{"id":543,"date":"2017-11-08T16:17:19","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T21:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=543"},"modified":"2018-03-08T16:20:40","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T21:20:40","slug":"gop-voter-suppression-is-the-countrys-greatest-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=543","title":{"rendered":"GOP Voter Suppression Is the Country\u2019s Greatest Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

JIM CROW REDUX<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

In state after state, the party enacts measures to solve a problem that does not exist but which targets African Americans, often with surgical precision.<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\"Jay<\/a>JAY MICHAELSON<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

11.08.17 5:00 AM ET<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0A year after the 2016 election, it\u2019s harder than ever for many people to vote, thanks to an\u00a0<\/span>array of new voting restrictions<\/a>, such as states eliminating early voting, requiring photo ID, and closing polling stations.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n

It just so happens that all of those steps were passed by Republicans, and all hurt Democratic voters the most, in particular people of color.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
What\u2019s odd about this partisan battle, though, is that unlike, say, tax policy or foreign policy, where reasonable people might disagree about values, when it comes to voting, one side\u2014the Republican side\u2014is just plain lying.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There simply is no voter-fraud crisis.\u00a0An exhaustive study by a Loyola law professor found that between 2000 and 2014, there were indeed\u00a031 reported instances<\/a>\u00a0of voter impersonation.\u00a0Out of more than a billion votes cast.<\/p>\n

Those are some steep odds: One possible instance per 32 million votes.\u00a0Your odds<\/a>\u00a0of becoming president yourself are one in 10 million.\u00a0Your odds of dying in a plane crash are one in 7,178.\u00a0Your odds of being struck by lightning are one in 134,906.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll say it again: There is no voter-fraud crisis.<\/p>\n

So how can the Republican Party, in state after state, enact measures that solve a problem that does not exist but that target black Americans, often with surgical precision?<\/p>\n

Easy: Because in the fact-free universe of Fox News, Sinclair, Breitbart, the new\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>, and the rest, it doesn\u2019t matter that there is no voter-fraud crisis.\u00a0They\u2019ll just make one up.\u00a0Remember, the president of the United States has alleged, without a scintilla of evidence, that between 3 and 5 million people voted illegally, a claim which\u00a0every expert in the field<\/a>\u00a0has said is implausible to the point of absurdity.<\/p>\n

And now, Kris Kobach, the nation\u2019s\u00a0leading liar when it comes to making up stories about voter fraud<\/a>, is co-chairing a presidential commission on \u201celection integrity.\u201d\u00a0Although the commission is supposed to have no preconceived notions, Trump has\u00a0already said<\/a>\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s something.\u00a0There always is.\u201d\u00a0And Kobach has already produced\u00a0bogus evidence<\/a>\u2014already\u00a0torn to shreds by experts<\/a>\u2014of such fraud in the state of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

The Trump commission isn\u2019t just putting the fox in charge of the henhouse; it\u2019s putting a particular fox, who has killed chickens for years, in charge of killing more of them.<\/p>\n

Back when Kobach was secretary of state of Kansas, he crusaded against voter fraud, and\u00a0suspended 36,000 Kansas voters<\/a>\u00a0(once again, disproportionately people of color) for not promptly proffering their birth certificates or passports as additional proof of citizenship.<\/p>\n

How many cases of fraud did Kobach find?\u00a0During his entire tenure: three. Yup, he filed a whopping three cases alleging voter fraud, none of which involved voter impersonation or non-citizen voting.\u00a0In fact, all three appeared to be\u00a0mistakes<\/a>, in which senior citizens (all defendants are over age 60) voted in two states by accident.<\/p>\n

So, if voter fraud is just a canard, what is the real reason for Republican-led \u201celection integrity\u201d measures?<\/p>\n

Obviously, it\u2019s to keep Democrats\u2014especially non-white Democrats\u2014from voting.<\/p>\n

Consider, for example, North Carolina\u2019s\u00a0decision to cut back early voting, close certain polling spots, and institute strict voter-ID laws<\/a>.\u00a0All three just so happen to disproportionately affect less-affluent voters and people of color\u2014constituencies that tend to vote for Democrats.<\/p>\n

Now, are such rules explicitly racist? Of course not.\u00a0They apply to everyone equally.\u00a0But because of the disproportionate number of people of color living near the poverty line\u2014itself, obviously, a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and institutionalized structural racism\u2014they just so happen to hit black and brown folks harder. Again and again and again.<\/p>\n

In the case of North Carolina, a federal court\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cafter years of preclearance and expansion of voting access, by 2013 African American registration and turnout rates had finally reached near-parity with white registration and turnout rates. African Americans were poised to act as a major electoral force.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then, said the court, the state \u201cenacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans\u2026 Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, in North Carolina, local officials\u00a0crowed<\/a>\u00a0during the 2016 election that \u201cAfrican American Early Voting Is Down 8.5%.\u201d\u00a0Donald Trump carried the state by 177,509 votes.<\/p>\n

Or how about Wisconsin, where the presidential electoral margin was 27,257?\u00a0Wisconsin has approximately\u00a0300,000 registered voters who lack photo ID<\/a>.\u00a0How many of them were prevented from voting?\u00a0We\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n

Or how about Ohio, which throws you off the voting rolls if you miss a single federal election? In a case the Supreme Court will hear this term, Ohio has said that if people aren\u2019t voting, it means that they might have moved and are voting elsewhere (PDF<\/a>). There\u2019s no evidence of that\u2014just a guess.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ohio, in the name of a made-up problem, created a real one: millions of voters purged from the rolls who have to affirmatively opt in to get back on them. In 2014, for example, 4.6 million registered Ohioans didn\u2019t vote, and had to respond to a single mailed notice to get back on the rolls (PDF<\/a>). Guess who is least likely to receive and respond to government paperwork? Voters who\u2014surprise!\u2014tend to be less affluent and less white. What a coincidence!<\/p>\n

The 2016 margin in Ohio: 446,821.\u00a0Just 10 percent of the people thrown off the rolls after 2014.<\/p>\n

Obviously\u2014blindingly obviously\u2014election integrity is a partisan issue because one party is predominantly white, aging, and becoming a demographic minority.\u00a0If current trends continue\u2014and even the slow-moving mass deportations of the Trump administration won\u2019t change them\u2014Texas will turn majority Democratic by 2024, and the presidential election will be no contest.\u00a0The only way to forestall that is to tweak the system to keep some people\u2014non-white people\u2014from voting.<\/p>\n

Now, is that racism, or political shrewdness?\u00a0At a certain point, the distinction blurs.\u00a0The fact is, the Republican Party is firing a barrage of weapons to keep people of color from voting.\u00a0Even if that is ultimately for political reasons, it\u2019s still racist as hell.<\/p>\n

Two months ago, I went to watch the oral arguments in another voting case,\u00a0Gill v. Whitford<\/i>, which is about Wisconsin\u2019s gerrymandered election districts.\u00a0Inside, the talk was of how to measure the extent of partisan finagling, of the Constitution and of math.<\/p>\n

But on the courthouse steps, everyone knew the score.\u00a0The Democrats are pushing for more open voting, because that helps them.\u00a0The Republicans are pushing for more closed voting, because that helps them.<\/p>\n

And yet, the two sides weren\u2019t equal. One side was pushing for more democracy, more access, and the other was pushing against it.\u00a0One side had facts on its side, the other did not.\u00a0Maybe both were self-interested, but only one side was telling the truth.<\/p>\n

I think Republicans knew this, too.\u00a0After\u00a0Gill<\/i>, several left-leaning advocacy groups held rallies on the steps of the Supreme Court with celebrity speakers and slogans about democracy.\u00a0No one on the right showed up at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JIM CROW REDUX In state after state, the party enacts measures to solve a problem that does not exist but which targets African Americans, often…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gopplaybook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-08_16-19-33.jpg?fit=583%2C446&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8VBh7-8L","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}