the state legislative branch.
Consider a state law unconstitutional? The Republicans in the statehouse
will not only be able to intervene and prevent the attorney general
from settling any claims — a provision will allow them to “retain legal counsel other than the Department of Justice.”
The state’s top lawyer has essentially been fired before he even takes
the job, without the say of the plurality of voters who hired him to
represent their interests.
Wisconsin has an incoming Democratic trifecta: Evers
and Kaul will join a re-elected secretary of state, Douglas La Follette,
who is a victim of a similar power grab. In a state with rampant voter suppression, outgoing governor Scott Walker cut La Follette’s
staff from 50 to one and stuck his office in the basement. The bills
Republicans just passed will help neuter that office in a different way—
slashing early voting schedules again, a move that was blocked in 2016
by a federal district judge who concluded that doing so discriminated on the basis of race.
Now that Trump has five reliable enablers of voter suppression on the
U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps Wisconsin’s GOP is willing to give this
another shot. They are also trying to move a state Supreme Court
election in 2020, despite there being no need to do so. As journalist Mark Joseph Stern argued, this is designed to discourage voter turnout and prevent a liberal takeover of the body.
Wisconsin’s Republican Senate leader, Scott
Fitzgerald, said the quiet part out loud in a conservative talk radio
interview on Monday, calling his next governor a “lap dog” for teachers’
unions and saying that “we don’t trust Tony Evers right now.”
His will, and presumably that of 17 other sitting GOP state senators,
outweighs the collective will of the state that the governor is
allegedly supposed to represent.
In a crack-of-the-morning vote Wednesday, Wisconsin’s Senate passed the sweeping measures by one vote,
17-16. Then the state assembly passed it, and outgoing Gov. Scott
Walker will sign it into law. Lame-duck power grabs aren’t new for him,
nor for Republicans nationwide. The assembly’s Republican speaker, Robin
Vos, defended this by saying that he was sticking up for the voters in
his district. “Where I live, people have said do whatever you have to do
to make sure the reforms that have been positive for Wisconsin don’t go
away,” he said via the assembly’s Twitter a day before the vote.
This mirrors what North Carolina Republicans pulled in 2016,
seeking to limit the powers of Democrat Roy Cooper after voters elected
him governor that year. Michigan saw that blueprint, and as the state
welcomes its own Democratic trifecta — the first in 28 years
— Republicans there have proposed new measures that would neuter the
incoming governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Protecting unconstitutional measures,
such as one that allows adoption agencies to discriminate against
same-sex couples, is taking priority over that will of the voter we hear
so much about.
Voter suppression is not merely about gerrymandering,
closing polling places and requiring IDs to shape an electorate. It is a
declaration that only Republicans are allowed to run things, even when
the voters say otherwise, and that any challenges to their power are
invalid. We worry, rightfully, about what Trump does and will do to our
democracy. He soils it with his lies about undocumented voting and his encouragement of intimidation
at the polls. But the embarrassment of his “voter fraud” panel
demonstrated that he is actually rather ineffective at suppressing
votes.
Trump is a small man, but that isn’t why this is bigger than him.
When it comes to protecting Republican power for themselves and their
shrinking white electorate, the real pros are at the state level.
No comments:
Post a Comment