Vote suppression is as vote suppression does.
Voter turnout in 2020 was historic and secure, with fraud all but nonexistent. That outcome was driven in part by massive expansion in voting by mail in the middle of a deadly pandemic. The Brennan Center reports that states across the country have since launched a backlash against voting:
In a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election, and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, legislators have introduced three times the number of bills to restrict voting access as compared to this time last year. Twenty-eight states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 106 restrictive bills this year (as compared to 35 such bills in fifteen states on February 3, 2020).
But well-run and fair elections in Georgia produced results not to Republicans’ liking. “So now, Georgia Republicans want to cook the rules,” the Washington Post Editorial Board writes. Fair is on the chopping block in over half the states. “Republicans have concluded that if they cannot win a fair election, they must make elections less fair.” But then, they concluded that decades ago.
The spate of new bills would “end no-excuse absentee voting, ban ballot drop boxes and restrict automatic voter registration.” That is on top of the bill introduced last week to require those voting by mail to provide copies of their IDs both when applying for absentee ballots and with their submission (emphasis mine):
Nothing in the 2020 election experience suggests that wide-scale use of mail-in ballots, the provision of drop boxes or the rollout of automatic voter registration pose major risks to voting integrity. Indeed, automatic voter registration programs are designed to increase the accuracy of voter registration lists. No conceivable public purpose is served by making it harder to register. Meanwhile, the crackdown on mail-in ballots reflects the fact that large numbers of Democrats shifted to absentee voting in 2020.
After last month’s deadly MAGA insurrection failed to overturn the results of the last election, rigging the next one through legislative process must seem like statesman restraint. To someone somewhere.
The Editorial Board reasons:
U.S. democracy needs an overhaul — not to restrict voting but to shut down politicians who seek to tilt the rules at the people’s expense. Using their power over federal elections, Democrats and any Republicans of conscience in Congress must make such an overhaul a top priority in the coming months. Fortunately, Democrats have an appealing bill ready to go that they have been crafting for years. The For the People Act would require automatic voter registration, which could add 50 million people to electoral rolls while improving their quality. It would mandate bipartisan redistricting commissions for congressional maps, ending partisan gerrymandering in federal elections. The bill would ensure access to early and mail-in voting and restore voting rights to people with prior criminal convictions. And it would create a public financing system for political campaigns, amplifying the power of small contributions with matching funds for candidates who decide to participate.
Not to mention the vulnerability of the Electoral College process to manipulation by politicians long after Election Day.
Automatic voter registration is of particular interest. Finding the unregistered is perhaps the Holy Grail of turnout activism. Just in North Carolina at one point recently there were a million more DMV customers than registered voters. But DMV records are not publicly accessible for cross-matching and commercial databases for doing so are not cheap. Thus, inviting people to vote who do not appear in voter registration records is a feat of costly data crunching unavailable to grassroots activists. No doubt Republican politicians prefer it that way. Automatic voter registration would make my day more than theirs.