[A democracy agenda that recognizes the racial elements of voter
suppression and election denial is sorely needed. ]
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THE VOTES THAT WEREN’T CAST  
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Clarence Lusane
February 2, 2023
TomDispatch [[link removed]]

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_ A democracy agenda that recognizes the racial elements of voter
suppression and election denial is sorely needed. _

,

 

The fundamental right to vote has been a core value of Black politics
since the colonial era — and so has the effort to suppress that vote
right up to the present moment. In fact, the history of the
suppression of Black voters is a first-rate horror story that as yet
shows no sign of ending.

While Democrats and progressives justifiably celebrated the humbling
defeat of some of the most notorious election-denying Republican
candidates in the 2022 midterms, the GOP campaign to quell and
marginalize Black voters has only continued with an all-too-striking
vigor. In 2023, attacks on voting rights are melding with the
increasingly authoritarian thrust of a Republican Party ever more
aligned with far-right extremists and outright white supremacists
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It shouldn’t be forgotten that the insurrection of January 6, 2021,
at the Capitol in Washington was also an assault
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minority voters. In the post-election weeks of 2020,
insurrection-loving and disgraced President Donald Trump and his
allies sought to discard votes in swing-state cities like Atlanta,
Detroit, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. Those were
all places with large Black, Latino, or Native American populations.
It was no accident then that the overwhelmingly white mob at the
Capitol didn’t hesitate to hurl racist language, including the
“N” word
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at Black police officers as that mob invaded the building.  

For years, Republican lawmakers at the state level had proposed —
and where possible implemented — voter suppression laws and policies
whose impacts were sharply felt in communities of color
nationwide. According to
[[link removed]] the
Brennan Center for Justice, “At least 19 states passed 34 laws
restricting access to voting,” laws invariably generated by
Republican legislators. These included bills to limit early voting,
restrict voting by mail, and even deny the provision of water
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hours in long lines, something almost universally experienced in Black
and poor communities.

While normally pretending that such laws were not raced-based but
focused on — the phrases sound so positive and sensible — “voter
integrity” or “election security,” on occasion GOP leaders and
officials have revealed their real purpose. A recent example was
Republican Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell, one of
three GOP appointees on the six-person commission that oversees that
state’s elections. He openly bragged
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the “well thought out multi-faceted plan” of the Republicans had
resulted in a dramatic drop in Black voters in the 2022 midterm
elections, including in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, which
is about 40% African American. He wrote: “We can be especially proud
of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes
than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in
the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”

HOW FAR MIGHT VOTER SUPPRESSION GO?

You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that, rather than
develop policies attractive to voters of color, the GOP and
conservatives generally have chosen the path of voter suppression,
intimidation, and gaming the system. And if anything, those attempts
are still on the rise. In 2023, less than a month into the new
year, according to
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Republicans across the country have proposed dozens of
voter-suppression and election-administration-interference bills in
multiple states.

Republican state legislators in Texas alone filed 14 bills on January
10th, including ones that would raise penalties for “illegal”
voting, whether committed knowingly or not. More ominously, one Texas
proposal would fund the creation of an election police force
exclusively dedicated to catching those who violate voting or election
laws. That unit would be similar to the draconian election-police unit
created in Governor Ron DeSantis’s Florida as part of what is
functionally becoming a regime dedicated to a version of right-wing
terror. Symbolically enough, for instance, Black ex-felons
were disproportionately targeted by DeSantis
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Although the campaign was launched with great fanfare, only a few
generally confused ex-felons were arrested and most of them had been
given misinformation by state officials about their eligibility to
vote and were convinced that they had the right to do so.

But DeSantis never really wanted to stop the virtually nonexistent
crime of voter impersonation or fraud. His goal, and that of the GOP
nationally, has been to strike fear into the hearts of potential
non-Republican voters to ensure election victories for his party. 

In states like Alabama, Mississippi, and 20 others where the
GOP controls both chambers
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the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, intimidating
voter-tracking police squads could be the next play in an ongoing
effort to undemocratically control elections. Such policing efforts
would without question disproportionately target communities of color.

While the expected midterm “red wave” of Republican victories
didn’t occur nationally in 2022, the same can’t be said for the
South. As documented by the Institute for Southern Studies’ _Facing
South_, the GOP actually outperformed expectations
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expanding its hold on multiple state legislatures in the region. Prior
to the election, analysts had predicted that the Republicans might
gain 40 seats across the South; in fact, they gained at least 55. Not
only did they take control of at least 25 state legislative chambers
— the lone exception, Virginia’s state senate where Democrats
retained a two-seat majority — but they also built or maintained
supermajorities in legislative chambers in Florida, Kentucky, North
Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia. This means that even if a
Democratic governor is in office, Republican legislators can pass
extremist bills into law despite a gubernatorial veto.

None of this is spontaneous, nor is it random. Tens of millions of
dollars or more from super-rich conservative donors and right-wing
foundations have poured into voter-suppression and
election-manipulation efforts. Heritage Action for America, a
conservative legislative-writing group linked to the Heritage
Foundation, spent upwards of $24 million in 2021 and 2022 in key swing
states to help Republicans write bills that would restrict voting,
targeting Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, and
Texas. Consider it anything but a coincidence that the language in
voter-suppression bills in those states and elsewhere sounded eerily
familiar. As the _Guardian_ reported, at least 11 voter suppression
bills in at least eight states were due, in part or whole, to advocacy
and organizing by Heritage Action. A _New York Times_ investigation
[[link removed]] found
that in Georgia, “Of the 68 bills pertaining to voting, at least 23
had similar language or were firmly rooted in the principles laid out
in the Heritage group’s letter” that offered outlines and details
for how to limit voting access.

Contemporary voter suppression efforts, however, go significantly
beyond just trying to prevent people from voting or making it harder
for them to do so. Credit that, at least in part, to the determination
of so many Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans to vote despite
restrictions imposed by the states. Consequently, Republican
legislators now seek to control — that is, manipulate — election
administration, too. Their tactics include the harassment of election
workers
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far-right activists seeking positions as election officials, and
various other potentially far-reaching legal maneuvers.

In fact, in recent voting, attacks on election workers, officials, and
volunteers have become so prevalent that a new national organization,
the Election Officials Legal Defense Network
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provides attorneys and other kinds of assistance to such officials
when they find themselves under attack.

Meanwhile, a flood of far-right activists has applied for positions or
volunteered to work on elections. Neo-fascist Steven Bannon and other
extremist influencers have typically called for such activists
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take over local election boards with the express purpose of helping
Republicans and conservatives win power.

Finally, GOP leaders in multiple states have been pushing an
“independent state legislature” doctrine
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argues such bodies have the ultimate power to determine election
outcomes. They contend that governors, state supreme courts, and even
the U.S. Supreme Court have no jurisdiction over non-federal
elections. Their fanciful and erroneous reading of Article 1, Section
4 and Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution suggests that state
legislatures can not only overturn the will of voters in a given
election but select electors of their choice in a presidential
contest, no matter the will of the voters.

In past decisions, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and the
late Antonin Scalia
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that they were at least open to such a reading. A firm decision on
this matter may occur in that court’s current session in the case
of _Moore v. Harper_. Court watchers are split on whether the
court’s conservative majority might indeed embrace
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“doctrine” in full, in part, or at all in ruling on that case
later this year.

MISSED CHANCES

Much of this dynamic of voter suppression is the result of the failure
of congressional Democrats to carry two voting rights bills across the
finish line. Black activists are all too aware that the Democrats blew
the opportunity to pass such legislation during the last two years
when they controlled both chambers of Congress, even if by the
slimmest of margins in the Senate. The John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act
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and the For the People Act
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were each game-changing bills that would, in many ways, have blunted
the massive efforts of Republicans at the state level to institute
voter restrictions and other policies that result in the
disproportionate disenfranchisement of African Americans, Latinos,
young people, and working-class voters generally, all of whom tend to
vote Democratic.

The JLVRAA would have restored the power of the Voting Rights Act to
prevent the very passage of voter suppression laws taken away by the
Supreme Court in 2013 in the case of _Shelby County v. Holder_. The
FtPA would have banned partisan gerrymandering, expanded voting
rights, and even supported statehood for Washington, D.C. Those bills
were aimed specifically at countering the hundreds of
voter-suppression proposals in Republican-controlled state
legislatures.

In its final report, the January 6th committee actually blew a chance
to highlight the attacks on Black voting rights. That report’s
full-scale focus on the role of Donald Trump, who certainly was the
key instigator of the insurrectionary events at the Capitol and its
chief potential beneficiary, ended up obscuring the role of racism
and white nationalism
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the stop-the-steal movement that accompanied it and was so crucial to
Republican election deniers. It should be remembered, though, that
Trump’s central argument and the biggest lie of all was that Black,
Latino, and Native American votes should be thrown out in Atlanta,
Detroit, Philadelphia, and other urban areas in states like Arizona
and Nevada where he was rejected by overwhelming numbers. 

Unfortunately, the January 6th report didn’t sufficiently identify
white supremacy as a driver of the “stop the steal” movement.
Despite the prominence of certain Black faces among the Trump camp,
including conservative organizer Ali Alexander, Trump campaign aid
Katrina Pierson, and former Georgia legislator Vernon Jones, January
6th, in fact, represented the culmination of months of attacks on
Black campaign workers, especially in Atlanta and Detroit. President
Trump explicitly fired up white nationalists by name-checking
and endangering
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African American election workers as spoilers of his alleged victory.

The movement in some democratic states to follow Trump’s autocratic
playbook is now also metastasizing globally. In Brazil, on January
8th, thousands of followers of the defeated far-right former president
Jair Bolsonaro attacked government buildings in Brasilia
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Newly elected President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva has had to
confront a surging wave of election deniers in the early days of his
administration. And it’s important to note that Lula’s voters were
disproportionately from the north and northeastern regions of Brazil,
areas with deep concentrations of Black and indigenous communities.

In the United Kingdom, in 2022, the Conservative Party pushed through
legislation that requires photo identification to vote
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future elections beginning in May 2023. As with Republican legislation
in Texas, student IDs will not suffice, creating a new obstacle for a
constituency that tends to vote for the Labour Party. In a country
where many working-class people don’t have drivers’ licenses and
the state does not easily provide acceptable IDs, voter suppression is
operative.

A democracy agenda that recognizes the racial elements of voter
suppression and election denial is sorely needed. At the federal
level, President Biden and Congressional Democrats should prioritize
keeping the issue alive, while forcing Republicans to divulge their
undemocratic hand, until the Democrats (hopefully) fully take back
Congress in 2024.

At the state level, Democrats who have momentum from their victories
in 2022 need to consolidate and strengthen voting-access laws and
policies. In Michigan, for example, where the GOP had for years used
its control of the state legislature to pass outlandish, racist laws
that generated significant harm for Black communities, the recent
Democratic sweep
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mean a new voting day.

Former President Trump and the rest of his crew, as well as state
versions of the same, are sadly enough in a significant, if grim,
American tradition. Isn’t it time to focus more energy on how to
stop their urge to suppress the Black vote?

_CLARENCE LUSANE, a TomDispatch regular
[[link removed]], is a political
science professor and interim political science department chair at
Howard University, and Independent Expert to the European Commission
Against Racism and Intolerance. His latest book is Twenty Dollars and
Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and
Democracy
[[link removed]] (City
Lights)._

_In an era marked by the demise of iconic newspapers and online
outlets, TomDispatch has been a continuing feature of the
independent media ecosphere, outlasting scores of former collaborators
and competitors alike. Devoted to well-crafted, longform writing and
typified by tough-but-measured commentary and hard-hitting reporting,
the site follows in the tradition of old-fashioned American muckraking
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site relaunched in 2021 with a new design and a more reader-friendly
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critiques of U.S. national security policy and other pressing issues
of the day. It continues to publish, without fear or favor, in the
public interest, beholden to no editorial constraints, political
party, or ideological orthodoxy. TomDispatch remains and will always
be “a regular antidote to the mainstream media.”_

* voter supression
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* voting rights
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* Racism
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* Republican Party
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* Supreme Court
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