It’s time to stop allowing the haters to set the terms of the debate.
Republicans are trying to make it more difficult for people who don’t vote their way — particularly minorities — to vote at all.
Particularly in Southern states, the goal is to repress African-American voting, because they are the group that votes more heavily for Democrats than any other.
The argument they use to justify their tactics is saying that everyone needs to have proper ID.
Fine.
If that were the only problem, we could all work with that, but Republicans are far craftier than that.
Here in Georgia in particular, recently passed laws provide fewer places to vote in minority neighborhoods, with the places that do exist equipped with fewer machines, fewer poll workers and poorer communication when problems arise. One part of the law that has nothing to do with honesty in voting makes it illegal to provide food or water to people waiting in line.
And since people in those minority precincts waited in line as long as nine hours, that matters.
Equipment? In Florida, where heavily white, affluent precincts had laptop computers to deal with problems, some heavily black precincts had one pay phone to communicate with officials. And of course, the line was nearly always busy.
If you want to demand that everyone has valid ID to vote, that’s fine.
We’re going to demand in return that facilities at all precincts be of the same quality. Wherever I have lived, and I have voted in at least six different states, I have never had to wait in line longer than 15-20 minutes. It is obscene that people in minority precincts might have to spend an entire day in line to exercise their right to vote.
Let’s be blunt here.
It’s about racism.
In North Carolina after the 2020 election, Republican officials bragged that they had been very successful in suppressing that African-American vote.
Here in Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp admitted that if they let everyone vote, Republicans would never win another election.
We haven’t even talked about the truly horrible stuff, like state legislators being given the power to reject election results.
Don’t kid yourself. In a two-party system, if one of the parties decides it has to win no matter what tactics are required, you no longer have a workable system. The fact that Donald Trump has never repudiated his Big Lie saying he won the election. Of course he lost, and of course the election wasn’t stolen from him.
If he succeeds in stealing the 2024 election by changing the rules in states like Georgia, Wisconsin and others, my guess is that it’s 50-50 that will be the last presidential election we have as a democratic republic.
Or maybe the last election we hold as one country.
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If I were younger, I might say that Jim Wright is what I want to be when I grow up. Wright is retired military and writes the very best blog on the Internet.
If you’ve never read “Stonekettle Station,” you need to give it a try. It’s well-written, courageous and insightful.
The excerpt below is from his December 9th post, and it’s one of the reasons I have made three or four contributions to his site. If he needs money to keep it going, we need to support him.
His voice matters.
Read this and then go read more.
“They’re mad at whatever some rich guy on TV tells them to be mad at, they don’t care why.
“They’re mad at the war on Christmas. They’re mad at the idea of electric cars. They’re mad because our roads and bridges might get rebuilt. They’re mad because Obama wore a tan suit and likes fancy mustard on his burger. They’re mad because other nations no longer bow and scrape at the feet of America. They’re mad at science. They’re mad because America currently has the lowest unemployment rate since WWII and people don’t have to take slave wage jobs if they don’t want to. They’re mad at the idea of energy that doesn’t destroy the environment. They’re mad because somebody told them to get a simple and easy vaccine, for free. They’re mad at the idea a rich man might have to pay his fair share. They’re mad about wind turbines. They’re mad anyone should propose any solution to any problem that doesn’t involve violence and guns. They’re mad a black man took a knee. They’re mad about a trade war they started. They’re mad because a phony audit they demanded determined that Trump lost the election by even more. They’re mad at any face, any language, any culture, any history different than their own.
“They’re mad at everything, there is literally nothing that these people aren’t mad about.