The classic hallmark of the Republican party, voter suppression, is being struck down at nearly every level, much to the chagrin of the party who knows they are on the losing end of the 2016 election.
For decades now, the Republican party has relied on discouraging, intimidating, and straight up stopping voters from casting their ballots, knowing that those who have the most difficult time voting – the poor, elderly, or disinfranchised – are also those who are most likely to vote against Republican interests.
As a result, Republicans have worked night and day to pass legislation which would reduce the voting population as much as possible by instituting excessive and unrealistic regulations on being able to cast a ballot – the foremost being requiring a photo I.D. to vote in a pretend effort to reduce voter fraud.
The problem with that line of arguing is that it is widely documented that voter fraud barely exists at all, and that the fraudulent votes cast are not nearly enough to warrant state and nationwide legislation to make the process more difficult.
Though these wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing laws have been instituted in some places, they are being struck down at record speed this week in other states, signaling a shifting tide for the party.
Several of these voter restrictions were struck down in North Carolina last Friday due to explicitly racist wording in the bills themselves. The judge who struck down the legislation came as close as he could to calling the lawmakers “racist.”
“We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history.”
On the same day, a similar ruling was handed down in Wisconsin where legislators were trying to tighten voter I.D. laws as well as cutting out absentee voting and reducing early voting.
Around the same time, similar legislation was struck down in Kansas and Texas as well, a clear indication that the party’s coordinated efforts to stop voting at all costs was more visible than they thought.
With Donald Trump at the helm, the GOP needs to use every dirty trick in the book to try to “rig” the election in their favor, but they will find that much harder to do now that many of their voter-ID laws have been placed in the trash where they belong.
We will just have to wait and see what other creative tricks the GOP pulls from their hat to try to push their hateful demagogue to the White House.
