The GOP in Michigan and across the country is a party that is led by people who don’t believe in democracy.
— Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson Friday night on MSNBC’s “The Last Word”
Republicans in one state capitol after another have dug in their heels to resist the will of the majority of voters. So convinced are they that they represent Real Americans™ that they now feel obliged entitled to ignore the voters and decide what the people want and what is best for them — just what Republicans routinely accuse Democrats of doing.
Nearly two-thirds of Florida voters passed a 2018 constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to felons after a federal court ruled Florida’s process unconstitutional. More than 20 percent of otherwise eligible Black voters are affected. Republican legislators promptly passed a measure requiring those with felony records “to pay all financial obligations from their sentencing or get these obligations excused by a judge” before they can vote. And if state and local governments cannot determine how much that is? Not government’s problem.
Commenting Thursday night on Georgia Republicans’ new law to limit voting, Democratic strategist James Carville commented that he (and Republican strategist Mike Murphy) never thought they’d see people trying to limit the number of people who could vote. “We tried to convince people who were going to vote to vote for our candidate. We never tried to pass something to stop someone from voting.” [timestamp 31:20]
President Joe Biden called the Georgia law restricting voting access an “atrocity.”
Last November, Biden won the state of Michigan by 154,000 votes. A record number of Michiganders voted, boosted by measures making it easier to vote. After contesting the results and claiming fraud, Republicans are having none of it:
Ron Weiser, chairman of the Michigan GOP, told the North Oakland Republican Club Thursday night that the party wants to blend together bills proposed in the House and Senate for a petition initiative.
If Republicans gathered enough signatures — more than 340,000 would be needed — the GOP-controlled Legislature could approve the proposal into law without Whitmer being able to veto it.
Senate Republicans unveiled 39 bills Wednesday to require applicants for absentee ballots to present a copy of identification, overhaul large counties’ canvassing boards and bar Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson from sending absentee ballot applications to voters unless they specifically request the applications.
This is the same GOP of former Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s emergency manager law used to overturn elections in majority-Black Michigan cities.
Republicans do X anti-democratic thing is now a thing, writes Sarah Jones at New York magazine:
Last August, Missouri voters ignored the state’s Republican leadership and voted by referendum to approve Medicaid expansion, the sixth Republican-controlled state to do so. Now, Republicans appear out for revenge. On Thursday, the House Budget Committee rejected a bill that would have allowed the state “to spend $130 million in state funds and $1.6 billion in federal money to pay for the program’s expansion,” the Kansas City Star reported.
Republicans say the state just can’t afford the cost. The bill, state representative Dirk Deaton claims, would “give free health care, government health care to able-bodied adults who can do it for themselves.” It’s unclear how Missourians could perform their own surgeries or triage themselves in case of an accident, but Deaton did not elaborate in his public comments. Another Republican, Sara Walsh, says her own rural voters had rejected the bill. “I don’t believe it is the will of the people to bankrupt our state,” she objected.
Walsh’s constituents supposedly don’t want the bill, but 53 percent of the state does — and that’s what matters. That’s how democracy works. Missouri voters passed Medicaid expansion in a free and fair election, and Republicans are telling them that their votes don’t matter. Writing this feels a bit rote, even repetitive. “Republicans do X anti-democratic thing” is now its own genre of article. But the party has its habits. There was an election in Missouri. Republicans are defying the results, as voters once defied them.
Walsh clearly believes votes that do not support what Republicans want do not represent the will of the majority not matter what the facts say. The only valid facts are “true facts” and the only valid elections are those Republicans win.
Paul LePage, former Republican governor of Maine also tried defying voters:
A vehement opponent of Medicaid expansion, LePage repeatedly tried to block expansion of the program from coming into effect. By the summer of 2018, he’d vetoed five expansion bills, and spent the last weeks of his term-limited administration filing legal action to try to stop expansion again. (His Democratic replacement, Janet Mills, promised to implement expansion “on day one” of her term, and did.) There’s an obvious thematic relationship between LePage, and Republicans in Missouri. They share an antipathy for welfare for Medicaid expansion in particular, but a secondary tendency also joins them: Power is the only force that matters. The same force is present in Georgia’s new elections bill, which makes it a crime to offer food and water to voters in line, and restricts the use of provisional ballots and drop boxes.
What Missouri Republicans are saying to constituents is really quite simple: Their votes aren’t important. So did LePage. So are Georgia Republicans, albeit in a different way; all three efforts have a suppressive character. It’s not much of a leap from Missouri to Georgia, where Republicans are taking measures to restrict the vote altogether. Why vote at all if the party that controls your state will just ignore your decision? The fate of Missouri’s Medicaid expansion may next be decided by a court; as was the case in Maine, a judge could order the state to fund the program. Even if that happens, a deeper problem would remain. The rot in the GOP runs so deep that there appears to be no immediate remedy, no compromise, no room for cooperation. Tell Joe Manchin there’s no reasoning with a political party that isn’t interested in democracy.
Republicans have consigned “government closest to the people serves the people best” to the ash heap of history in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board believes:
As usual, Florida lawmakers are cooking up lots of new ways this year to seize more power from cities and counties.
One bill would prohibit local governments — when awarding contracts — from giving preference to companies that pay decent wages or provide benefits. Another would make it harder for governments to regulate home-based businesses. Another would prohibit signing contracts with Amazon, Facebook, Twitter or Google. Another would handcuff counties trying to pay for growth through impact fees on new development. Another, written by the America Natural Gas Association, would impede local efforts to convert to clean energy sources.
The Board offers more examples, but let’s move on.
The bottom line is this: The Republican agenda is now wholly about suppressing the vote to secure power as a minority party. They don’t care about schools. They don’t care about traffic. They don’t care about policy or kitchen-table issues. They’d rather frighten voters with bogeymen and pass laws to keep black and brown people from voting. Hell, Republicans will sacrifice their own (especially women) by requiring identity cards that sometimes are hard to obtain. They don’t care. So long as it hurts more Democrats than Republicans, they consider even their own voters expendable.
There are plenty of authoritarian states in which they would feel more at home.
UPDATE: More local nullification in Key West, after locals voted to limit “thousands of here-today, gone-tonight tourists who regularly pour from giant cruise ships onto the streets of their iconic city”:
“I am so furious that I can hardly see straight,” said Kate Miano, owner of the luxe Gardens Hotel, where century-old brick walkways wind past orchid-festooned trees. “We battled the big cruise ship companies, and now they’re taking away my vote? I can’t understand how they can possibly do that.”
Yes, they can, say legislators now meeting in Tallahassee. And there’s a good chance they will soon succeed.