{"id":192728,"date":"2021-06-05T15:12:28","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T15:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/06\/voting-rights-voter-suppression-laws-state-level-republicans-ari-berman-interview\/"},"modified":"2021-06-05T15:16:28","modified_gmt":"2021-06-05T15:16:28","slug":"theres-less-than-two-years-to-save-american-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/05\/theres-less-than-two-years-to-save-american-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s Less Than Two Years to Save American Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The ongoing drive by Republicans to pass voter suppression laws presents the biggest challenge to democratic government since the establishment of Jim Crow. If Democrats in Congress fail to act by the 2022 midterms, it could be too late to stop it.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) flanked by senators John Barrasso (R-WY) and John Thune (R-SD) during a news conference in December 2020. (TOM BRENNER\/POOL\/AFP via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Though it has yet to fully register as the national story it deserves to be, America is currently in the throes of what may well be the most concerted effort at voter suppression in living memory. Since the beginning of the year, Republican state legislators have introduced a deluge of new laws intended to restrict voting, suppress traditionally non-Republican constituencies, and overturn the results of elections.<\/p>\n

Mother Jones<\/i> senior reporter Ari Berman has been covering issues<\/a> related to voting rights, gerrymandering, and democratic disenfranchisement for years and is author of the 2015 book Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America<\/i>. Berman spoke to Jacobin<\/i>\u2019s Luke Savage about the concerted right-wing offensive currently underway at the state level, its deep parallels with similar efforts in the nineteenth century, and why failure to pass federal voting rights legislation will have dire consequences for American democracy.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

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Luke Savage<\/dt>\n \n

America is currently in the midst of the most pronounced effort at voter suppression it\u2019s seen for quite some time. According to the Brennan Center<\/a>, fourteen states enacted twenty-two new laws between January 1 and the middle of last month that restrict access to the vote. From what I can tell, this is just the tip of the iceberg \u2014 there being hundreds of voting laws tabled at the state level that have a restrictive character. How would you characterize what\u2019s going on right now?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n \n

Ari Berman<\/dt>\n \n

I would characterize it as the greatest assault on voting rights since the end of Reconstruction. If you look at the number of bills introduced, the number of bills passed, and the intensity of the effort behind it, I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. Many of these kinds of efforts were blocked under the Voting Rights Act \u2014 and since the Supreme Court gutted it in 2013, voter suppression has gotten worse. But this is by far the worst it’s been in the past decade. It’s not like this is the first time there have been efforts to suppress the vote, but we are seeing a greater number of efforts at suppression, more restrictive bills than before, and more of an intensity within the Republican party to pass them.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n \n \n

Luke Savage<\/dt>\n \n

What are some illustrative examples of the bills at play here? I know there’s one<\/a> in Arizona (which hasn’t passed) that would essentially make it possible for the legislature to nullify the secretary of state\u2019s certification of election results by a simple majority vote. Are there other particularly egregious examples of restrictive or draconian laws that come to mind?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n \n

Ari Berman<\/dt>\n \n

Well, there are laws that have actually passed, or that are close to passing, that I find very disturbing. In Georgia, they stripped the secretary of state as a voting member on the board of elections and basically gave the gerrymandered legislature much more control over the state election board \u2014 giving that board the power to take over up to four county boards of elections. That kind of stuff is very disturbing when you think about the fact that Donald Trump tried to overturn the election and that the exact mechanisms he tried to use involved going through county canvassing boards, going through state election boards, and pressuring the secretary of state. So they’re pursuing all the methods that Trump tried to use. There\u2019s a Texas bill making it easier for courts to try to throw out votes, to try to overturn an election which, again, is exactly the kind of thing that Trump wanted to do.<\/p>\n

So I’m concerned about all of the bills that will make it harder to vote: whether it’s making it harder to get a mail ballot, making it harder to return a mail ballot, making it harder for your ballot to be counted, the kind of intimidation work that poll watchers could do, adding new ID requirements that weren’t there before, or cutting back on early voting and the amount of time that people have to vote. I’m concerned about all of those policies, which are in some ways a continuation of what we’ve been seeing for the past decade. What I’m really, really concerned about, though, is that we’re actually making it easier to overturn an election. Because that’s the fail-safe if voter suppression doesn’t work: you say, \u201cOkay, well, we didn’t achieve all of our ends to suppress the vote. So we’ll just throw out votes altogether or decertify the election,\u201d then just start breaking one democratic norm after another. That’s what didn’t happen in 2020 that I’m very concerned could happen in 2024.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n \n \n

Luke Savage<\/dt>\n \n

How concerted would you say the effort is? To what extent are these state-level Republican parties acting in concert? And to what extent is this a national strategy that we’re seeing play out?<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n \n

Ari Berman<\/dt>\n \n

It’s an incredibly concerted effort to try and make it harder to vote. First off, it starts with the leader of the Republican Party. He’s setting the tone in terms of the policies and outcome that he wants to see. But we also recently broke a story<\/a> about this big dark money group, Heritage Action for America (the sister organization of the Heritage Foundation) bragging to donors that they’re writing what they call \u201cmodel legislation\u201d restricting voting rights. They said very clearly that they either draft the bills for them [state-level Republicans] or they have what they called their \u201csentinel\u201d give them to legislators. So it has what they called a \u201cgrassroots from the bottom up\u201d vibe, or they’re advising them on the kinds of policies they want to see.<\/p>\n

They’re doing this in all of these key battleground states, and they’re putting real money behind it. They’re spending $24 million over two years on this campaign, while dark money groups overall are spending $42 million on their voter suppression campaigns. The Republican National Committee and state-level Republicans all have so-called \u201celection integrity\u201d committees, so this is way more coordinated than it was in the past. In short, the voter suppression efforts that we’re seeing right now are much more coordinated than they were a decade ago, with a lot more money and the top leadership of the Republican Party behind it.<\/p>\n