When demographic trend
lines tell you that your point of view, your values and your political
perspective are rapidly becoming casualties, perhaps even “endangered species,”
what do you do? Live with the change and learn the art of compromise? Embrace
the new demographics into your political sphere of influence? Or dig in your
heels, trying imposing and continuing demographic exclusions, finding ways to
minimize the voting power of those who threaten your position and resist change
with every fiber in your body?
Common sense would seem
to tell you to co-opt those who threaten your position if they are eventually
going to overwhelm you in the not-so-distant future. But common sense doesn’t
seem to have much sway with a vast constituency that still believes that God
will not let them down. All’s fair in love, war and voting. The ends justify
the means. Insert additional clichés here. The resistance to fairness is so
powerful, you have to wonder whether these excluded voters will retaliate
against this traditionalist minority when the new kids on the block inevitably
set the rules sometime in the future.
We’ve had an
acceleration of Republican-legislature-driven spate of “make it impossible for
Democrats to win” gerrymandering that seems to have emboldened ultra-right-wing
social conservatives, pushing Republican moderates out or further right. The
notion of legislative compromise has definitely left the building, as former
House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor (R, Virginia) just found out
in his primary loss to a Tea Party opponent.
Gerrymandering works,
it seems, and so what else can the GOP do to marginalize the opposition? The
Voting Rights Act of 1965 [President Lyndon Johnson’s signing is pictured
above] has been amended several times to keep it relevant. But ever since a
conservative Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Act by a 5-to-4 vote a
year ago, freeing nine, mostly southern states, to change their once-clearly
exclusionary election laws without advance federal approval, too many GOP-controlled
states have been working overtime to make sure that those least likely to vote
Republican have increasing barriers to having access to the ballot box. Folks
who live in big cities – particularly the poorer elements who don’t drive and
thus do not have drivers licenses with photo IDs – would be particularly good
folks to keep from the ballot box. They’ll never vote Republican.
“With the midterm
elections only months away, efforts to carry out some of the country’s
strictest photo ID requirements and shorten early voting in several politically
pivotal states have been thrown into limbo by a series of court decisions
concluding that the measures infringe on the right to vote…
“The court decisions
have gone both ways, but several have provided a new round of judicial rebukes
to the wave of voting restrictions, nearly all of them introduced since 2011 in
states with Republican majorities. The decisions have ensured that challenges
will remain a significant part of the voting landscape, perhaps for years…
“Opponents of these
voting laws have been heartened by the successes of the past six months in
places like Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But with cases still awaiting
legal action in seven states, including appellate rulings, it remains unclear what
kind of impact the rulings will have on the midterms… A few state and federal
appeals courts have indicated they may rule before Election Day, potentially
affecting voting in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas, among other states.
“‘There have been a
string of victories, but as to the ultimate balance, it’s too early to tell,’
said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California,
Irvine. ‘But at the moment the courts have been leaning more toward striking
down some of these laws.’... Still, many states are already rolling out
stricter voting requirements, and not all the laws have been challenged or
overturned, in part because the laws vary widely in terms of the restrictions
they place. The effects remain unclear, because much of the voting this year
has come during primaries, for which fewer voters turn out. Those who do vote
tend to be the most committed and best prepared.” Washington Post, June 17th.
The general impact has
been to reduce non-Republican voters to 5/8 of the voting power of Republicans.
Thus, the conservative incumbents have extended their hold until the minorities
are able to overcome that voting disadvantage.
“Just 16 percent of
Americans currently say they approve of Congress, compared with a previous low
of 21 percent just before the 2010 midterms.” Huffington Post (citing a Gallup
poll), June 17th. Last mid-terms (2010), despite similar low approval ratings,
85% of House incumbents then running were re-elected. We hate Congress, but we
vote them back in.
The bigger question is
whether the United States can actually survive intact, without breaking into
smaller nations in accordance with their constituents’ beliefs, within the 50
years or so it will take to reverse the voting skew regardless of schema
designed to disenfranchise left of center voters. We really have little
justifiable claim to being a viable and functional democracy these days, and
the People’s Republic of China is making sure the rest of the world knows this!
I’m
Peter Dekom, and the disdain for true representational democracy shown by so
many Americans seems to me to be shameful.
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