Marc Elias: Consent of the Governed

[Nevilledog]

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Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
There are no longer serious discussions of how a Republican can win the popular vote in four years. Instead, today’s GOP is gaming out scenarios where they can lose by more than 7 million votes and still win the Electoral College.

Consent of the Governed
Read the latest by Marc Elias here.
democracydocket.com
4:58 PM · Apr 19, 2021

https://www.democracydocket.com/2021/04/consent-of-the-governed/

Seven million more Americans voted for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. Yet Republicans filed more than sixty lawsuits to have Trump declared the winner. Even when those failed, 140 Republican Members of Congress voted to reject the results.

26 million more Americans voted for Democrats than Republicans in the U.S. Senate. Yet the body is currently evenly divided.

Whether it is the presidency, Senate, House, or state legislatures, the pattern is the same—while more voters support Democrats than Republicans, the geography of those voters and the rules of how votes are allocated favor Republicans.

For more than 200 years, the cornerstone of American democracy was majoritarianism—the idea that the candidate with the greatest popular support should prevail. Beginning with the Declaration of Independence, our country’s creed was that government derives its legitimacy from “the consent of the governed.”

This was neither a liberal nor a conservative principle.

In 1964, the Supreme Court used the majoritarian principle of one-person-one-vote to declare that “in a society ostensibly grounded on representative government, it would seem reasonable that a majority of the people of a State could elect a majority of that State’s legislators.”

*snip*

[onecaliberal]

1. This can't be repeated enough. N/t

[PortTack]

2. If you can..please give to his efforts democracydocket.org

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. The GOP is the party of voter suppression

The GOP is the party of voter suppression. Former CH Rehnquist got his start in GOP politics as a meber of a GOP goon squad in Arizona that challenged non white voters for daring to vote. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Rehnquist-on-Voting-Fairness-Chief-Justice-2690688.php

In 1962, Rehnquist was the leader of Operation Eagle Eye, a crew of Republican lawyers who roamed precincts in south Phoenix challenging the qualifications of minority voters. Rehnquist's role in the actual interrogation of blacks and Latinos waiting to vote is murky. At Senate hearings on his nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971 and to the chief's spot in 1986, Rehnquist denied "challenging the qualifications of any voters."

But several witnesses -- including San Francisco lawyer James Brosnahan -- told a different story.

Brosnahan testified at the 1986 hearings that in 1962, when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Phoenix, he received complaints that GOP operatives were stalling voters at a heavily Democratic precinct by accusing minorities of being unable to read. Some states had long used literacy tests to prevent minorities from voting, but federal law banned the practice in 1964.

The asshole who formed ALEC and founded the Heritage Foundation was clear on this

The GOP has to cheat to win elections