You Ain’t Like Us, So You Cain’t Vote

You Ain’t Like Us, So You Cain’t Vote

They’re not our kind!

Speaking to CBS News August 19th on whether he will accept the November results, Trump repeated: “If I see that we had a fair and free election, which I hope to be able to say, but if I see that, I will be.… You will never see anybody more honorable than me. I am an honorable person.”

The CBS reporter: “But you didn’t accept the results of the last election.”

“Well, that’s right, because there were many problems with the last election. You know it, so do they, and so does everybody…I think things have been done over the last four-year period that will make this a free and fair election, and certainly if for some reason I lose, and I think if I lose, this country will go into a tailspin, the likes of which it’s never seen before, the likes of 1929.”.

In 1830, under the Indian Removal Act, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations (known as the "Five Civilized Nations”) were rounded up and slow marched over the next two decades to areas in the Southwest where less valuable land (“Indian Territory”) was ceded to them. This notorious and cruel Trail of Tears, which also included some extra “ethnic cleansing,” moved 60,000 indigenous peoples from the homeland of the ancestors to a new world that was strange an unfamiliar to them. Thousands died as the marched, and even when they were settled, they were repeatedly displaced again; treaties signed with them were ignored.

Today many still live on those western reservations/pueblos, some with limited access to running water, electricity, medical care or even decent schools. Many of these people have been kept away from the benefits of modern life, and I suspect if you visited some of these pueblos, if the residents even let you in, you would be ashamed of the quality of their lives. Many were not born in hospitals, have no birth certificates, but their ancestors were in what became the United States long before the European invasion of North America.

There are lots of pueblos in Arizona, and while many Native Americans have found some power in the right to vote (I have stories of the efforts in my beloved adopted State of New Mexico), the Republican-controlled AZ legislature – certain that these people are highly unlikely to vote for their candidates – have passed legislation that most certainly will deprive these people of a right they have had for a very long time, as US citizens: the right to vote. That legislature has created “proof of citizenship” laws imposing new voting restrictions that make it exceptionally difficult, if not impossible, for non-GOP minorities to vote.

As reported by David Savage for the August 19th Los Angeles Times, GOP legislators are using the Republican National Committee for an emergency petition to the US Supreme Court to uphold voting restrictions that would purge over 40,000 voters from the existing Arizona voting rolls: “Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from voting in person or by mail… Although Congress made it easier for Americans to register to vote, those federal rules cannot override ‘the Arizona Legislature’s sovereign authority to determine the qualifications of voters and structure participation in its elections,’ they said in an emergency appeal filed Aug. 9…

“After a 10-day trial, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix blocked enforcement of the new proof-of-citizenship requirement, citing the federal motor voter law and the state consent decree [under 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona]. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, refused to lift her order Aug. 1…The fast-track appeal may signal whether the conservative court is ready to intervene in partisan election disputes…

The Arizona Republicans asked for a decision by Thursday [8/22] because counties will soon begin to print ballots… Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes [a Democrat] said the appeal should be rejected… ‘There is no evidence of fraud and undocumented voting. The 2024 election is weeks away and acting now to restrict the voting rights of a large group of Arizona’s voters is undemocratic,’ he said in a statement… Many of the affected voters are ‘service members, students and Native Americans who did not have birth certificates while registering,’ Fontes added.

“On Friday [8/16], Biden administration lawyers also urged the court to turn down the appeal. ‘Thousands of voters have already registered to vote by filing the federal form without accompanying documentary proof of citizenship,’ said Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. ‘Judicial intervention at this stage would produce unnecessary confusion and chaos on the cusp of an election.’” Donald Trump’s above quotes repeat that the 2020 presidential election, which also happened to elect a GOP majority to the House, was rigged… but he is more than happy that his lockstep MAGA minions are doing their best to rig the November election on his behalf.

OK, how does the Supreme Court handle such cases? Well, until they granted Donald Trump a wide swath of immunity not anchored anywhere in the Constitution, I would say this is a slam-dunk loss for the GOP. But we know that the Trump configured Court is bound neither by its own precedents nor the Constitution itself. Rightwingers are using “election integrity” to push likely Democrats off the voting roles. “[In] 2004, Arizona required newly registered voters to provide ‘documentary proof of citizenship.’… The ACLU and civil rights advocates sued to challenge that requirement. They cited estimates that more than 13 million Americans lacked access to a birth certificate or other such documents.

“They won in the lower courts, [and in the Supreme Court in Inter Tribal Council] that the federal motor voter law preempted or overrode the state’s law… Justice Antonin Scalia spoke for the 7-2 majority and said the federal law requires states to ‘accept and use’ the standard federal form in federal elections… In response, Arizona adopted a two-track system of voter registrations. To vote in state and local elections, new registrants were required to show proof of their citizenship with a driver’s license or a birth certificate. Those who registered through the federal form were allowed to vote only in federal elections. They are referred to as ‘federal only’ voters. The state later agreed in a 2018 consent decree to give full registration to new voters whose residence and citizenship could be confirmed through its motor vehicles department database.

“But two years ago, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed a new law that prohibits registered voters who do not provide proof of their citizenship from voting by mail or in a presidential election... The Justice Department sued to challenge the laws.” LA Times. “According to an expert who testified in the RNC case, ‘approximately one-third of a [percent] of non-Hispanic White voters [in Arizona] are Federal-Only Voters, while a little more than two-thirds of a percent of minority voters are Federal-Only Voters.’

“This racial disparity likely explains why the Republican Party is now asking the Supreme Court to further restrict this small percentage of Arizona voters. 2020 exit polls showed Republican Donald Trump winning white voters in Arizona, but losing the state as a whole due to President Joe Biden’s strong performance with Latinos. Biden’s margin of victory in Arizona in 2020 was about three-tenths of a percent, and even a tiny shift in the state’s population of eligible voters could tip the balance.” Ian Millhiser writing for the August 19th Vox.com.

And although this case has been used to lengthen the period for court ruling on voting issues where it benefits them, they are now pretending it never worked that way. “[In] Purcell v. Gonzales (2006), the Court warned that ‘federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election rules in the period close to an election.’ While the Court has never stated precisely when the ‘period close to an election’ begins, its Republican majority has read Purcell quite aggressively in the past.” Vox. But just not in this case. They want it nice and short. Outrageous!

Late Breaking News: In a 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court allowed the citizenship-document-proof to remain as to state-candidate/issue ballots but not on those “federal only” ballots. We are creating second class-citizens with a reduced right to vote… even when they have been voting for decades.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s bad enough that the Electoral College has allowed five presidents to win an election despite losing the popular vote (in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016), now the party in power (in Arizona and a host of other red states) is fomenting a pre-stolen election (for Trump and his MAGA minions) this November by purposely culling the voter roles of voters likely to vote Democratic… because… oh, they don’t want elections to change their freedom-killing mandates.