Republican Officeholders in the States are Engaged in a Political Coup Supported by Congressional Republicans

Republican officeholders in the states are engaged in a political coup supported by congressional Republicans.

The voter suppression laws being enacted by Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country are an effort to eliminate as many Democratic voters as they can in future federal elections. Period.

The laws are targeting people of color, young people, voters in urban areas and other likely Democratic voters who helped hand former President Trump a decisive defeat in the 2020 presidential election. These new laws could result in millions of eligible citizens losing their ability to vote, starting with the 2022 congressional elections.

At the same time, Republicans in Congress, led by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, are determined to prevent any action by Congress that would protect the right to vote and override the state voter suppression laws.

McConnell, who made his bones in the Senate by setting records for obstructionist filibusters, has made clear he is “100 percent” focused on stopping President Biden’s agenda.

That agenda includes “high priority” legislation that would set fair rules to ensure all eligible Americans can vote and that would create a new way to finance campaigns in order to combat Washington political money corruption.

Various states are enacting voting restriction laws premised on one of the greatest political lies in American history — former President Trump’s blatantly false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by fraudulent voting.

President Trump appears to be following the playbook set out by Joseph Goebbels, who said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Trump has been repeatedly telling his Big Lie about the 2020 election for months without providing a shred of credible evidence.

Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him has been established as false beyond any reasonable doubt. There is no evidence of any meaningful fraud or cheating anywhere in the country. (The absurd “audit” of presidential voters in Arizona will not change this one iota.) The courts rejected dozens of lawsuits brought by Trump and his followers attacking the results of the presidential election.

Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security declared the 2020 elections were “the most secure in American history.” But this incontrovertible truth has not stopped Republicans in state legislatures from using Trump’s Big Lie as cover to enact new voter suppression laws to gain political advantage.

More than two-thirds of Americans who voted, for example, did so by means that Republicans in the states are trying to restrict. This is about as anti-democratic as you can get.

In Georgia, the new voter suppression law restricts the use of ballot drop boxes, bars election officials from sending out ballot applications proactively, decreases the time to apply for an absentee ballot, institutes new ID requirements for absentee voting, and makes it a crime to give water or food to voters standing in line to vote, among other restrictive measures. The law also gives the Republican controlled state legislature increased control over the State Election Board, including the power to suspend county election officials.

In Florida, the new voter suppression law imposes restrictions on voting by mail which was used by nearly one-third of Florida voters in 2016 and 2018. The law places limitations on voting drop boxes including a requirement that they be monitored 24/7, adds additional identification requirements for absentee voting and limits distribution of food and water to voters standing in line.

In Texas, new voter suppression legislation is moving rapidly through the legislature. As the legislation currently stands, it would empower partisan poll watchers and impose criminal penalties on county officials who proactively send mail-in ballot applications. It is likely to be altered significantly in committee to match the Texas Senate version, which had provisions harshly limiting early voting and specifically targeting voting procedures used last year in the state’s urban counties.

Restrictive voting legislation is also moving through Republican-controlled legislatures in Arizona and Michigan, two states carried by President Biden in 2020. Voting restrictions have also been enacted in other states and are moving forward in still others.

The bottom line here is a “nationwide Republican campaign” to roll back access to the ballot.

In Washington, congressional Republicans are collaborating with Republican politicians in the states by standing ready to filibuster any legislation that would override the new state law voting restrictions and establish fair voting rules for federal elections.

The For the People Act would do just that.

The Act, H.R. 1, passed the House in March. Its Senate counterpart, S. 1, is being marked up tomorrow in the Senate Rules Committee. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has made clear he will bring it to the floor of the Senate, regardless of what happens in Committee. The Act is sponsored by 49 Senators, including every Democrat except Senator Joe Manchin.

The legislation uses voting rules that were in place for the fraud-free 2020 national elections — rules that resulted in safe, secure, and fair elections — as the model for voting rules and procedures for future federal elections.

Importantly, S. 1 would supersede the voter suppression laws being enacted.by Republicans around the country. The Constitution gives the federal government the authority to establish voting rules for federal elections and provides that they supersede any state laws that conflict with the federal rules.

Senator McConnell, a serial abuser of the filibuster rules, is pulling out all the stops to block S. 1 by a filibuster. There is no indication that any Republican Senator is prepared to vote for the legislation or for ending a filibuster on the bill, even though the legislation has broad support in the country from Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents.

Senator McConnell has set records for conducting filibusters which he used during the Obama presidency to paralyze Congress and block large portions of the Obama agenda. He has committed to do the same to the Biden agenda.

McConnell claims there should be no changes made to the filibuster rule because it is important to the institution. Yet there have been numerous changes and exceptions to the filibuster rule over the years.

In fact, when it suited his own partisan political interests, Senator McConnell in 2017 did not hesitate in leading his Senate Republican colleagues to create the latest exception to the filibuster rule. This resulted in the confirmation of three Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justices by a simple majority instead of by the vote of 60 Senators normally needed to end a filibuster.

Is the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice more important than protecting the sacred right to vote, preventing Washington political money corruption, and repairing our democracy? The answer to this question is clearly no.

President Biden and Senate Democrats must now help persuade Senator Manchin that an exception to the filibuster rule, just like McConnell’s exception, is justified in order to allow the Senate to pass the essential democracy reforms in S. 1 by a majority vote.

Majority Leader Schumer has said about S. 1 “failure is not an option.” That is a commitment that must be met.

Congress cannot allow state legislatures to deprive millions of eligible citizens of their right to vote. The For the People Act must become law promptly to ensure that fair voting rules, rather than voter suppression laws, govern the 2022 congressional races and the federal elections that follow.