The Fight for the Right to Vote

Georgia's move to restrict ballot access is the opening salvo

Mar 28, 2021

In about two weeks, the country will mark the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. On April 12, 1861, rebels in South Caroline fired on Fort Sumter, the United States military post in Charleston harbor. These were the first shots of the American Civil War, a bloody and longer-than-expected conflict. Last Thursday, the Republican-controlled state legislature in neighboring Georgia fired the opening shot of what will be another type of war by enacting The Election Integrity Act of 2021. The nearly-100 page bill was signed into law by Republican Governor Brian Kemp the same evening and marks the beginning of a concerted effort by GOP-controlled state legislatures to enact restrictive voting provisions.

The new Georgia law goes into great detail to suppress the vote. The key provisions are:

Absentee ballots would be verified based on driver’s license numbers or other documentation instead of voter signatures.
Ballot drop boxes would only be allowed inside early voting locations and available strictly during business hours.
Weekend voting would be expanded for general elections, with two mandatory Saturdays offered statewide. Counties could also choose to offer early voting on two optional Sundays.
Early voting for runoffs would be reduced to a minimum of one week because runoffs would occur four weeks after general elections.
The deadline to request an absentee ballot would be set 11 days before election day.
Members of the public would be prohibited from distributing food or water to voters waiting in line.
The State Election Board could remove county election boards and replace them with an interim elections manager.
A hotline to report illegal election activities would be set up in the attorney general’s office.
Counties would be required to certify election results within six days, instead of the 10 days currently allowed. Election workers would also be required to count ballots without stopping until they’re finished.
(Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The initial reaction of voting rights advocates was to file a suit Thursday night challenging the new law. In announcing the suit, attorney Marc Elias, who led the successful legal effort against the Trump campaign’s attempt to overturn election results last fall, called Georgia’s law “a grab bag of voting restrictions”. The battle on the legal front will no doubt be a prolonged one and will likely reach the Supreme Court.

The Challenge

There are three possible outcomes in this struggle between the forces of representative democracy and those of authoritarianism: Georgia’s new law and others of the 250 proposed in GOP-controlled states survive court challenges and the voter suppression policies remain in force; or, Senate Democrats make the bold move of eliminating the filibuster, allowing them to pass House bill H.R.1 which addresses voter access, election integrity and security, and campaign finance. If enacted, H.R.1 would negate the more extreme measures the Republicans are seeking to implement. There is also the possibility of a mixed result, with the Democrats failing to get H.R.1 through the Senate and the Republicans having parts of their laws tossed out by the courts. No matter the outcome, the consequences of this fight will be felt far into the future. Given this is the period when states redraw their Congressional districts, if partisan gerrymandering is left to stand, Republicans will have a structural advantage in many states for the next decade.*

If the Republicans are successful- at least in the short term- in implementing their various voter suppression schemes, the pressure well be on Democrats and non-affiliated voters to increase their voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. They must build on the model that Stacy Abrams built in Georgia during the last election. No matter how high the hurdle, proponents of free and fair elections must jump that much higher. That is the challenge.

It is obvious that the Republican Party has forsaken the primary function of a political party in a democratic society- persuading voters to choose them. They have instead pursued a strategy of limiting the majority’s ability to vote that is pushed by well-funded right-wing organizations like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council). ALEC, a group that allows state legislators and corporate representatives to intermingle, is known for disseminating model legislation. Of course, much of these measures on the state level would become moot if the Senate relegates the filibuster to the history books and passes H.R.1. Eliminating the filibuster would also open the way for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act (H.R.4), which passed the House in the previous Congress.

This is not a fight that will end quickly. The demographics of the nation are shifting further away from the erstwhile Grand Old Party. Rather than accommodate to the change, the shrinking minority that is the Republican base is committing itself to, as Mitch McConnell put it, a “scorched earth” strategy.

I am reminded of the Pacific campaign of World War II. As the inevitability of the American victory became apparent the last two years of the war, Japanese resistance became more fanatical and more deadly. Each island we conquered as we moved closer to Japan came at a higher price than the one before. In desperation, the Japanese resorted to suicide air attacks, the infamous kamikaze. We know how that worked out for them. Now it is the Republicans who exhibit the signs of desperation. For those who are fighting to preserve a democratic republic, now is the time for perseverance. It is the lesson of history.

As Mark Twain said, “ The past does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme”.

*Republicans completely control the state government (legislature and governor) in 23 states and the legislature in 8 other states with a Democratic governor.

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