Claims of voter suppression are based on falsehoods.
Claims of voter suppression are based on falsehoods.
E very day Americans are subjected to a new round of hysterical warnings about “the end of democracy” or “voter suppression.” Every day the moral panic is ratcheted up to new bloodcurdling levels. Last night on MSNBC, for example, Lincoln Project alum Kurt Bardella claimed that if Congress didn’t pass H.R. 1, the Democrats’ Constitution-busting nationalization of elections, America would “never have a fair election in this country again.” The volatile Joy Reid responded by contending that, indeed, the GOP intended to turn America into apartheid-era South Africa.
Claims of voter suppression are malleable, forever evolving, and open-ended. But if the threat to voting is as dire as is claimed, it implies that existing norms are in danger of being corrupted or nullified. Nowhere is that happening. If we accepted the standards now touted by Democrats as the only means of ensuring a legitimate election, it would mean also accepting that we have never had a valid election in the history of the United States.
In reality, it’s never been easier to vote. It is arguably at least as easy to vote in this country — in Texas and Georgia and other places not so much in the news — as it is in almost any country in the world that holds free elections (apart, perhaps, from Australia, which has instituted illiberal mandatory voting policies). All but a single European nation requires a government-issued photo ID to vote, something Democrats would eliminate with the bill they call the “For the People Act.” Even in Estonia, often praised as the exemplar of a sound voting system, a person needs state-issued ID. Estonia’s population, incidentally, is not quite as large as that of the city of Dallas. Instituting an Estonian-style system in the U.S. would also mean nationalizing all elections for 239 million eligible voters online. Considering that 67 percent of Democrats believe that Russians tampered with their votes in 2016, and 65 percent of Republicans believe that the 2020 results were illegitimate, you can imagine the conspiracies that would bloom after an Internet-based election.
This week, Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe tweeted: “Call me crazy, but I think it should be easier to vote than it should be to buy a gun.” We hear this kind of preposterous assertion all the time. To buy a handgun — a constitutional right, by the way — one needs government identification and a criminal background check conducted by the FBI. In states such as New York or Maryland, laws are far more prohibitive. If obtaining a ballot was half as difficult as obtaining a legal firearm, Democrats would be completely justified in calling it suppression.
It is far easier to vote than to buy a gun. Voting is also arguably easier than sending a FedEx package or signing up for Netflix or going to a ballgame. In every state in the union, citizens can request that the government send them a ballot in the mail. In some states, a ballot will be sent to your home even if you didn’t ask for one. And the ballots that are sent are clearer and more user-friendly than ever. (As are voting machines.) In most places, a person can get a ballot in another language. They can send it in at their leisure.
Now, it’s possible, unfortunately, that some of those peddling “voter suppression” believe minorities are less capable of procuring ballots and identification than they are. Who knows? It’s more likely that voter-suppression fear-mongering is propelled by a cynical partisan desire to preemptively cast doubt on elections à la Stacey Abrams. Which is why most of the warnings are vague or laden with complete falsehoods. These cynics know well that most Americans support basic voter-integrity laws.
It would be one thing if Democrats were arguing that Republicans were standing in the way of what they believe are more efficacious and progressive policies. That would at least be grounded in some version of reality. The notion that states are instituting Jim Crow 2.0, as the president recently claimed, doesn’t only minimize the ugliness of that history — it is unmoored from reality. Election laws are not perfect, and in many jurisdictions, including many liberal ones, polling-place lines are often too long. But the state has no duty to come to your house, knock on your door, and try to convince you to expend the minimal effort to participate in democracy. If you don’t vote at this point (I never do), it’s probably because you don’t care enough. And that’s fine.