GOP feeds the Big Lie with voter suppression

Christine Todd Whitman’s brother started to say the quiet part out loud.

It was November 1993, and Whitman had just been elected governor of New Jersey, with the campaign assistance of her brother, Webster B. Todd Jr.

During a post-election seminar, Todd attributed his sister’s victory to intensive work “getting out the vote on one side and voter sup…”

Todd stopped himself in midutterance, right in the middle of blurting out the word no campaign operative ever says with a camera or microphone close by. He finished his thought in an appropriately euphemistic way, crediting the campaign’s effort “at keeping the vote light in other areas.”

The media ruckus caused by Todd’s inadvertent burst of honesty prompted a bit of damage control from Whitman’s media aide, Carl Golden.

“Sometimes,” Golden said, “voter suppression is as important in this business as vote getting.”

He wasn’t wrong.

After all, the goal of any campaign is to maximize your turnout and minimize the other side’s turnout.

A cough suppressant chemically tamps down the physical compulsion to cough. Successful campaigns tamp down the desire of your opponent’s supporters to vote.

It’s achieved by persuasion, negative messaging and, in some cases, the willful building of apathy.

After all, when Mayor Ron Nirenberg consistently refuses to grant his chief opponent, Greg Brockhouse, a debate, he’s trying to suppress Brockhouse’s ability to generate energy, enthusiasm or credibility for his candidacy.

Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election because 4.4 million people who voted in 2012 for Clinton’s fellow Democrat, Barack Obama, stayed home in 2016.

So if we accept the idea that voter suppression, while an ugly term, is actually a natural part of politics, we need to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable suppression.

Driving down support for the other side with negative ads is part of the game.

Changing state election laws in a targeted fashion to cut back on voting access, however, is an abuse of the political system.

That’s what we’re encountering right now; the reverberations of the Big Lie that the 2020 election — which saw Trump lose the popular vote by seven million votes to Joe Biden — was stolen from Trump by rampant voter fraud.

That’s why we’ve seen lawmakers in 28 states file more than 100 bills this year to make voting more difficult.

Georgia’s voting overhaul was particularly egregious, with the passage of a law allowing state officials to override the determinations of local election boards, restricting the use of ballot drop boxes and making it a crime to offer water or food to someone waiting in line to vote.

At the same time, Georgia’s Gop-driven law was the thoroughly predictable result of Biden’s narrow 2020 win in that state, largely achieved with massive mail voting from Democrats.

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor, signed the bill into law only weeks after Trump attacked him for not attempting to invalidate Biden’s win in that state.

In Texas, we’re seeing similar efforts from Republican lawmakers. Senate Bill 7, from state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-mineola, would prohibit public officials from distributing mail-ballot applications to anyone who hasn’t requested one.

The bill would also require documented proof for anyone claiming disability as an excuse for mail voting and allow poll watchers virtually unlimited ability to move around at a voting site and record what happens.

House Bill 6, from Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-deer Park, similarly elevates the power of poll watchers and bans the unsolicited distribution of applications for mail ballots.

Keep in mind that we’re talking about applications, not ballots. A person who receives a mail-ballot application would still have to fill it out in order to receive a ballot.

Sending out applications — as Bexar County did during the Covid-plagued 2020 election for all voters 65-and-older — simply gives people an option. It doesn’t remotely create voter fraud.

Republicans, however, despise mail voting and see any effort to encourage its use as a problem.

Republicans took a very difference stance in Florida in 2000, when the state Republican Party sent out letters to its voters with mail-ballot applications enclosed. Then-gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, urged Floridians to “vote from the comfort of your home.”

That push won Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, the presidency that year, as he carried the mail voting in the close, crucial state of Florida by a margin of more than 143,000 votes.

Last August, Trump tweeted this message to Florida voters: “I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail!” At the same time, Trump repeatedly decried the practice of mail voting in other states.

The lesson is simple: The GOP only trusts mail voting in places where the party is good at it. Everywhere else, it’s fraudulent.