Our most fundamental right is at stake
Republican lawmakers must be stopped from suppressing and restricting the right to vote.
Men of property wearing velvet knee-length breeches, silk stockings and buckled shoes, their costume complemented by powdered wigs. Men of property gathered to vote. Men, and men alone.
The dense forest of campaign signs planted near their polling place is meant only for their privileged eyes and no one else’s. They could not have imagined that the right to vote also belongs to Black Americans, to young Americans, to poor Americans, to female Americans. Such a notion would have made the nation’s first president gnash his wooden teeth.
Not to be facetious, but when some use the phrase “Stop the Steal,” it has nothing to do with election integrity and everything to do with that golden dream of exclusion. A version of which Texas Republicans and their counterparts in more than 40 states are working assiduously to make reality.
Their rationale is the outrageous Big Lie that the November election was corrupt, the Big Lie former President Donald Trump continues to perpetuate. In Texas and other GOP-controlled states, their war on democracy has produced more than 250 pieces of legislation designed to restrict, constrain or squeeze down access to the ballot box.
In Georgia, for example, the suppressionists want to limit or eliminate early voting on Sunday. Surely, that innocuous piece of legislation has nothing to do with Black churches and their traditional “Souls to the Polls” effort on Sundays before Election Day. Georgia leaders appear now to be pulling back on this effort. Another Georgia bill would make it illegal to give food or water to people waiting in line to vote, people waiting in line, of course, because suppression-minded lawmakers have restricted the number of voting sites.
Florida wants to ban drop boxes. New Hampshire is stopping permanent no-excuse absentee voting. Iowa already has shortened pollingplace hours and has reduced early voting, among other measures designed to make it harder to vote.
Texas, never a state to be outdone, would force counties to close polls at 7 p.m., making it harder for
working people to get to polling sites. State Sen. Bryan Hughes’ bill also would require anyone applying for a mail ballot on the grounds of disability to include written documentation from the U.S. Social Security Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or a certificate from a licensed physician, chiropractor or Christian Science practitioner.
As this page noted a few days ago, people in Texas are more likely to be struck by lightning than cheat at the polls, but that fact hasn’t stopped state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, from filing seven bills falsely bearing the label “election integrity.” One, for example, would allow the Secretary of State to withhold funds if a voter registrar or elections administrator fails to “remove voters who should not be registered in a timely fashion.” Other bills filed this session would eliminate drive-thru voting, outdoor voting and mass voting sites; ballot drop boxes could not be used. Ambitious voter-roll purges would be required. Purging voter rolls, of course, is a common tactic for taking away a person’s right to vote under the guise of reducing duplication and mistakes.
In Texas and elsewhere, lawmakers determined to suppress the vote are likely to be successful — unless,
that is, citizens are so determined to cast their ballot they will rise to meet every effort to thwart them. It’s happened before when lawmakers’ contempt for democracy has prompted a backlash.
Congress also has the power to repair our democracy. The For the People Act (H.R. 1) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4) are ambitious multifaceted pieces of legislation designed to guarantee voting-rights protections for all. H.R. 1 already has passed the House this year; a version of H.R. 4 passed the House in 2019, with 13 Texas Democrats as cosponsors. This time both are likely to die in the Senate unless Democratic lawmakers can figure out a way to modify or overcome the filibuster.
Here’s what the bills’ passage would mean for Texas:
• H.R. 4 would restore a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of voting discrimination — Texas included — to get federal approval for changes in voting rules. The U.S. Supreme Court killed the so-called preclearance portion of the VRA in 2013. Under H.R. 4, states would have to submit proposed changes — mandated poll closure at 7 p.m., for example — to the Department of Justice for review or seek a declaratory judgment in federal court that they would not directly or indirectly discourage voting on the basis of race.
• Voters would go to the polls without that nagging feeling that maybe they’re not registered or maybe they don’t have the right documents. They would automatically be registered to vote when they apply for state services. States also would be required to allow voters to register online. The legislation would implement universal voting by mail and provide at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections.
• Perhaps the most dramatic and far-reaching measure in H.R. 1 is a ban on partisan gerrymandering. Instead of ingenious Tom DeLaystyle “packing and cracking” schemes and precise computergenerated districts designed to keep one party in power in perpetuity, states would be required to use independent commissions to draw congressional districts. As we’ve seen in California, Iowa, Arizona and a number of other states that already rely on commissions, successful candidates are more likely to appeal to the center rather than rely on partisan extremists. They’ll be inclined to represent the views of the district, not simply activist primary voters. (Unfortunately, this portion of H.R. 1 wouldn’t go into effect until after the 2030 census.)
Some provisions in the ambitious voting-rights measures are debatable — a public-financing and smalldollar matching requirement, for example — but debate and discussion and ultimately compromise are what lawmakers are supposed to be doing. What’s not debatable is the nationwide battle Republican lawmakers are waging at the state level to suppress or restrict our most fundamental right as citizens of a democracy.
Here in Texas, Sens. Bettencourt and Hughes, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton and their election-suppression cohorts prattle on about “election integrity.” They should don powdered wigs and velvet knee breeches while claiming to do the people’s business under the Capitol dome. That way, voters could see at a glance what they’re really about.