Georgia Republicans forge ahead, repress voting rights
On the other hand, Illinois Democrats repress choices that the voters can make
From Chicago’s south suburbs to America’s Deep South, it feels like democracy is under attack from both major political parties.
Republicans in Georgia and other states seem to want to repress the ability of people to vote in elections. This played out in dramatic fashion Thursday when state troopers arrested Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon after she knocked on the door of Gov. Brian Kemp’s office while he signed new election reforms into law.
Pictures and videos of white men handcuffing and hauling off a Black female lawmaker create unfavorable optics for the GOP. Georgia Republicans made it a crime for outside groups to give food or water to people waiting in line to vote, among other restrictions.
Pundits have said the logic behind voter repression measures is that Republicans tend to fare better in lower-turnout elections. The fewer people vote, the better chance Republicans have of winning races, according to conventional wisdom.
Thus, it appears Republican-controlled legislatures in Georgia and elsewhere are
adopting voter repression measures as a deliberate strategy for winning elections.
Such efforts are blatantly anti-democratic attempts to undermine a core American value that people have a right to choose who represents them in public office.
Democrats, on the other hand, want to make it easier to vote. Their formula for winning often depends on getting more people to participate in elections. Democrats, however, tend to engage in a different type of undemocratic activity. They seem to restrict voter choice.
“Go ahead and vote,” Democrats seem to say. “So long as we can control who gets your votes.”
Illinois Democrats appear to be notoriously adept at this type of activity.
It’s all done out in the open, often in the name of voting integrity. Proponents typically tout candidate repression measures as necessary to ensure qualified individuals run for office and that proper procedures are followed.
If you want to seek elected office as a Democrat, you need the support of party leaders. The organizational establishment tends to favor loyal soldiers who have dutifully waited their turns and logged sufficient hours working to help elect other Democrats.
The system tends to discourage independent mavericks. Democrats seem to leave little room for rogue idealists. If you want to buck the system and go it alone, the party establishment can make your life miserable by trying to torpedo your campaign.
Some infamous examples have involved former House Speaker Michael Madigan. Earlier this month, Madigan prevailed in a federal lawsuit that accused him of planting sham candidates on ballots in 2016 in order to confuse voters.
A reformer with a Hispanic-sounding name had the audacity to challenge Madigan in the Democratic primary. Two other candidates with Hispanic-sounding names then appeared on ballots.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Constitution does not give judges authority to penalize a politician for a “shady strategy that voters tolerate,” the Chicago Tribune reported.
Madigan also scored a big win in 2016 when the Illinois Supreme Court voted 4-3 along party lines to block a statewide ballot proposal that would have asked voters whether to change the state constitution to make the process for creating legislative districts more fair.
More than 563,000 Illinois residents signed petitions asking for the opportunity to decide the question. But Madigan fought hard to retain control of the redistricting process that often results in gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering districts preserves political power but it crushes democracy. Here in Illinois, many congressional and state legislative elections are uncontested. Districts are often too safely red or blue to make it worthwhile for the other side to expend resources to challenge a seat.
The skills, qualifications and experience of candidates often matter less than whether there is an R or a D after their name. The lack of choice is bad for voters.
Here’s a counterintuitive thought: Maybe making the redistricting process more fair might reduce voter resentment and partisanship and increase overall voter enthusiasm. For example, plenty of constituents in the 1st Congressional District from Elwood, Manhattan, Frankfort, Mokena and other Will County communities are unhappy that a Chicago Democrat has represented them in Congress for many, many years.
Many have expressed feelings that their congressional representative rarely, if ever, visits their part of the district and seems to only care about concerns of residents in the more urban sections of the 1st District. Over the years, resentment about representation may have hardened some of these suburban and rural constituents into enthusiastic GOP voters.
That’s what many Democrats fail to understand about why more than 74 million people voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and why he came within several thousand votes in a handful of swing states of winning a second term.
Voter repression is wrong. But repressing voter choice is an equally undemocratic sin. Illinois, and the Chicago suburbs in particular, seem to have a thriving cottage industry of attorneys and others whose livelihoods depend on legal disputes over whether candidates and referendum should appear on ballots.
Taxpayers often foot the bills for these inharmonious exercises that play out before duly appointed electoral boards. Someone has to pay attorneys, clerks, investigators, handwriting experts and others who engage in determining whether signatures were properly gathered on petitions and whether pages were property notarized and attached to each other.
The GOP’s voter-repression strategy may backfire. Democratic voters may become more enthusiastic about exercising their rights to vote because of efforts to restrict them.
At the same time, Illinois Democrats ought to consider how the party’s ballot-repression measures also harm democracy.