What a close look at the Senate’s leading obstructionist shows about the voting rights debate
According to Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the leader of the Senate Republican minority, the two bills that Democrats are now pushing to address voting rights are a “bald-faced attempt by liberals to rig our electoral systems in their own favor.” That’s what he wrote in an oped in USA Today two days ago.
Let’s see what’s actually in the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the legislation in question.
First, the Freedom to Vote Act, which was introduced by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) last September with Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) as one of its original co-sponsors. It is now backed by all 50 Democratic senators.
The bill requires all 50 states to offer early voting for at least two weeks before Election Day and to ensure that polling places are within walking distance of public transport, rural voters and college campuses. It also creates a national standard enabling voting by mail, eliminating onerous rules like requiring that mail ballots be notarized. It also makes clear that any mail ballot post-marked by Election Day that arrives within 7 days would need to be counted. It also makes Election Day a national holiday. In terms of protecting voting rights, it restores them to all ex-felons, and requires states ensure that no one need wait on line longer than 30 minutes to vote. And it prevents states from prohibiting donations of food or water to people waiting on line (a response to one of the meanest provisions of Georgia’s new voting law).
Does any of that sounds like liberal rigging?
To take just one example, many states already allow voting by mail (in some cases universal and in others where an absentee ballot is available upon request), including states like Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. These are all states dominated by the Republican Party? Are those Republicans all closet liberals?
Currently, 43 states and several territories all allow early voting in some form. Roughly half were won by Donald Trump in 2020. It’s hardly clear how early voting is a liberal plot.
As for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, this law aims to insure that states or subdivisions with a substantial history of violating voting rights get pre-clearance from the Justice Department before they change their voting rules or practices. It also makes certain voting changes automatically subject to Justice Department review, because of how these changes have historically discriminated against minority groups. And it gives voters the ability to sue to keep their vote from being diluted by racially motivated gerrymandering or by voting rules make it harder for minorities to vote than non-minorities.
The Freedom to Vote Act simply makes it easier for all Americans to vote. And the John Lewis Act simply makes it harder for states and localities to discriminate against minority voters, in recognition of the long history of such bias.
If Senator McConnell had his way, we’d pass a federal requirement that all voters show a photo ID before they can vote. The nonpartisan ACLU came out strongly against that idea, calling it a new kind of poll tax. It wrote, “As a significant number of racial and ethnic minority voters, voters with disabilities, rural and Native voters, the homeless, the elderly, and low-income people do not have photo identification nor the financial means to acquire it, the burden of this requirement would fall disproportionately and unfairly upon them.” And in the 2004 election, the imposition of ID requirements disproportionately reduced turnout for minorities two to three times more than for non-minorities, according to a study by the federal Election Assistance Commission. So who is more interested in rigging elections, Senator McConnell?
It’s not often that power-brokers like McConnell make clear their real interests, but years ago, he said that he didn’t think it mattered if fewer people voted in our elections. Here’s what he said at the Republican National Committee’s annual meeting in 1991:
“You’ve read these periodic diatribes by various assorted columnists talking about voter turnout. I know this is heresy. Some of you may not agree with it. But I’m not particularly disturbed by lower turnout. I’d like it if everybody voted. On the other hand, I think it is rather healthy that to a large number of Americans, politics is not the central motivating factor in their lives. In their view they’ve got something more important to do. And they’re out there doing it. And to conclude that the nation is somehow going to hell in a handbasket because the turnout is 51 percent versus 52 percent, to me, is absurd. I’d rather have the people who care decide who wins.”
Unfortunately for politicians like McConnell, in a democracy, ultimately the people decide who governs them. Making it harder for them to vote won’t stop them, it will just motivate them more.