Fighting voter suppression

America confronts a Republican party that has decided it can't win on the basis of the qualities of its candidates or the appeal of its programs.  So it intends instead to hang on to power by keeping "the wrong sort" of voter from voting.

Professor David Domke is streaming a two-part series of lectures this week, entitled "From Never to Now: The Right to Vote in America in 2021."  He presented his first lecture tonight; the second will be tomorrow.  In the past, I've presented detailed summaries of Dr. Domke's lectures.  I'll try to give a much more abbreviated summary of today's, because the facts he discusses are fairly well known to anyone following contemporary politics.

The election of 2008 left the GOP in shock.  Not only had a black Democrat been elected president, but the Democrats had won a 257-178 majority in the House, a 59-41 majority in the Senate, and 28 out of the 50 governors.  The Republican leadership vowed:  "Never again if we can legally help it."  The plan was not to seek votes from new constituencies or to present a new and more appealing platform.  

The plan instead was to limit ability of unfriendly voters to vote.  Some plans had already been underway before 2008, but the 2008 election gave the party new urgency.

1.  Win control of legislatures and gerrymander both Congressional and legislative district boundaries. 

2,  Enact voter ID laws, with the understanding that the states could require specific forms of identification that would be easy for affluent voters to obtain, but more difficult for black, brown, lower income, and young potential voters -- all of whom tend Democratic.

3.  Cut the number of days available for voting.  In the South, especially, reduce voting on Sundays, when Black church congregations often showed up in a group after church to cast ballots. 

4.  Reduce the number of available voting places, especially in "undesirable" regions of the state.

5.  Voter registration purge.  A 1993 federal statute prohibits purging registration because of a failure to vote recently, but purging is legal for voters who have change residences.  Younger and poorer voters tend to move much more often.

All these strategies have been permitted by the Supreme Court in a series of decisions during the past ten years.  All were enormously successful, leading to the Republicans' taking control of  House, Senate, a majority of governors and of state legislatures in the 2016 election.

The Democrats, with the help of organizations such as that headed by Domke, made the partial recovery in 2020 possible.  This was done despite lack of support in critical state legislatures, often by voter initiative.

1.  Automatic voter registration -- for example, when a driver's license is issued or renewed.  This is Domke's favorite instrument.

2.  Same day registration -- the voter registers at the same time he votes.

3.  Early in-person voting.

4.  Mail and/or liberal absentee voting.

Domke warns that the 2020 election results, and especially the senatorial results in Georgia, stunned the Republicans once more.  The vow "Never Again" is being heard once more, explaining the frenzy of voting restrictions in many states' legislatures over the past few weeks.  Domke warns that the Republicans to date have fought more desperately and more effectively than the Democrats, and that their effort to make voting difficult can be defeated only by intense political efforts.