When Democrats and progressives talk about voter rights, usually they speak in moral terms of democracy and justice. But sometimes, the quiet part is said out loud.
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, in his “Bad News” newsletter, recently wrote: “Partly because of the way the American population is flowing, and partly because the Trump administration deliberately rigged the Census, [House] Democrats are going to get pounded” in the midterm elections, and the Democrats’ “For the People Act” voting rights legislation is “likely the only chance the Democrats have to stave off this disaster.”
Slightly less explicitly, New York’s Ed Kilgore spoke of the electoral value of the Democratic proposals: “The urgency of these measures should be obvious, with red states narrowing the path to the ballot box and with the decennial redistricting about to begin.” The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne summed the general concern with the existing electoral system, asserting that “voter suppression actions across the country would hit the young and racial minorities the hardest,” and counseling Democrats to “consider self-interest” and abolish the filibuster for the purpose of passing the For the People Act.
Republicans are certainly playing to type. In response to their shocking losses in the presidential and Senate races, Georgia Republicans aren’t going full Bull Connor, but they’re doing a good impression by pursuing measures to limit mail voting, ban drop boxes, and expand photo ID requirements. The Republican chairwoman of the Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections, in explaining her fierce lobbying in support of those proposals, was clear about their partisan nature: “I will not let them end this session without changing some of these laws. They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.”
