Safe from Fairness

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | Jan. 29, 2022

There are some things about the 2020 elections we know to be facts despite all the noise coming from the losers.

We know, for example, there was neither widespread fraud nor voting irregularities sufficient to change the outcome of local or national elections. We know early voting by mail did not result in massive numbers of dead people or non-citizens voting and did not allow huge numbers to vote twice. 

In fact, voting early by mail wasn't even especially new; more than two dozen states already allowed no-excuse early voting prior to 2020 without apparent issues. Oregon, Washington, and Colorado do all of their voting by mail; they don't even have in-person polling places.

So, we might reasonably wonder why so many Republican legislatures are doing everything they can to hamstring a safe and secure way for people to vote. We already know early voting by mail works without compromising the integrity of our elections. 

The 2020 Republican presidential candidate and his most visible acolytes told Republican voters, among other lies, their mail-in ballots were not secure and they should vote in person at the polls. That appeal worked. According to Pew Research Center, 54 percent of us voted in person on or before election day, but more than 66 percent of Trump voters turned out in person compared to only 42 percent of Biden voters.

Republicans eschewed mail-in ballots based on a series of lies about their lack of security. Now Republican legislators and legislatures, ever willing to perpetuate myths about mail-in voting in 2020, conspire to make voting by mail significantly harder because they believe it benefits Democrat candidates.

They could, instead, simply tell their Republican supporters to safely vote by mail. They could reassure them there have been more than 250 recounts and audits conducted in various states for the 2020 election and none have found any significant issues with either mail-in or in-person voting. None have found anything that changed any outcome by more than a handful of votes.

(The now infamous and interminable recount of 1.2 million ballots in Maricopa County in Arizona resulted in a net gain of 99 votes for Joe Biden.) But that runs counter to their election fraud lies. So they have to concoct all manner of restrictive new voting laws designed not to increase election integrity but to shred it. 

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, which keeps track of such things, 440 bills making it harder for some people to vote were introduced in 2021 in 49 states.    

In states controlled by Democrats, or which have split control, the proposals died quick deaths. But 19 states passed 34 laws restricting voting, 152 bills have carried over into the 2022 legislative sessions in 18 states and 13 new bills have been pre-filed for 2022.

Most restrict mail-in voting, eliminate or restrict early in-person voting, require elaborate identification proof for mail-in ballots, restrict those assisting visually impaired voters, or dramatically reduce the number of polling places.

Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer has already vetoed three bills that toughened voter ID laws and restricted the mailing of absentee ballot applications without requests. Another 21 restrictive voting bills have carried over from 2021. Additionally, there is a ballot initiative afoot requiring intrusive identification for those requesting early ballots including sharing the last four digits of our Social Security number.   

In Georgia, a bill will reduce the number of polling places in heavily Democrat districts resulting in discouragingly long lines. The bill also makes it illegal to hand out water to those standing in the lines they artificially created. The same bill requires a recount of the 2020 election in Fulton County — home to Atlanta — despite the fact it has already undergone two machine recounts and one hand recount. 

In Pennsylvania, one of the 30 bills moving forward from 2021 would create a fully partisan commission to oversee elections and allow it to overturn election results in some circumstances. A similar bill is moving through the Texas legislature. Additionally, Texas leads the nation in nakedly making it more difficult to vote in heavily Democratic districts by severely reducing in-person polling places, mail-in ballot drop boxes and gerrymandering 12 competitive districts into just one.      

Similar legislation is coursing through several other GOP-controlled states. It is not clear all the new laws will pass court tests and tested they will be. The most negative impact of these new restrictions falls most heavily on minority communities, anyone with transportation or mobility challenges, the elderly, at- home caretakers, and the poor, demographic groups that skew significantly Democratic.

Republican leaders now seem unwilling to try and win on the merits of their policies or philosophy. They prefer to simply prevent their opponents from voting at all, keeping elections safe and secure from fairness.