Voter Suppression Claims Are Hysteria

Every 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.

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David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner.

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Every 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.