Suppression

More Perfect

No matter what your political view or ideology – every American should believe in the right to vote.  It’s fundamental to the nature of our country. The citizens of the United States select their leaders by majority agreement.  It’s the American Way.

As a part of the United States becoming a “More Perfect Union” we have included more and more citizens in the voting process.  That’s been a major narrative in our nation’s story:  the fight for the right to vote.  I outlined that struggle recently in an earlier essay, The Arc of the Vote.  Any political movement that establishes itself as anti-voting is swimming against the current of American history.  And sadly, that is the story of the modern Republican Party.

REDMAP

As with many things in the GOP, it didn’t start with Donald Trump.  It actually begins in 2010 with the REDMAP project.  As a political party, the Republicans made a national strategy out of drawing district lines to gain the maximum power.  The idea wasn’t new. The term for it, Gerrymander, came from the actions of the Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, in 1810. 

But the REDMAP project took re-districting to an extreme, using modern technology and voting patterns to divide states in favor of Republicans by the city block.  An outgrowth of the project was to “pile” Democrats into a few districts where they would have an overwhelming majority. Other districts would slice Democratic communities into multiple districts so that their vote was diluted.

The ultimate results of successful “REMAPPING” was districts so partisan, that voters of the minority party were in fact, disenfranchised.  Their vote simply didn’t matter, and the elections became about which candidate in the Republican Party could be more partisan.  Districts like Ohio’s Fourth, represented by Republican Jim Jordan, snaked across the state.  Its boundaries extend from the Dayton suburbs to the Columbus suburbs, the Toledo suburbs, the Mansfield suburbs to the Cleveland suburbs.  It carefully avoids urban areas, making it the tenth most Republican District in the nation.

VOTER ID

The second part of the plan was to suppress Democratic voters, and therefore, suppress minority voters.  They did this by creating whole new barriers to being able to vote.  For centuries voting was a two-step process:  registration, and casting the ballot.  Registration required a proof of citizenship (birth certificate) and used a signature to identify the voter.  Voting was a process of matching the signatures, a quick and easy check, to cast the ballot.

In the Jim Crow South, Black Americans were harassed at both steps in the process.  To register they had to prove that their “grandfather” was eligible to vote,. That was something that the former slaves could not do.  Once that was stricken, they were required to pass “literacy tests”, or accurately guess the number of jellybeans in a jar.  And when those “tricks” failed to stop registration, then intimidation in the form of the Ku Klux Klan kept them from voting at the polls.

But modern voter suppression is more sophisticated.  Instead of creating barriers at registration, the Republican Party determined to make the actual act of voting more difficult.  Instead of matching signatures, they required state identification cards to be allowed to gain a ballot.  For most suburban white voters, a State ID was commonplace, a Driver’s License. But for minority and urban voters that “third step” in the process is more onerous.  In essence, a “poll tax” was added, a fee for the right to vote: the cost of a State ID.

Fake News

Before they could add in the VOTER ID requirements, the Republican Party had to generate a reason.  So they created an ongoing drumbeat of stories about voter fraud at the polls, even though the actual number of cases of fraudulent voting in the United States was miniscule.  By convincing voters that there was fraud at the polls, then VOTER ID laws could be justified.  So the Republican Party created a problem, and then they mandated a solution.

All of this occurred in spite of the Republicans Party’s own studies which called for them to expand their membership.  The 2013 “autopsy” of the losing 2012 Romney Presidential bid carefully outlined the steps that the “Party of Lincoln” could take to gain Black and Latino voters.  In over one hundred pages, it called for Party diversification. It depended on the strength of Republican ideas to draw voters to their cause.

But the “autopsy” was ignored.  The Party turned away from diversification both spiritually and literally. They fired Michael Steele, the first Black Chairman, and turned to Wisconsin’s Reince Preibus.  

Purge

The third “leg” of the Republican voter suppression campaign was in purging the voting rolls.  While the typical “suburban Republican” voted in every election, many Democrats voted only in the Presidential years.  If they missed one, then it would be eight years between votes.  So Republican Secretaries of State pushed through laws to purge the voting lists of those who failed to vote in six years.  It was simple statistics.  They would remove a lot more Democrats then Republicans.

REDMAPPING, VOTER ID, and LIST PURGING aren’t just strategies:  they are now our history.  The America we live in today is shaped by the results of these suppression techniques.

Consolidation

And now we are confronted with the final, more blatant, fourth leg of the campaign. The President making it harder for Americans to cast a ballot.  Even before the COVID pandemic, boards of elections were reducing the number of polling places in urban areas.  In locations where folks are less likely to have private transportation, polling places have been consolidated to make them farther away.   While the NBA’s offer to use their Coliseums as “mass” polling places is helpful, it also requires folks to travel farther from their own homes to vote.  What seems like a great idea to suburban voters used to getting in their cars and going, is just another barrier to urban voters.

In the 1950’s era of Norman Rockwell paintings, folks in small towns walked to their local school and voted together.  It is classic Americana, citizens deciding their government.   It is the way Americans voted for the history of our nation.  But the line of voters Rockwell painted was of all white people.  Now that more American’s of all races have the right to vote, that method isn’t “good enough”.  

Last, Best Chance

REMAP, VOTER ID, LIST PURGING, POLL CLOSINGS:  all of this isn’t coincidental.  As discovered in the notes of Thomas Hofeller, mastermind of the REDMAPPING strategy, it was done specifically to disenfranchise minority voters.  And now, in the midst of the pandemic, Donald Trump is placing the final obstruction to voting.  In a crisis when the MOST at risk from COVID are elderly minority voters, the President’s appointee has undercut the Postal Service.  At a time when commonsense would dictate voting by mail, the government is taking affirmative steps to make that more difficult.

None of this is by accident.  The Republican Party turned it’s back on diversification after 2013, now they have little left but to try to restrict the vote to their own supporters.  So what can Democrats do?

Vote:  Democrats must overcome every obstacle and vote.  Democrats must check their registration to make sure they aren’t purged.  They must vote early by mail if that’s what’s required.  Or they must risk infection and possible death (really) to line up and vote in person on Election Day.  There can be no stopping, no hesitation, no questioning of purpose.  If we don’t, Republicans will be rewarded with four more years in office. Who knows what barriers may be in place by 2024.  This is our best chance to follow the American Way, fulfill the American Dream, and move the arc of history towards justice.  

Vote.