“They had things [in the draft stimulus bill], levels of
voting
[essentially, voting by mail] that if you’d ever agreed to
it,
you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Donald Trump on Fox & Friends, 3/30
There’s huge overriding reality that
faces the Republican Party: if they were ever to depend on a strict “one
person, one vote” majority in most but the reddest of states, and certainly in
national votes, they will lose. Instead, they have adopted a program of denying
votes to those that oppose them, mostly within the 31 states where they control
both houses (Dems have 18), much of which is tossed by the courts with amazing
frequency.
Here are couple of efforts that have
been tossed: trying to prevent felons from voting, and when that was tossed,
trying to get felons who had not fully paid their fines to be denied the vote.
Tossed again. Moving polling stations far away from minority neighborhoods,
especially when locals are unlikely to have cars… while denying “vote by mail”
alternatives (hence the President’s quote above). Gerrymandering such that pure
blue cities like Austin, Texas have all but one (blue) of its five
congressional districts reach way, way out into the rural hinterlands until
that blue vote is overcome by red voters. Austin is blue, but four out of its
five congresspeople are red. Political gerrymandering is embedded in American
history, but it clearly is a distortion of what a fair distribution of voting
would produce. The Supreme Court has vacillated in addressing this, even as
elected representatives openly admit they purposely gerrymander to keep
incumbents in and opponents out.
Want more? Requiring voter photo IDs,
particularly in communities where people don’t drive (and hence have photo ID
driver’s licenses), as a precondition to vote. Courts have thrown out what look
like poll taxes. As quickly as a court enjoins voter ID requirements, the
reddest states vote in a slight variation. Courts also threw out a Census
question proposal because the architects were conclusively proven to have
drafted that provision, requiring a statement of whether the individual answering
Census questions, to get minorities not to answer and thus eliminate fully
counting them. It was aimed at blue states to reduce the number of
representatives they get to send to Congress (since the Census determines how
many each state gets).
Political agendas have found their way into the COVID-19
mess. States like Texas, Mississippi and Ohio have attacked Roe vs Wade by
declaring abortions to be non-essential medical procedures that cannot be
performed during the pandemic. Don’t look to increasingly conservative federal
courts to reverse this erosion of Roe; after a federal district court
judge in Austin issued a temporary restraining order against that Texas ban, the
Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
at New Orleans stayed that decision on March 31st, reinstating the
ban. Funny that no blue states, even hard-hit New York, have not made
that determination. Think about a desperate single mother-to-be, early enough
in her term, knowing she cannot care for the child and terrified that she might come down with the
virus herself. OK, that isn’t enough for you?
Aside from “stay at home” orders that
exempt religious gatherings regardless of size (Florida), thus making sure that
there will be lots of places for the contagion to find new victims (especially
large worship services that could have been moved online), who in turn can
spread that virus to family and friends. Consistently, the larger the
gathering, the greater the acceleration of the coronavirus infection rate.
Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, spring breakers in Florida and Georgia,
birthday and “thumb your nose at the virus” parties all over the country have
been the super-spreader spawning grounds with incredible certainty.
As Washington State is learning, as
the outbreaks of the virus in the vast urban concentrations in and around
Seattle begin to taper slightly, COVID-19 seems to have moved rapidly into
rural regions where doctors and hospitals are scarce. Big outbreaks in red
southern states like Alabama and Louisiana are catching locals by surprise. A
shock for folks in the countryside believed this was only a mega-city disease.
Surprise. After the cities…
The problem with COVID-19 is that if
we allow pockets of the country to sidestep the obvious isolating approach
(locking down all but essential businesses, keeping a safe distance, allowing
only necessary very small groupings [two? Or just a family?], shelter at home,
etc.), if we continue to be unable to measure who has the disease because of
limited testing so we cannot prepare or respond properly, allow getting
necessary equipment and supplies to be through a bidding process (even among
states and the fed), we are going to continue to create and maintain very specific
“COVID-19 storage” areas that could spread locally or even launch a second wave
of the virus everywhere we thought it was contained. Notice how applying the
obvious controls, in South Korea and Germany, worked. We’re not doing that, and
even the amazing NIH Dr. Anthony Fauci tells us that we seem to be following
the horrific CV-19 outbreak pattern experienced by Italy.
The battle between the federal
government, where Donald Trump is/has openly shutting/shut down or slowing
federal aid to states with governors that have criticized him, particularly
Michigan (which has the nation’s third highest CV-19 death toll) and Washington
State (fourth behind Michigan), is likewise increasing the virulence of the
virus, giving it more victims able to spread the disease. Our leaders just
cannot stop playing these deadly games.
This proclivity of Mr. Trump and his
GOP cronies to use the virus for political vendettas, to make unrealistic
projections of recovery (causing people to relax their vigilance), touting
medical treatments not approved by the FDA but totally depleting the supply of
those meds needed to treat others with very real ailments, and believing that a
free market is the best way to guarantee supplies (it clearly is not!) are
morally unjustified. Thousands if not tens of thousands of people, who might
never have been infected or might have been treated, will die as a result. One
more thing… communities where there might be a significant number of
undocumented residents.
As undocumented immigration has been
a cornerstone GOP issue, there is a rising notion of leaving those without
“papers” to live without public services, including medical treatment, perhaps
to die and spread the disease to their “undocumented” community. Even as ICE was
theoretically stopping its non-essential raids, it continued to arrest and
detain fairly harmless undocumented immigrants (two such immigrants were just
released from detention by court order). Are Americans really like that? Oh,
and if you let large pockets of people unable to be tested and get treated… and
they actually live in and around your community… even if you are heartless, if
you care about yourself and your family, guess what could happen as a result?
Let’s head back to Florida, where a
quarter of its residents are over 65 years of age, designated as a particularly
vulnerable group. Already a “top ten” state in CV-19 fatalities. “More than 25
MILLION American adults do not have a government-issued photo ID — which is
now, apparently, a FEMA requirement to obtain potentially life-saving COVID-19
testing. These tens of millions of Americans are disproportionately among our
most vulnerable populations — including senior citizens, people of color,
people with disabilities, people from low-income communities, and younger
adults. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the barriers to obtaining an ID have become
practically insurmountable, as DMVs and similar ID-issuing offices are
shuttered indefinitely across the nation.
“According to the Florida Department
of Health, coronavirus tests are to be provided for anyone showing symptoms,
first responders, healthcare workers, people who are autoimmune-compromised,
and those who have pre-existing conditions. However, VoteRiders has confirmed
that FEMA-run test sites such as those in Seminole, Orange and Duval Counties
require everyone to show a photo ID with their name and birth date.”
VoteRiders.org, April 2nd. I might add that in the universal
healthcare reality of the UK and the European Union, no one has asked for papers.
It appears that they know that people without legal residence are actually able
to spread the disease to legal residents!
I’m
Peter Dekom, and all of this comes when our state and federal governments
should know better; after all, FEMA just ordered 100,000 body bags!
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