The 2020 presidential election produced the highest voter turnout in American history. Both candidates received record numbers of votes. This was America at its best, but not for the Republican Party. So it’s no wonder that legislatures in dozens of states have proposed more than 200 laws, aimed mostly at Black voters, that would dramatically cut voter turnout.
If many of the proposals were ever to become law, America would be turning back the clock to the dark Jim Crow era when states deliberately prevented Blacks from going to the polls. There is no secret behind the Republican effort to stop them from casting ballots. Thanks to massive turnouts in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Joe Biden was elected president.
Biden often says, “Here’s the deal.” And here’s the deal: The Republican Party has morphed into a white man’s party. It is slowly but surely being outvoted by minorities in the inner cities and the suburbs. If you can’t win fair and square, why not change the rules to stop large voter turnout? What’s the excuse for these draconian laws? According to the Republicans, the 2020 election was riddled with voter fraud.
Over the past four months, 60 state and federal judges, many of them appointed by former President Donald Trump, have ruled that there was no fraud in any of the election counts. As late as this month, an Arizona judge fined the state Republican Party for bringing a “frivolous” lawsuit, claiming that there were “voter irregularities.” Had Biden won the election by a narrow margin, the voter-fraud argument might have had an impact, but he defeated Trump by seven million votes.
Here’s a sampling of the kinds of bills that have been introduced by state legislators. In Alabama, the legislature is being asked to ban the distribution of water bottles to voters who are standing on line at the polls. In addition, it has been proposed that voters pay a fee to vote, just like the historic poll taxes that were thrown out by the courts decades ago. In Alabama, legislators want to ban Sunday voting to prevent churches from encouraging “souls to the polls.”
Jerry Kremer was a state assemblyman for 23 years, and chaired the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. He now heads Empire Government Strategies, a business development and legislative strategy firm. Comments about this column? JKremer@liherald.com.