Let the people vote: Part one
Why the battle to ensure the right to vote for all Americans is old, new, and critical to ensuring social structures that align with our values.
Dearest ones:
When a party loses an election, we assume it will examine why. Which policy ideas failed to resonate with voters? Which candidates lost their support? Where did money go, and why? Which messages gained the most traction?
All of these questions can be asked (and answered) with the intention of transformation, or in self-serving ways, with the intention of improving “messaging” rather than substance.
Now, we witness a major party ask blatantly: how can we exclude those who we believe do not support us from access to the vote itself?
If we believed for a moment that the outcome of the 2020 election (and the January 2021 Georgia senate runoff) settled our democratic rights safely, that belief should be eradicated by the hundreds of proposals from Republican state legislators to restrict voting access.
While the Republican party currently plies this tactic, it has been the chosen path of all major parties at different times in history. The drafting of the Constitution included the compromise of counting enslaved people as three-fifths of a person - thus preventing the slave-economy states from counting enslaved people fully to gain more seats in Congress, while excluding them from the vote entirely. Post-Reconstruction campaigns of terror were organized by southern Democrats to prevent freed Black people from voting for decades. Jim Crow laws extended barriers to voter registration or made it virtually impossible for Blacks to access the polls. Both parties organized resistance to expanding suffrage to women, a campaign that took almost a century to bear fruit.
There is a major initiative on the table in Congress - the For the People Act - that would establish expanded voter access rights nationwide, as well as addressing the corruption of dark money and gerrymandering. Democrats in the House were able to advance the For the People Act without a single Republican vote. Its fate in the Senate is almost certainly doomed for the same reason: it would need 10 Republicans to support it coming to a vote, and the odds of that happening are vanishingly small.
It is the sign of a morally rudderless party, bankrupt of constructive policy ideas, to attack the right to vote itself. Democrats who support the For the People Act are not heroes of democracy - they are simply willing to do the minimum to keep democracy alive. Republicans who argue against it, and those who support voter restrictions in 43 states, are revealing their deep lack of faith in the democratic process.
Here’s what it comes down to: throughout our country’s history, we have experienced the tension between the belief that only the educated, elite, property-rich (read: White male) citizens have the right to lead the country, and therefore restricting voting is fair and proper; and the belief that democracy thrives on the greatest participation possible. In 2021, the Republican party has positioned itself firmly in the first camp.
Next week, I’ll dive a bit more deeply into the battle for voting rights for all, and why it is perhaps the most important battle of this first year post the previous administration, how it relates to the “big lie” that led to the attack on Congress in January.
In the meantime, below the photo are some resources on the For the People Act, the current voting rights battle, and the way in which the recent Covid relief act will help those who are struggling.
Be well, be healthy, and thank you for continuing to read these little explorations into a life of conscience.
Info on the For the People Act - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/congress-must-pass-people-act
Info on the impact of the Covid relief bill, compared to the 2017 tax cuts - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/09/difference-between-trump-tax-cuts-biden-relief-bill-one-chart/
Info on the battle to ensure the right to vote -https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/voting-rights-battle/2021/03/02/3d213412-7af8-11eb-85cd-9b7fa90c8873_story.html