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The voter fraud lie is crumbling. But it did not begin with Trump. It is the foundation for the last decade of voter ID bills, voter purges and other suppression techniques, itself built upon a decade of brutal partisan gerrymanders https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/07/us-democracy-trump-election-gerrymandering
A record number of Americans voted early, by mail, or braved hours-long lines amid a pandemic to vote. They had to battle their own government and courts, which worked in tandem to slow the mails and enforce rigid deadlines on when ballots must arrive to be counted.
Citizens organized heroic efforts to undo racist suppression – only to see their own courts and legislatures override them. In Florida, a referendum to restore voting rights to 1.4 million formerly incarcerated citizens won in 2018 with almost 65% of the vote.
In response, Florida’s gerrymandered legislature passed a law requiring all fines and fees associated with the conviction to be paid first. It was essentially a modern poll tax, and the courts went right along with it.
In 2013, a 5-4 Supreme Court undid the “pre-clearance” protections of the Voting Rights Act, designed to check localities with a history of racial prejudice in voting laws. John Roberts argued that those voting protections were in response to “eradicated practices.”
This magically changed and racially harmonious nation then embarked on an orgy of voter suppression, largely aimed at disenfranchising Black and Latino voters.
Gerrymandered legislatures led the way. State Republicans rigged rules and entrenched themselves in power.
Gerrymandered legislatures led the way. State Republicans rigged rules and entrenched themselves in power.
Trump may have lost, but the Texas governor who limited ballot dropboxes to one per county isn’t going anywhere. Nor are his congressional colleagues, who refused to fully fund the postal service amid expanded pandemic mail-in voting.
And what about the Wisconsin state legislators who forced voters to the polls in-person this spring during coronavirus? Or Republican officials who refused to begin processing millions of mail-in ballots early, enabling Trump to try to paint mail ballots as somehow fraudulent?
Trump is responsible for only a small piece of this. American democracy will survive only if his party decides to walk away from these suppression tactics and compete for every vote in a multi-racial America. Perhaps this defeat will encourage that.
Or maybe Republicans will take the same lesson they did from their 2008 walloping and double down, knowing they will be backed by courts packed with ideological true believers.
The rot runs deep. A country that proclaims itself the greatest democracy in the world has an awful lot of work to do. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/07/us-democracy-trump-election-gerrymandering
