Voting: A right and a duty that increasingly feels like a privilege

Published October 15, 2020

Ballots for the general election will be in voters’ hands, including mine, soon. As I posted not that long ago, I am making a special day of voting.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we do it by mail. Or by drop box. It’s ridiculously easy compared to my days as a Louisiana voter. No worries about having to go to a polling location before or after work, or during a lunch break. No standing in long lines.

No overzealous “poll watchers” to wade through. No targeted voter suppression. In fact, the county I live in added drop boxes for this election.

I’ve had plenty of time to study. My election guide arrived in the mail on October 6. The newspaper I work for has had excellent coverage of local and state races, including videos showing our editorial board’s interviews with the candidates. The editorial board also makes endorsements for people who appreciate that sort of thing, and I consider them as I decide which boxes to check.

I’m all set. I am hopeful that my ballot will arrive by Saturday, my own personal election day.

The county also has used social media to answer questions with a list of election facts.

 

What I am seeing elsewhere in the country is largely unsettling. Stories of people standing in line for hours are sometimes framed as evidence of a commitment to the process and a greater sense of importance than in previous elections, but they reflect the type of voter suppression people could see coming seven years ago.

 

John Oliver looks a little different than he did in 2013. So does voting in America. OK, a lot different.

Oliver was filling in for a vacationing Jon Stewart in June 2013 when he did that segment. People could be forgiven for perhaps failing to grasp the size of the moment, especially coming while they were enjoying their vacations.

But it’s amazing how much “The Daily Show” has brought to light. An Aasif Mandvi interview with Don Yelton on the show later that summer made headlines, and Yelton resigned his position with the Republican Party at the request of state and local party officials.

That’s not all that happened after the airing of the show. North Carolina voting laws were changed.

It’s good to see news organizations revisiting the 2013 knife to the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but a little stunning to learn that many Americans weren’t even aware that it had happened.

We are living with a voting landscape that looks pretty much the way critics of the 2013 ruling imagined that the ruling would create, and one that only the most politically naive person would think is not by design.

Supreme Court ruling on Voting Rights Act opened floodgates for new restrictions

 

You could see the mess in Georgia coming from miles away. Texas? Well, the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board called Gov. Greg Abott’s order what it is in this recent headline: Editorial: Abbott’s order closing ballot drop-off sites is voter suppression — plain and simple.

Voter suppression is a real thing, and a part of the Republican Party strategy for decades. The editorial board of The Washington Post called it out late last month: An appalling new low in their campaign to disenfranchise people in advance of the Nov. 3 elections has been reached with the bid by Florida Republicans — cheered on by President Trump — to investigate Mike Bloomberg for the “crime” of trying to help people to be able to vote.

The payoff line:

The call for investigation is nothing more than another brazen effort to try to scare people — who have the legal right to vote — from going to the polls.

Scare tactics are only part of the strategy to keep certain people from voting.

States wasted no time after the June 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act in taking advantage to restrict voting. One of them, Texas, announced less than two hours after the Supreme Court ruling that it would implement its long-planned redistricting and the strictest voter ID law in the country — immediately.

Of course, the scare tactics in Republican strongholds exist because the GOP knows that where politics are concerned, perception trumps reality. Newt Gingrich, who is as much responsible as anyone for the mess we are in, said as much during the Republican National Convention in 2016. Perception matters more than reality, feelings matter more than facts, he admitted on camera. That comes at the 6:06 mark of the video below.

Presented with FBI facts, Gingrich pivoted to what he thought most Americans believed, saying, “The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics which, theoretically, may be right, but …”

Wait, what?

“People feel more threatened,” Gingrich went on to say after being reminded that FBI statistics going back 25 years do not have a liberal bent.

As a political candidate, I’ll go with how people feel, and I’ll let you go with the theoreticians.

And there you have it.

The existence of Fox News Channel, whose origins date to some of the most sinister closed-door meetings of the Nixon administration, is thereby justified. Its primary purpose is not to report facts; on the contrary, it is to create perception, to stoke feelings. In terms of political strategy, Gingrich’s approach has its merits. Boiled down to its essence, it’s frightening.

Candidates can create feelings. Feelings are facts. Therefore, candidates can create facts.

And that’s a big part of how Trump convinced tens of millions of people to vote for him.

But I digress

I hadn’t planned on this turning into the John Oliver hour. I hadn’t planned on digressing about what should be obvious but apparently is not.

But after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and amid Trump’s third opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice, voting rights are even more endangered now than they were when Oliver addressed them on programs in 2013 and in 2016

In truth, people who have every right to vote are denied that right in far greater numbers than any “voter fraud” the Republican Party claims. And because many people want to feel that those claims are true, for them, they are. As I said earlier and will continue to say, today’s voter suppression is part of a long game that has been going on for decades.

Meanwhile:

One party wants voting to be as easy and accessible as possible. One party doesn’t. One party wants every eligible voter to be able to vote. One party doesn’t.

And that’s where we are.

Where I am, in the state of Washington, we vote the way I wish all of you could vote all of the time. More and more I feel lucky to live here and to have voting be as obstacle-free as it is. But I shouldn’t have to feel lucky about this. Every eligible voter should have it so good.

Election Day is 19 days away as I write this. If all goes according to plan, in two days I’ll put my completed ballot in the drop box seen in the photo above, 17 days before the deadline. And it’s not because of the pandemic. This is how we vote in every election.

Sadly, voting in America is a right and a duty that increasingly feels like a privilege, and an endangered one for some people. My completed ballot will reflect a desire to change that trend.

Ballot drop box photo: Clark County, Washington.