Having fewer voters doesn’t mean losing—if you have the power to determine who votes and who counts the ballots.
The Republicans are now waging a full-spectrum war against majority rule, the very foundation of democracy. Through methods like onerous voter ID requirements and cutting the number of voting sites, Republican leaders across the nation have been seeking to shrink and use blatant gerrymandering to re-configure the electorate to precisely fit their chosen demographic base.
But the Republicans are doing more than suppressing and diluting Democratic votes. They are aggressively pursuing “voter nullification,” where a majority of votes can be officially over-ridden by spurious accusations of fraud.
In more than 15 states, the Republicans are now moving decisively in undermine the popular vote in favor of Republican-led legislatures and partisan officials ultimately making the call on the final winner in their states, Barton Gellman reported in The Atlantic.
Moreover, Republican true believers in Trump’s “Big Lie” of a “stolen election” are seeking to insert themselves in administering elections. Over 80 Republicans denying the results of the 2020 presidential election are now actively running for governor, attorney general or secretary of state — the positions crucial to validating elections at the state level. At the local level, ardent Republican activists are seeking key administrative roles in running elections.
Yet contrary to common wisdom, this assault on democracy was not fathered by Donald Trump alone. The fear that genuine democracy could harm major financial interests extends back over two centuries. But the brazenness of the new Republican onslaught on majority rule has few precedents.
Here’s a sampling of the Republicans’ willingness to constrict democracy to fit their electoral ambitions:
• ”Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are… Rank democracy can thwart that.” — Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) 2020.
• “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So, I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country…
“I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.” — North Carolina Rep. David Lewis, Republican, 2016
• “I’m concerned about voter registration in Mississippi. The Blacks are having lots (of) events for voter registration. People [Blacks are non-people?] in Mississippi have to get involved, too.” — Jones County voting commissioner Gail Welch, 2020
• “The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for.”— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), 2021.
• “Many of our people [‘our Christians’] want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.
“As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” —Paul Weyrich, founder of Moral Majority and American Legislative Exchange Council, 1980.
• ”The things [provisions in a bill to expand voting rights] they had in there were crazy. They had things—levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” —President Donald J. Trump, 2020
• “… We want to make it [voting] more convenient? … Do we want to go to their house? Take the polling booth with us? This is a hard-fought privilege…I want them to fight for it. I want them to know what it’s like. I want them to go down there and have to walk across town to go over and vote.” —Florida county election official Mike Bennett (R), 2011.
• “I’m not sure the goal of the state is to actively seek out voters. The state is not so proactive that it tries to grab all the voters.” — Texas State Representative Andrew Murr (R), 2021.
• “Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.” — Arizona state Rep. John Kavanaugh, 2021.
• “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process [with early voting opportunities] to accommodate the urban voter turnout machine.” — Doug Priesse, Ohio Republican, 2017.
• “This law [North Carolina voter ID is going to kick the Democrats in the butt…If the law “hurts the Whites, so be it…If it hurts the college kid kids too lazy to get off their bohunkeses to get an ID, so be it… If it hurts a bunch of lazy Blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” — Don Yelton, Republican leader, 2013
• “‘What I’m concerned about here is winning and that’s what really matters here. ... We better get this done [voter ID law requiring documents which the poor, people of color and college students are unlikely to have] quickly while we have the opportunity … Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up and now we have voter ID and I think voter ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.” — Wisconsin State Sen. Glenn Grothman, Republican, 2011
• “We’ve got to think about what this [voter ID] would mean” for neighborhoods in Milwaukee [a majority-minority city] and college campuses,” — State Sen. Mary Lazich, a Wisconsin Republican. 2011, Republican legislative caucus meeting, 2011.
• “I think we believe that, insofar as there are inappropriate things, people who vote inappropriately are more likely to voe Democrat.” Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman, 2012.
The Republicans are making it clear that majority rule and protections for the rights of the minority are democratic doctrines that they would readily sacrifice on the altar of electoral advantage. Coming at the same time that the Republicans are rushing to add new barriers to fair elections, the 2022 mid-terms are becoming more consequential each day.
• How many of your isteners really, honestly, are sure that Sen. [Ron] Johnson was going to win re-election or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?” — Wisconsin Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, 2018.
• “Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin [234-201]in the US House seated yesterday [Jan. 3, 2012] in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more [actually, 1.7 million] votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.”— Republican State Leadership Committee boasting of $30 million redistricting plan, 2013.
“If we do not suppress the Detroit [83% Black and overwhelmingly Democratic] vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election.” — Michigan state legislator John Pappageorge, Republican, 2004.
The above quotes suggest the sweeping breadth and unswerving determination of the Republican assault on the principles that define democracy. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and election nullification top the long list of anti-democratic measures being enacted by Republicans promoting the “stolen election” Big Lie.
The Republicans are making it clear that majority rule and protections for the rights of the minority are democratic doctrines that they would readily sacrifice on the altar of electoral advantage. Coming at the same time that the Republicans are rushing to add new barriers to fair elections, the 2022 mid-terms are becoming more consequential each day.
Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based labor studies instructor and and writer and former editor of the Racine Labor weekly. Email winterbybee@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2022
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