For The People II

In 2017, President Trump claimed he’d won the 2016 popular vote, and appointed Kansas politician Kris Kobach to head a commission to find election fraud. He failed. In 2020, Trump, again without evidence, claimed fraud and tried to overturn the election. In a fit of naked opportunism, Republican lawmakers in forty-three states used the moment to rewrite voting laws in their favor.

Remarkably, even Republican-led states like Arizona and Georgia that had showdowns with Trump over the security of their elections are using the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen to enact voting restrictions that mainly impact minorities, who they are sure will vote for Democrats. It’s especially odd considering Hispanics and Black men are likely Republican voters. But to ensure that an increasingly powerful block of Black women will find it harder to vote, Republicans are willing to sacrifice men of color, who vote in smaller numbers.

The “For the People Act” would stop state legislatures from tilting the playing field. The shamelessly anti-democratic bills have alarmed experts like Jason Johnson, a professor of political science at Morgan State University, who says these laws are “destructive to a functional democracy.”

After the 2020 election, and despite the claims of the Big Lie, vote-by-mail, “no-excuse” absentee voting, and ballot drop-box use were quite high owing to pandemic-related concerns. Ease of access is one important reason that turnout was the highest in history. With over 155,000,000 votes counted, this election faced more scrutiny than a Nevada boxing commissioner after a close bout. Fraud was not found.

The “For the People Act,” seeks to institutionalize easy voter access by writing into law many of the provisions the states took to keep their voters safe in the face of COVID-19. During the period of dispute between the November election and the January 6th Electoral College certification, Republicans argued before the Supreme Court that if these the rules are allowed to stand, they would put Republicans at “a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.” (I love it when people say the quiet thing out loud.) Logic dictates there are two paths to parity: develop ideas that resonate with more people, or change the rules. Wanting for ideas, they’ve opted to change the rules.

The bill also closes the loopholes created by The Citizens United ruling. That Supreme Court decision removed campaign spending constraints enacted by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2000, popularly known as “McCain-Feingold.” Among the rewritten regulations is the notion that the public has a right to know who is spending money to influence election outcomes. Currently, those funds are known as “dark money“ because they are spent in secret, meaning you and I have no idea who is trying to impact public policy. Knowing the “who” always reveals the “why.” This bill would shine the disinfecting light of the sun upon them, and they demonstrably don’t want that.

Conservative organizations like the American Principles Project and the American Action Network are pouring money into the opposition of this “sunshine” law. They say unmasking donors will subject them to harassment. The unspoken thing there is that they want to tilt the playing field in a direction that benefits them financially, and they don’t want to be called out for their selfishness.

In the topsy-turvy world of “newspeak,” former VP Mike Pence, in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, pronounced these democracy-saving initiatives as an example of “the radical left’s cancel culture.” George Orwell has nothing on Pence. In fact, Orwell’s novel, 1984, is apparently providing the roadmap for anti-democratic tactics. Talk about learning the wrong lessons from a famously dystopian novel! When uttered with a straight face, and repeated ad infinitum by grave-sounding pols and pundits, “newspeak” spreads lies so casually and with such apparent authority, they start to sound like the truth.

The For the People Act also:

•Ends highly partisan gerrymandering that draws congressional districts in a way that electoral results are preordained, allowing representatives to pick their voters instead of the other way around. It uses California’s and Arizona’s—polar political opposites, it bears mentioning—methodologies as roadmaps of nonpartisan, independent state committees that draw congressional districts.

•Stops states from “voter-caging,” (that’s using non-forwardable mail to create lists of voters to challenge), and purging those who failed to vote in prior elections;

•Includes the “Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act,” making it illegal to knowingly lie about dates/times/places of elections, qualifications to vote, and false information about public endorsements;

•Restores federal voting rights to individuals who have been released from jail;

•Requires states to provide enough polling places so that the average wait is no more than thirty-minutes.

An apt adage for our times might be “if you can’t beat them, disenfranchise them,” but the For the People Act goes a long way toward ensuring fair elections.