Who’s afraid of basic voter access?
Dear GOP: If you believe your party is the best, then equitable expansion shouldn’t be a threat.
Any American political party that comes to view voting access as a threat, let alone a full-blown existential crisis, is doing something wrong.
Yes, we’re talking about the white Texas Democrats who hatched all kinds of desperate plots in the early 20th century to keep power away from Black and Mexican voters. And we’re talking about Republican statehouses across the country today clinging to the reins of power by erecting obstacle courses for voters they perceive as unfriendly to their cause — namely, low-income people of color and folks under 30.
In corporate America, when a company faces the prospect of extinction or obsolescence, those that survive listen to their customers’ needs and innovate to stay relevant. Netflix didn’t fixate on sabotaging Blockbuster; it invested in sending DVDs, and eventually streaming innovations and quality programming.
That’s the way to compete: by opening doors, not barring them.
And yet, in Texas and many other states, the only strategy of the aging, white Republican elite has been to cater to a small sliver of voters who turn out to the Republican primary with ever more radical policies — near total abortion bans, reckless carry for unlicensed, untrained gun owners — and also by making voting less convenient, and for some, an outright scary endeavor that can land you in jail for an honest mistake.
We ask you, Texans, especially sensible Republicans who generally support the basic tenants of democracy, if the GOP is the best party with the best ideas to make this state and this country the best it can be, why would it be afraid of online voter registration?
Why would we in Texas be content with a cumbersome registration that involves an old-school printer and a 30-day waiting period?
If you’re a Republican politician in any state, why would you be afraid
of a national voter ID standard that, unlike Texas’ original discriminatory version years ago, allows for voters to present a variety of ID cards and documents — in paper and digital formats?
Why would you be afraid of making Election Day a national holiday? What’s so bad about making redistricting a fair process that follows certain basic rules rather than an artful exercise in partisan gerrymandering and deck-stacking? What’s so threatening about requiring more political donors to step into the light and show themselves?
If your knees aren’t trembling at the prospect of any of that, maybe it’s because you don’t fear voters as much as Texas’ reigning political party does.
And maybe the current version of federal voting legislation isn’t an
existential threat after all.
It does all the aforementioned things, and a few others that aren’t so bad either. The compromise, announced Tuesday and heartily endorsed by moderate West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who had opposed a previous version, is called the Freedom to Vote Act.
It’s narrower in scope than its predecessor, which was kind of like the Green New Deal of voting, a laundry list of provisions, including some that were sensible but some that were half-baked and ill-conceived unfunded mandates.
Instead, the Freedom to Vote Act focuses mainly on access to the ballot and trying to create a level playing field for voters with minimum federal standards for voting by mail, a minimum 15-day window for early voting and same-day voter registration. Even though Democrats have reached compromise on the legislation doesn’t mean its chances of passing the Senate are any greater. Manchin has expressed some hope of being able to peel off 10 Republican votes in the divided chamber. But if he fails, Democrats would have to alter the filibuster to keep the GOP from blocking debate on the bill. That could include the welcome change of requiring U.S. senators to actively filibuster — actually talking the bill to death in a marathon monologue on the Senate floor, the way we do it in Texas — rather than just threatening to do it, which is the lazy Washington shortcut.
We can’t help but hope enough Republican senators see the merits of protecting voter access for all and get behind this legislation. Behind the politics and rhetoric, the sensible senators know the right thing to do. Kind of like the Republicans in Texas who quietly added a little last-minute sense into the state voting bill when no one was looking.
The Chronicle’s Taylor Goldenstein reported this week two little-noticed provisions that Republicans allowed in the final version signed by Gov. Greg Abbott: one lowered the criminal offense for illegal voting from a second-degree felony to a Class A misdemeanor. The second provided a bit of protection for people who make an honest mistake in casting votes when they’re not eligible.
The same common sense is possible in the U.S. Senate, if not exactly likely.
None of the improvements and compromises in the federal voting bill will stop some Republicans from declaring it a “federal takeover” of elections.
But when they make that claim, ask yourself: When does ensuring basic rights constitute a federal takeover?
Only when it gets in the way of a partisan one.