“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” states the Declaration of Independence. Just not Republican-led governments … under which consent of the governed is unwelcome and actively opposed.
“It’s just sad when a political party has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics,” said Wisconsin state Sen. Dale Schultz (R). “I am not willing to defend them anymore.”
That was March 2014. Schultz condemned his party’s attempts to limit access to the polls.
“It’s all predicated on some belief there is a massive fraud or irregularities, something my colleagues have been hot on the trail for three years and have failed miserably at demonstrating,” he said.
Six years later they are still failing miserably yet still trying to make it harder to vote. I recently counted 20 of their vote suppression methods. Ari Berman came up with a few more.
Republicans are filing election-related lawsuits in Nevada, Texas, Pennsylvania, Minnesota … everywhere, actually. Those actions have been largely a failure too, but party lawyers are just getting warmed up. They’ve challenged the rules. They’ve challenged the methods. They’ve challenged voting days and hours. The Trump administration has slowed the U.S. mail.
Now Republicans are challenging individual voters, maintaining the pretext their efforts are only about ensuring elections officials are scrupulously following the law:
“The other side has given every indication that they will challenge every ballot they can, at every step of the process,” said Chad Dunn, general counsel for the Texas Democratic Party and co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project.
“The mask is off. This isn’t about rooting out any mythical voter fraud. It never was,” Dunn said. “This is about raw power and obtaining power by any means necessary.”
A quote I use on the back of my GOTV planning guide states a very different philosophy:
“We think that voting actually is not just a private vote for the person who gets the vote, but a public good, and that the more people who vote, the more legitimate the elected officials are, and that they represent the actual values of the electorate.” — former Colorado Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon (D-Denver), Colorado Statesman, 7/27/12
It’s not Lincoln, but it’s American. One wonders if our opponents are anymore except on paper.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes declared in a commentary Friday night.
No, it does not. Harris County, Texas added drive-through voting to its election-support efforts, and made 24-hour service available over the last day of early voting. Nearly 10,000 voted between 7 p.m. and midnight. Hundreds more voted in the wee hours. If you build it, they will come.
“What I like about engineering is that you can’t manipulate the laws of physics and mathematics,” Miguel Valencio said. “As we’ve seen lately, election laws are not the same.” Valencio arrived to vote about 1 a.m. He works for an oil-field services company and was angered by Governor Greg Abbott limiting county residents to using a single drop box for absentee ballots. He had not been enthusiastic about voting for Joe Biden, but Abbotts’s actions convinced him to vote in person.
Texas has exceeded its 2016 voting total with Election Day still days away. Those down-ballot and local judges races? They matter.
Some of us still believe the consent of the governed matters.