We have nothing to fear but voters themselves

California is just one front in what is shaping up as a multistate battle over who gets to vote — and how they get to do it — in the November election. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent executive order for each registered voter to receive a mailin ballot has drawn a lawsuit from Republican congressional candidate Darrell Issa and the conservative group Judicial Watch.

The complaint alleges that Newsom violated Issa’s rights by forcing him to “reevaluate his electoral strategy” with the rule change. (Voters had previously needed to request a mailin ballot.)

Newsom said the move is necessary to keep voters and poll workers safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

“The right to vote is foundational to our democracy,” Newsom tweeted on May 8. “No one should be forced to risk their health to exercise that right.”

The struggle between expanding and contracting voter access did not begin with the pandemic. It’s been flaring for many years and intensifying after a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling extracted the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, deleting a law that required areas with a history of discrimination to receive U.S. approval before changing voting rules.

The popular framing of the fight is that Republicans want to tighten requirements, purportedly to prevent fraud, and Democrats want to increase participation by making it easier to register and vote. The conventional wisdom is that Democrats gain when turnout is higher, Republicans benefit when fewer people vote.

President Trump put the issue in sharp relief in early April when he said “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again” if Democrats get their way on expanding early voting and vote by mail.

Before the pandemic, views of mailin voting did not tend to divide on party lines. Five states (including heavily Republican Utah) have universal vote by mail, and researchers have not found any particular advantage for one party. The votingaccess controversy has focused more on matters such as voter ID laws, the purging of rolls, targeted poll closures and sameday registration.

Suppression tactics were so rampand and succesful in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, in which Republican Brian Kemp narrowly defeated Stacey Abrams, that both parties correctly anticipated that voter access would be the issue going into 2020. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee put a team of attorneys in place to spend millions on litigation and election monitoring this year.

President Trump showed no regard for propriety — let alone the U.S. Constitution — in threatening to withhold federal aid from Michigan and Nevada if they go to universal mail balloting in November. He accused the Democrats in those states of setting up a scenario for massive fraud, even though there is no history of such in the recent history of increased mail voting. In California, for example, 72% of the ballots in the March primary arrived by mail.

It’s worth noting that Trump’s claim of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election — up to 5 million votes, he said — evaporated under scrutiny of his own commission. Also worth noting: Trump himself voted by mail this year.

Rob Stutzman, a prominent GOP consultant from Sacramento, said his fellow Republicans should stop complaining and “get in the game.” A Trump critic, Stutzman said the allegation that Democrats are “harvesting ballots” is a conspiracy theory not backed by evidence.

Besides, Stutzman recently wrote in the Washington Post, Republicans should have an advantage in voting by mail. He pointed to Republican Mike Garcia’s victory over Democrat Christy Smith in a Southern California special election to fill the seat vacated by U.S. Rep. Katy Hill. Some 10,000 more Republicans than Democrats returned their ballots by mail.

It’s beyond cynical to think the way to win an election is to keep eligible citizens from voting. It’s also a little foolhardy for a president who probably needs Michigan for his reelection to threaten to cut off aid to the state when it’s reeling from the health and economic trauma of a pandemic.

Voting is the antidote for these attacks on democracy.

JOHN DIAZ