How The Republican Push To Restrict Voting Could Affect Our Elections

[Nevilledog]

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Norman Ornstein
@NormOrnstein
Excellent piece on the anti-democratic and racist voter suppression laws that define the Republican Party—and why John Roberts will go down as the modern Roger Taney.

How The Republican Push To Restrict Voting Could Affect Our Elections
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Republican lawmakers have pushed new voting restrictions in nearly every state. From making it harder to cast ballots ear…
fivethirtyeight.com
7:49 AM · May 17, 2021

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-republican-push-to-restrict-voting-could-affect-our-elections/


In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Republican lawmakers have pushed new voting restrictions in nearly every state. From making it harder to cast ballots early to increasing the frequency of voter roll purges, at least 25 new restrictive voting laws have been enacted, with more potentially on the horizon. The GOP has introduced such measures in the name of “election integrity,” but at the heart of this effort is former President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

“I liken it to a quack doctor holding up an X-ray, pointing to something going, ‘See, see, see?’ and getting the person to believe that there’s something really there on that X-ray that requires expensive and dangerous surgery,” said Carol Anderson, a professor of African American studies at Emory University, of Republican efforts to pass new voter restrictions even though there is no evidence of voter fraud in the election. “We had an election that was amazing in the midst of a pandemic. And instead of applauding themselves for it, they went with a Trumpian lie.”

Understanding how new voting restrictions will influence our elections is difficult. Political science hasn’t found that these types of laws have that big of an effect, at least as individual measures. But, while laws that make it more taxing to vote are not new, the current onslaught of voting restrictions and changes to how elections will be administered is not something we’ve grappled with on this scale. Additionally, there is their nakedly partisan origins — nearly 90 percent of the voting laws proposed or enacted in 2021 were sponsored primarily or entirely by Republican legislators — and the fact that these laws are likely to have a greater impact on Black and brown voters, who are less likely to vote Republican.

Republican efforts to pass new voter restrictions have been so aggressive and widespread that their effects are hard to predict. Elections, moreover, don’t run themselves; they’re run by people. And these new laws point to an even more troubling problem that threatens to undermine our democracy: the GOP’s eroding commitment to democratic values, like free and fair elections. In many ways, the most concerning change our elections face may not be any one law, but rather the GOP’s increased willingness to take such anti-democratic actions.

*snip*

[JoanofArgh]

1. Kurt Bardella said on MSNBC yesterday that if R's take back the House in

2022, the 2024 election will result in a constitutional crisis.

[FoxNewsSucks]

2. I disagree that the effects are hard to predict.

It's designed to bring about fascist authoritarian Republiqon rule, while giving lip-service to, and an illusion of, free and fair elections.

Like Putin, or Saddam Hussein.

[onecaliberal]

3. Easy to predict that they will seize the government

By force if necessary because 1/2 the military and Intel services agree with them. That’s why Dems need to blow up the filibuster and pass the voting rights act. Period!

[CrispyQ]

4. Could? One doesn't need a crystal ball to see they WILL affect our elections.

And this shitshow down in AZ? Why the fuck can't we shut that down? If it were our side behaving like this the repubs would have found a way, & the media would be all over what a farce the whole thing is. There's just so much we don't respond to, either strongly enough or timely enough.