Democrats need to keep their foot on the gas
When Republicans take control of the U.S. House next month, lunatics will have run of the asylum. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will chair the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) will have a firm grip on Speaker(?) Kevin McCarthy’s balls. The clowns will be driving the car.
The real action, the place where your primary focus needs to rest, is out in the states. Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, is already on it.
“I was throwing up with anxiety,” Wikler told the Guardian as the midterm elections grew near. Republicans already held control of both houses of the state legislature. If Democrat Tony Evers lost reelection to the governorship, Republicans had sworn the GOP “will never lose another election.” Republicans would engineer themselves permanent control of the state, one crucial to Democrats’ presidential chances in 2024.
The Guardian explains:
Wisconsin has the most gerrymandered legislative map in the country, designed to ensure the GOP has as easy a path as possible to capture majorities in the legislature, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study.
Meanwhile, the Cost of Voting Index ranks Wisconsin as the fourth most difficult state in the country for people to exercise their right to cast a ballot, thanks to its strict voter identification requirements and laws that make it practically impossible to conduct voter registration drives.
But Wisconsin’s Republicans are looking to tighten access to polling places further, and passed a host of measures to do so, all of which fell to Evers’s veto pen. With a supermajority in the legislature, they would have been able to override his vetoes.
The “red wave” collapsed and “Wisconsin Democrats narrowly managed to keep Republicans from a supermajority in both houses of the legislature.”
“Because of all that, democracy is going to survive in our state,” Wikler said. And perhaps more.
At the meeting of Democratic governors and governors-elect in New Orleans earlier this month, officials who have played defense over the last two years hope now to go on offense.
That, despite unified Republican control in Texas, Ohio, Florida and Georgia where Republicans are working to pile voting restrictions atop voting hurdles. In Congress, Democrats have yet to advance the John Lewis Voting Rights Act out of the Senate after passing it in the House last summer. The Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Harper could give states even more power over election laws and congressional maps.
Democrats need to overcome their reflexive complacency. Adam Pritzker, cousin to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, is founder of the States Project that focuses on legislative races (New York Times):
“Democrats never cease to amaze me,” he said. “They go from like waving the white flag in states to then thinking that we won, then wanting to take the foot off the gas pedal. It just seems a little bit dangerous to think that way.”
There is much to do to push back against the GOP’s assault on popular democracy:
The most popular Democratic plan on voting access is to join the 20 states that have already enacted or approved automatic voter registration, a system that adds anyone whose information is on file with a government agency — such as a department of motor vehicles or a social services bureau — to the voter rolls unless they opt out. Oregon, which in 2016 became the first state to adopt the practice, had the highest percentage of voter turnout in the country last month, a distinction held in recent elections by Minnesota.
Steve Simon, a Democrat who won re-election as Minnesota’s secretary of state, said that automatic voter registration and preregistering 16- and 17-year-olds before their 18th birthdays would be atop the voting access agenda for his state’s Democratic legislators.
Democrats in Michigan there hope to leverage their gains there:
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said at the recent governors’ gathering that she was considering backing automatic registration and making it easier for out-of-state students attending Michigan universities to register to vote. (Republicans in some states have sought to make it harder for out-of-state college students, who tend to lean Democratic, to vote, arguing that they should cast ballots in their home states.)
The Michigan secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a fellow Democrat, said that while her office worked to carry out the election changes approved by voters, she would like to see sweeping new rules and penalties for disseminating and amplifying misinformation that interferes with voting — things like fliers or mailers with the wrong dates for an election or deceptive language on petitions that are gathered for proposed ballot amendments.
“The greatest threats to our democracy right now continue to be the intentional spread of misinformation and the threats and harassment of election officials that emerge from those efforts,” Ms. Benson said. “We owe it to voters on all sides to ensure we are seeking accountability for anyone who would intentionally try to essentially block someone from voting through misinformation.”
In Wisconsin, Tony Evers’ reelection means Republicans may be less likely to challenge his veto pen. Republicans have said they will not reintroduce the more than dozen bills Evers vetoed over the last two years.
But don’t count on it. They are nothing if not relentless. Adam Pritzker had it right. It’s not time for Democrats to take their foot off the gas.