Greg Sargent summarizes William Saletan’s analysis of Republican voting machinations:
Saletan writes:
All over the country, Republicans are tightening state election laws. They say they just want to prevent fraud, not stop Black Americans or other Democratic constituencies from voting. But there’s a simple way to test that claim: What do these Republicans think of early in-person voting? Unlike mail ballots, which in theory could be faked in ways that in-person ballots couldn’t (though in reality, mail ballots aren’t), early voting at a polling place is essentially identical, in terms of security, to voting on Election Day. So letting people vote early and in person doesn’t make it easier to cheat. It just makes it easier to vote.
Nope. Republicans want to stop that, too. Doesn’t matter if you are a legal voter or not.
By margins of 40-50 points, Republicans in Economist/YouGov polling “consistently said it should be harder.” Even via early voting, Saletan adds:
From the standpoint of preventing fraud, it makes no difference whether the period for early voting, whether in person or by mail, is long or short. Either way, the same risks and security measures apply. Yet Republicans want to constrict this period. In May, when a Reuters/Ipsos survey asked about “shortening the time window for early or absentee voting,” more Americans opposed that idea than supported it. But Republicans strongly supported it, 65 percent to 23 percent. In March, when a Des Moines Register poll asked about a proposal to “change the early voting period in Iowa with fewer days allowed to request and cast absentee ballots,” most Iowa voters rejected that proposal. But Republicans endorsed it, 71 percent to 24 percent.
In poll after poll, a third or more of Republicans oppose making early voting available for two weeks prior to Election Day.
When polls ask about “early voting” in general, the number goes up. Last month, in a Navigator survey, 47 percent of Republican voters opposed “expanding early voting access by requiring all states to offer 15 days of early voting.” In Texas, 60 percent of Republican voters supported “prohibiting counties from offering more than 12 hours a day of early voting during the last week of early voting.” In Pennsylvania, 59 percent of Republican voters favored a proposal to “ban early voting.”
They even object to counting votes “even if cast by eligible voters” if they end up voting in the wrong precinct on Election Day.
That phrase, “even if cast by eligible voters,” says it all. For many Republicans, and by some measures most Republicans, the crackdown on ballot access goes well beyond concerns about fraud. They object to people voting early, voting at alternative polling places, or getting Election Day off from work, even if the security measures are the same. They agree with Trump that “far too many days are given to vote.” That’s not a movement for ballot integrity. It’s a movement to constrict democracy.
This should not surprise anyone. I don’t know why some lefty nonprofit does not simply put in heavy media rotation the famous clip from 1980 of movement conservatism godfather Paul Weyrich stating for posterity, “I don’t want eveybody to vote.”
“Now many of our Christians have what I call the “goo goo” syndrome. Good Government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
The only democracy Republicans will endorse is one they can leverage in their favor by squeezing down the number of people who cast ballots. Their ideas are unpopular. Their economic policies have shrunk the middle class and kept real incomes stagnant (if not actively suppressed) since Weyrich gave that speech. Republicans are killing off their own voters by promoting resistance to vaccinations and masks. And they will take America down with them if they cannot rule it.
The only people they are fooling are the ones they are killing.