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May 15, 2021
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers' Voice
Republicans are continuing to push voter suppression bills in various state legislatures. A few Republican leaders are opposing it because they think it gives the GOP a bad name or because they think it might suppress Republican voters who embrace mail-in voting. But the great majority of Republican politicians still embrace the Trumpist lie of a stolen election. State legislators have dutifully sponsored some 360 bills in over 40 states to tighten election laws. The Democratic Party opposition is anemic. Even a number of Democrats are beginning to regret the do-nothing years of the Obama administration during which nothing was done to stop the Republicans from gerrymandering districts in the states they controlled. (1) But the Democratic Party isn't doing much better now on voting rights. It timidly relies on appeals to corporations to oppose the Republican bills; on lawsuits; or hoping that two congressional bills can get through the Senate; or simply on collecting money for the 2022 election. Meanwhile the juggernaut campaign of voter suppression continues.
Since the 2000 election, when voting in Florida was a disaster, the state has updated its election procedures and allowed easy absentee voting. This is helpful to seniors among others, and even Donald Trump voted absentee (while denouncing it). Voting went smoothly in 2020, and Trump won the state, but there was one hitch: for the first time, Democrats outvoted Republicans in absentee voting. And not by a little – by 700,000. Horrified Republican legislators decided to restrict absentee voting, even though it’s favored by many of their supporters among seniors and Hispanics. In April they passed a new law that will add more ID requirements for those requesting absentee ballots; will require voters to request an absentee ballot for each election instead of being on a list to be sent a ballot for every election; will limit who can collect and deliver absentee ballots; will limit the use of drop-boxes; and will further empower partisan election observers. (2)
Democratic legislators criticized the bill as “a solution in search of a problem”, since there was no problem with the 2020 election. One legislator likened the Republicans’ search for election fraud to the search for the chupacabra, the mythical vampire beast that roams the wilds of Florida and sucks the blood of farm animals. But Governor Ron Desantis signed the Republican bill into law, and corporate leaders refrained from any criticism.
Supporters of HR1 (the Democrats’ For the People Act, their measure to reform election law) argue that it would blunt the effect of this law, and that’s good reason to support HR1. (3) But to pass it, Democrats would need to get rid of the Senate filibuster, and they can’t even agree on that; so HR1 is likely going nowhere.
In Texas, Republicans aim their fire at urban areas that have large concentrations of minority (Black and Hispanic) voters. Their voter suppression bills specifically target counties having more than a million people, in the cities of Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. In Houston (one of the nation’s largest cities), last year the Democratic supervisor of elections initiated new methods of increasing voter turnout, for example drive-thru early voting and one-day with 24-hour early voting. This made it easier for many people to vote, especially shift workers, the disabled, pregnant women, etc. The result: voter turnout reached 70%. This cut down Trump’s edge over the opposition compared to 2016: he still won the state, but by a closer margin. So Republicans propose bills that would roll back these reforms. Since whites were the majority of early voters, their bills do not prohibit early voting. But they do prohibit 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting, which had a majority of minority voters. Their new bills also impose harsh penalties on election workers who help voters and limit the number of voting machines to a certain number per precinct (which will especially hurt the larger precincts and require long lines and longer wait-times). Another provision will ban anyone from encouraging absentee voting (I guess this would mean clerks who mail out ads to voters encouraging them to vote absentee). And another provision would make it much more difficult to remove a partisan poll watcher for misbehavior (which Republicans are notorious for).
Some corporate leaders, notably those of American Airlines and Dell Corp., spoke out against the Republican bills. In response, some Republicans offered amendments to the bills that would punish anyone or any “entity” (such as a corporation) that speaks out against the bills. These amendments have since been dropped, but the threat still remains, and other corporations have been quiet. (4)
Arizona was another state that had a big boost in voter turnout in 2020, up by 10%. Some 70% of voters turned in mail-in ballots, which are especially helpful to indigenous people living on tribal lands. Republicans want to suppress this large turnout, so one of their proposals is to purge voter rolls; another is to prohibit election clerks from sending out absentee ballots unless an individual requests it; another would mandate criminal penalties for any election official – and anyone else! – who encourages mail-in voting. (Freedom of speech, anyone?) Yet another would prohibit local precincts from accepting private grants of money to help them pay for election costs. (5) This latter provision is being pushed in a number of states and is a result of the last election, in which large private grants financed a significant increase in election help. (Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook alone gave out grants of $250 million.) It would seem reasonable to try and keep elections out of the hands of private donations; but on the other hand, state legislatures are notoriously cheap when it comes to financing elections.
But these “reform” bills are being held up until the state senate’s audit of Maricopa County election results is finished. The county already did a recount, and then had an audit of its recount. Not satisfied, the state senate now has ordered an audit of the audit, to be carried out by a shady private company called Cyber Ninjas headed by a QAnon conspiracist. This company’s method is to shine UV lights on ballots to discover if they’ve been tampered with, although no one has the faintest idea of how UV light could do that, and thus are supposed evidence of election fraud. Republicans in the state senate have new bills ready to move as soon as they have this "evidence" from their conspiratorial audit. (6)
Legislators in some 20 states are sponsoring 40 bills that would make it easier for partisan poll watchers to harass and intimidate voters and election workers. Their bills would also make it harder for such poll watchers to be removed from the area by election workers. In Michigan, one proposal would completely ban nonpartisan poll watchers, to make sure any arguments (and thus, election results) never get resolved. Other new bills would increase the number of partisan poll watchers allowed, would eliminate restrictions on how close to election officials they could be, allow photographing and video recording (which might turn up on social media, publicizing voters and how they voted), and would limit the grounds on which poll watchers could be expelled by election officials. These bills come after the 2020 election, when hordes of Republican “poll watchers” tried to invade the polls in Detroit at the TCF Center and harass election officials who were trying to count absentee ballots. In other places as well, Republican poll watchers would hover over officials and try to file protests over every move the ballot-counters made. This is clearly misbehavior, but Republican legislators want to legalize it. (7)
The Republican campaign is not a localized, hit-or-miss effort; it’s organized by the national Republican Party with the backing of the Trumpist wing of the big bourgeoisie. The party’s national leadership has organized a “committee on election integrity” that is funded to investigate state election laws and coordinate efforts to “reform” them. The campaign is backed by other national organizations like the Heritage Foundation, whose “Action Initiative” is devoting $24 million to the effort. Another player is the State Policy Network and its affiliated groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Still another is ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is working with national legislators like Rand Paul to draft and promote reactionary laws. (8) The Republicans will also dominate redistricting in many legislatures, allowing them to intensify gerrymandering.
Looking at things more broadly, this assault on voting rights is part of a general assault on democratic rights. MAGA Republicans were stung by the massive demonstrations last year following the police murder of George Floyd. When demonstrations swelled into streets, in some cases cars plowed into them. This happened over 100 times, eight times by police. Now 34 states are considering bills that would grant immunity to drivers of such cars, and so far three states – Florida, Iowa, and Oklahoma – have passed such laws. (9) Thus the Trumpists are saying it’s not only OK to take away people’s right to vote but OK to run over and kill people who protest.
Democratic rights are more important to the working masses than to the Democratic Party politicians. It is only through exercising and extending its rights that the working majority can develop independence of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It is only through fighting against exploitation, against racism and white supremacy, and against all forms of oppression that the masses can develop a class stand against the bourgeoisie. Voter suppression and anti-democratic laws aim to push the workers back into passivity; voting rights were won by heroic mass actions that paved the way for voting rights laws, not by the benevolence of politicians.
As for the Democrats, they appeal to the corporations to oppose the voter suppression bills, even though the big capitalists profited from the Trump presidency and want to keep workers unorganized. These appeals haven't had much effect; some corporate leaders have spoken out against the voter suppression laws, but Republican political leaders ignore them or threaten to punish them for speaking out. But Democratic politicians and their supporters insist on highlighting hypocritical corporate declarations as if they were a magic talisman. What these appeals show is that the Democrats are fighting with the Republicans over who best represents the interests of the corporations and the business class.
The voter suppression laws are dead serious. What the Trumpists couldn't get by force on January 6, they hope to get more gradually with voter suppression, gerrymandering, and doing what they want even when they lose elections. (10) The next few years may be very difficult indeed. If there isn't to be a grim future, there will have to be a major development of the mass struggle, not only on voting rights but on all the issues that affect the life of the working class.<>
(1) Astead W. Herndon, "Why Some Black Democrats Haven't Embraced a Voting Rights Push: In the South, Black Democrats describe a party too slow in combating Republican voting limits. And Black lawmakers are wary that a major elections bill could reduce their power in Congress", May 7, 2021, New York Times.
(2) Patricia Mazzei and Nick Corasaniti, "Florida Republicans Pass Voting Limits in Broad Elections Bill", May 6, 2021.
(3) "How the For the People Act Blunts New Florida Voting Restrictions", April 30, 2021, Common Dreams.
(4) Nick Corasaniti, "Republicans Target Voter Access in Texas Cities, but Not Rural Areas: In Houston, election officials found creative ways to help a struggling and diverse work force vote in a pandemic. Record turnout resulted. Now the G.O.P. is targeting those very measures", April 24, 2021, New York Times.
(5) Marian K. Schneider, "Arizona's Voter Suppression Bills Are Dangerously Close to Becoming Law", April 28, 2021, Brennan Center for Justice.
(6) Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC,April 29, 2021..
(7) Nick Corasaniti, "G.O.P. Seeks to Empower Pollwatchers, Raising Intimidation Worries: Republicans in several states are pushing bills to give poll watchers more autonomy. Alarmed election officials and voting rights activists say it's a new attempt to target voters of color", May 1, 2021, New York Times.
(8) David Armiak, "Rand Paul and ALEC Are Working Together to Suppress the Vote", May 7, 2021, Truthout.
(9) Eve Ottenberg, "The 'Kill a Leftist' Law", May 7, 2021, Counterpunch.
(10) Heidi Schmidt and Travis Meier, "Missouri won’t expand Medicaid, even though majority of voters told them to",
May 13, 2021, Fox 4 News. Missouri voters mandated Medicaid expansion
by approving an amendment to the Missouri constitution, but the
Missouri Court of Appeals Western District and the Republican majority
in the legislature said it wasn't binding. <>
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