The Democrats' new "voter suppression" and other efforts to rig the 2022 Election.
If you oppose any Democrat friendly voting rule, you might as well be a racist.
We have been hearing quite a bit lately about how Republicans are engaging in “voter suppression.” When those claims are examined closely, what one determines is that “voter suppression,” at least according to Democrats, is opposing any change to voting rules that Democrats propose or suggest. Lately, there appears to be a bigger component . . .
Before we get to the new developments, let us revisit where we started. What are the Democrats labelling “voter suppression?” Essentially, “voter suppression” was any “change” or, rather, any clarification to the manner in which Americans voted in the 2020 Federal Election. Democrats desired that the 2020 Federal Election manner of voting remain in place, largely because it favored them. It favored Democrats because voting measure that they had long advocated had been implemented, not through the ordinary process, but, as “emergency” measures in response to the COVID-19 virus and, for that matter, largely unConstitutionally.
These voting methods favored Democrats because their voting base, as a whole, typically is not as committed to voting in person on Election Day. Accordingly, the “easier” it is to cast a vote by any other manner yields a more likely Democrat vote. This would be unproblematic from the opposition’s viewpoint if some of the expansive methods of voting in addition to in person, on Election Day, were not subject to an increased potential for voter fraud. As a result to the potential for voter fraud, Republicans traditionally have resisted attempts by Democrats to expand voting from in person, on Election Day. These GOP efforts largely had been successful in most States until 2020. That is, while some States, such as deeply blue California had enacted Democrat friendly voting methods such as mail-in ballots and same day registration, most non-blue States had not. COVID-19 changed all that.
While the pandemic raged, many red and purple States “enacted” Democrat friendly voting methods by arguing that COVID-19 required radical changes to voting methods, and all without going through the ordinary legislative process. As a result, governors in blue, red, and purple States unilaterally changed voting rules in a manner that required voting methods that Democrats favored, all without getting them passed through the State’s legislature. In most instances, those governors were Democrats and those legislatures were controlled by Republicans. In some instances, Democrats controlled the State entirely while in others Republicans did. In any event, the fact is that the 2020 Federal Election’s rules were more closely aligned with Democrats’ preferred method of voting than any election in United States history.
After the pandemic subsided, in 2021, many States determined to clarify or otherwise restore their respective States’ voting to those that existed prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. This is not to write that States returned precisely to the rules that existed before the pandemic. In fact, many (if not most) States retained some measure of Democrat preferred voting methods. For example, Georgia increased the number of days of early voting from that which had existed before the 2020 Election.
Despite the fact that the reactions of State legislatures after the 2020 Election were to enact (or clarify, as the case may be) voting methods that were more Democrat friendly than those that existed before 2020, Democrats uniformly labeled the voting legislation “voter suppression.” Indeed, many used the more hyperbolic term “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Of course, neither label was accurate, nor descriptive. Republican legislatures were clarifying that the pre-emergency voting methods would return—again, if anything, such measure were henceforth to be more Democrat preferred than those that existed before the pandemic.
Once Democrats had smeared Republicans preferred voting methods as “voter suppression,” and “racist,” after some time, they began, subtly, to take a slightly different tact. Before turning to that, consider that there is no evidence that Republican favored voting methods “suppress” votes, much less those of minorities. In fact, in Georgia’s recent primary election, its “Jim Crow 2.0” voting laws yielded record turnout generally and among minorities specifically. This, of course, is a story for another day (should that day ever come).
Forever on the march, Democrats recent shift has not been to attack Republican preferred voting methods, but Republican led efforts at ensuring election integrity. This is especially pernicious considering the fact that the efforts merely seek to ensure that only legally, properly cast, votes are counted. Nonetheless, these suggestions have come from partisan and extremely partisan outlets alike. For example, The New York Times recently ran this piece claiming that Republican backed efforts at monitoring election ballot counting were somehow improper. On a more partisan level (which, given the Times’ bent for some time is hard to fathom), Democrat “super lawyer” Marc Elias recently tweeted about his efforts to block people from monitoring Nevada’s 2022 vote count somehow as virtuous.
Put succinctly, Democrats and their allies now are claiming that desiring to monitor vote counting or to otherwise ensure that only valid, legal, and properly cast ballots are counted is improper, agin to “voter suppression” or fraud. This likely will continue through and including November, 2022. There is (nor would be) any point in speculating what their motivation could be—it is obvious to anyone that Democrats are nearing the point of nonsensical when it comes to voting.
At this juncture, Democrats have shifted from attacking voting methods as “suppression” and “racist,” to suggesting that efforts to monitor vote counting or to inspect ballots for illegality is nefarious. To wit, you may not challenge any preferred Democrat method of voting or inspect the results of such methods. Thus, Democrats have reached the point whereby only their preferred methods of voting are permissible and, further, there shall be no inspection of those methods. Everything else is “vote suppression,” “racist,” a “threat to democracy,” and the like.
One wonders how far the bridge to their suggesting only Democrats should be permitted to vote. In light of how fast and how radically the messaging travels these days, we likely will not have to wonder for long.
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