Block the Vote: 2026 Edition

The Republicans are at it again. 

The House of Representatives, for the second time in the First Reichstag (formerly the 119th Congress), passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill that is as committed to safeguarding American voter eligibility as North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is committed to democracy, people, or republicanism. 

But this bill is certainly connected to Republicanism.  (Not capital letter.)

The SAVE Act would ban registration by mail and require Americans to present proof of citizenship when registering with photo ID, such as passports, in every state and would require birth certificates, if presented in lieu of passports, to show names given at birth. It would also order states to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.  Well, what's so bad about that?

Quite a few things, actually.  First of all, a large number of Americans don't have passports, mainly because they don't - or mor likely, given how vacation time and discretionary money are both in short supply these days, can't - travel abroad.  

Second, most people don't know where their birth certificates are and many of those people who would need birth certificates the most would be married women - because their current IDs usually bear their husbands' surnames, and birth certificates are required to provide their maiden names.  It would also require converts to Islam, not so coincidentally, to show their birth certificates with their original names, because many converts to Islam, such as basketball players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lewis Alcindor) and Muhammad al-Raouf (formerly Chris Jackson), adopt Arabic names upon their conversions.  

Third,  it is totally unnecessary to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.  There are none.  Migrants and residents who are not eligible to vote are not going to waste their time registering.  Especially when it's illegal.

These changes to voting laws in the United States will likely not become law any time soon, because it still has to clear the Senate, where Democrats can use procedural measures to block it.  One of the first senators, if not the first senator, to oppose the bill, is a Republican - Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who called the bill "federal overreach."  The Constitution, of course, gives the states the rights and responsibilities of holding elections to prevent the very sort of federal intervention this bill threatens to implement.  But when did constitutional violations ever stop MAGA before?

Oh yeah, even if the Senate does block it like it did in 2025, Trump is already prepared to counteract that.  He plans to issue an executive order requiring voter photo ID, and there have been indications that he plans to send ICE to polling places for the 2026 midterms, particularly in the fifteen states he and MAGA have identified as trouble for their movement. 

This plan to suppress may backfire, because Democratic women are more likely to get passports now. You know who likely don't have passports? MAGA Republicans! They think they don't need passports because they don't need to leave the U.S. because "this is the greatest country in the world!" Yeah? How many countries have they been to in order to make that determination?  

Oh yeah, it would also restrict if not completely eliminate voting by mail in addition to banning registering by mail, and MAGA Republicans are more likely to use the mails as well. 

Even if the bill doesn't reach Trump's desk and he tries to issue an executive order, necessitating a court battle, the groundswell of voters ready to vote MAGA Republicans out of office is likely to be so large that Democrats could win a landslide creating impregnable majorities both houses of Congress.  At that point, Attorney General Pam Bondi - who already tried and failed to blackmail Minnesota Governor Tim Walz into surrendering state voter registration data as a prerequisite for getting ICE out of his state - will send authorities to state capitals like Trenton to collect voter registration data.  At which point, maybe Governor Sherrill will finally realize that it's time for my home state of New Jersey to leave the Union.

Block the Vote - 2021 Edition, Part Two

The New York Times had a report recently about how the Democrats have two chances to defeat Republican voter suppression laws in the states through the courts and through legislation, and those two chances are slim and fat.  Boiling it all down, the report explained how Democrats are outvoted in the state legislatures and cannot stop the voter-suppression juggernaut.  But fighting voter suppression through lawsuits is even more of a lost cause, as the suits take forever to go through the system and may not be ruled upon until December 2022 at the earliest - one month too late to give the Democrats a fighting chance in the midterms. And even the very idea that they could actually win any of these suits is in doubt, as the new voter-restriction laws - ostensibly designed to combat voter fraud - is dubious, because the laws have been so carefully worded that an accusation that they're designed to suppress Democratic constituencies could be seen as a smack-talking partisan exercise . . . and a charge that's very hard to prove. 

Democratic efforts to move a voting rights bill - passed by the U.S. House - out of the U.S. Senate Rules Committee are stuck in neutral thanks to Republican opposition to it and one Democrat - Joe Manchin West Virginia, of course - who has concerns about how the law would affect rural states like his own.  (Once again, time to bash Democrats Sara Gideon in Maine and Cal Cunningham in North Carolina for losing the least losable U.S. Senate elections of 2020 and making Manchin's position in the catbird seat possible!)  Democrats find themselves negotiating with Manchin to get him to back the bill by making changes to please him.  In that case, it goes back to the House, where Madame DeFarge - also known as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - and buddies of hers such as potty-mouthed Rashida Tlaib will object to the changes made in the Senate.  And so on and so on.

Baring a miracle, it looks like Republicans will easily keep these changes in state voting laws in place to enable them to win back Congress in 2022 and the Presidency in 2024 - and we'll have a situation in which Democrats become a permanent minority even as Republicans are sustained by a minority of the country because the electorate will be too narrow and too exclusionary.  Oh, Democrats might get a bone thrown at them every now and then in the form of bipartisan legislation in the form of an earned-income tax credit and a Cesar Chavez monument on the National Mall in Washington, but things like universal health care, bullet trains for Amtrak - yeah, they won't get any of that.  And they'll only be able to speak . . . when spoken to.  In other words, we'll have a fake democracy that restricts a more liberal and more nonwhite segment of the population from participating in the governmental process.

Thank you for talkin' to me South Africa!

Yes, as Thomas Hobbes once said, life is "solitary, nasty, brutish and short," and in America that goes double. 😠 

Georgia Rhythm - A New Beginning

In the same way that Friday the 13th, Part V was a new beginning. Just when you think voter suppression, like Jason Voorhees, is dead, well, like Jason, it comes back.

The Republican-majority Georgia legislature passed - and the illegitimate Governor Brian Kemp signed - a new law tightening the screws on restricting he vote in the state. The law now mandates, among other things, voter ID for absentee ballots, a limit on the number of mail-in drop boxes, and the right of the state to take over a local elections board where fraud is "suspected."   It also bans giving food and drink to people waiting in line to vote on the grounds that it constitutes electoral bribery.

President Biden has vowed to do everything he can to fight voter suppression in Georgia and elsewhere - 42 other states, including my home state of New Jersey, have some form of voter restriction legislation pending in their legislatures - which is a way of saying he can do very little.  The President of the United States cannot unilaterally overrule a state's election laws (though Trump tried), and the voter-right law in Congress can't pass without eliminating the filibuster in the Senate, something Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia isn't prepared to support.  I have also heard - I don't know how true this is - that Senate Democrats have suggested excepting any legislation related to voting rights from the filibuster rule, but Manchin reportedly doesn't even want to make that exception.

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA), who was elected in a runoff for a special election to complete an unexpired Senate term, has made getting this legislation through and to President Biden's desk for his signature a priority, and he plans to persuade Republicans who are on record as having supported renewals of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  If Warnock, above, can do that, he should consider selling ice cubes to Eskimos.  Because Republican senators are no longer in Congress to vote in favor of the interests of the general public.  They're there to satisfy the far-right GOP base.  And the base wants stricter voting requirements to stop Democrats from stealing elections (which Democrats do by voting legally). 

Senator Warnock is noncommittal on the issue of boycotts of Georgia-based businesses and calls to move events scheduled for Atlanta, or Augusta (like the Masters), elsewhere, preferring instead to focus on what he can do about voting rights in Washington.  I say, he's fated to lose his fight and also lose his bid for a full six-year Senate term in 2022, thanks to the new law - and will have be content with just continuing to pastor Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta come 2023.  The odds are simply against him.  But then, what do I know?  Three months ago this time, I didn't think he'd even get elected to the Senate in the runoff.

Block The Vote - 2021 Edition

The Capitol insurrectionists demanded that someone "stop the steal" - even though there was no fraud in the presidential election to get President Biden in - and now Republicans are taking the Big Lie to heart and acting accordingly.  

Numerous states are passing bills that would tighten voting rules by limiting or eliminating early voting, providing more ID at the polls to vote, or, in Georgia, where the Democrats won narrow presidential and U.S .Senate victories, demanding a reason for mail-in voting and getting rid of mail-in ballot receptacles altogether.  This is all designed to keep Democratic constituencies - especially blacks - from voting.

Can I offer any comfort to you?  No. Like Jacob Marley's ghost, I have none to give.   And there are three reasons for that.  First of all, Republicans, though out of power in Washington, did very well in state legislative elections in 2020, a census year, meaning Republicans have the upper hand in redrawing U.S. House districts (as well as state legislative districts) and they intend to bitch-slap Democrats with the back of it.  (Where was Martin O'Malley's Win Back Your State PAC when we really needed it?)  Second, Republicans already control the legislatures passing this voter-suppression legislation, and they're likely to be upheld by a Republican-dominated court system.  Third, the voting-rights bill passed by the House, which would negate state voter-suppression laws, has no chance in the Senate because Republicans will filibuster it and Senate Democrats haven't figured out a way to get the voting-rights bill around that roadblock.  

I do have one ray of hope, a silver lining of sorts, to throw out.  And it's not President Biden's executive order securing the right to vote; that's purely symbolic.  In states like Georgia, mail-in-voting has been traditionally used more by Republicans - who are older and have trouble getting to the polls - than Democrats.  So this suppression of mail-in voting could keep more Republicans than Democrats in Georgia from casting a ballot and end up being a wash that doesn't help the Republicans one iota.

With this legislation all but certain to become law, Democrats in Georgia will have to work with what they have.  If they have to stand in line all day to vote, so be it.  They can't let the bastards win.  And if you're a Georgia resident and you need water to sustain you while waiting to vote, BYOB - Georgia's new voting legislation doesn't allow people to hand out water bottles to voters either.

Playing Post Office

It makes sense that, in the wake of a pandemic, Donald Trump would conspire to get his own choice for Postmaster General - a prerogative no U.S. President has had since 1969, when Nixon appointed Winton Blount before the Post Office Department became the Postal Service - into office, and then Louis DeJoy, said Postmaster General, would start making "reforms" to slow the mail down and make mail-in voting more precarious as Trump keeps shouting out loud how ripe for fraud it is.

The idea is that if DeJoy slows the mail down enough, the ballots mailed in for the 2020 presidential election won't arrive in time to be counted and that some ballots sent out for filling in won't make it back at all.  So now we have to worry if the Postal Service leadership is in cahoots to get Trump returned to office in a sham election.  I'm as worried about this as I am about the tropical storm due in my area tomorrow, not to mention catching COVID-19.

I've already seen the mail slow down.  I seem to get magazines I subscribe to a little bit later than usual, and, as I'm paid by mail for my job, I'm getting those much later.  My boss mailed my most recent check a week before it was postmarked.  This is the challenge anyone who votes by mail this year due to of COVID-19 faces.    

I went third party for President in 2016, my first time ever, and now in 2020, I hope to again do something for the first time ever by voting by mail.  I haven't ruled out voting in person, because COVID-19 is pretty much under control in my state and my town, but if I do vote by mail, I want to get my ballot as quickly as possible and I want to mail it as quickly as possible so it gets to its intended destination - I assume that would be my county court house - before November 3.  If it takes ten days to get there, I'll mail it twenty days before Election Day. DeJoy is smart.  Voters supporting Joe Biden have to be smarter.

There is a silver lining to Trump's war on mail-in voting: Republicans are likely to be at a disadvantage given that his supporters tend to be older and whiter and likely more afraid to vote in person due to a pandemic.  And there are a lot of young people in the Democrats' rainbow coalition who are ready to vote in person even if they have to camp out at the polling places to do so.  But with three months to go, anything can still happen.  Like maybe another late-October superstorm like Sandy.  Don't think meteorological history can't repeat itself.

I'm worn down by Trump fatigue.  A lot of us are.  I think people are ready to do the heavy lifting to send him packing.       

Hell's Broke Loose In Georgia

And Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp deals the cards.

Kemp, whose job it is in Georgia to regulate statewide elections, has been using all sorts of tricks to keep, last time I checked, 30,000 people from voting in this year's gubernatorial election - all because a few names on the rolls are spelled wrong by a letter or two.  Kemp, a Republican, is apparently afraid that there will be too many Democrats going to to the polls and voting for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, pictured below. 

Now why would Brian Kemp be scared of a nice lady like this being elected governor of Georgia?

It's not because her name sounds Jewish, is it?

Oh, mercy me, where is my head?  It's because she's black - like 70 percent of the registered voters Kemp has purged from the rolls.  He's also dong this to strengthen the hand of the Republican gubernatorial candidate, who happens to be . . . Brian Kemp!

Abrams is promoting an agenda to make Georgia a fair, just state (note that I didn't say see was promoting and an agenda to make it "more" fair and just), and Kemp clearly believes that the worst thing Georgia could have is a black woman running the show.  I can think of something far worse - letting Brian Kemp run the show.  He makes Trump look civilized, what with his own anti-poor, anti-immigrant agenda.  He's promised to go out through Georgia and apprehend and deport illegal immigrants himself with his own pickup truck.

I must say, it took the Democrats guts to nominate a black woman for the highest office in the Peach State, but it may be paying off; early voting in Georgia has tripled over the number of voters in 2014.  Polls give Abrams a slight edge, although Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com site rates the race as a toss-up.  After having tried and failed with running Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason for governor in 2014 and running Sam Nunn's daughter Michelle for the U.S. Senate that same year, Georgia Democrats are eschewing dynasty politics and trying something different, which may enable them to do something they haven't done in a long time - win an election.  (And also bear in mind that Jon Ossoff is Not.  Running. For Anything.  Again.)  But as long as Brian Kemp is calling the shots over how elections are run in Georgia, Abrams' election is anything but a guarantee.

Though, if he rigs the vote, at least Georgia has its own Jimmy Carter to monitor the recount. ;-)   

Blocking Votes

If President Obama loses his bid for re-election next year, it may not be because of the economy, and it won't really be because of the November 6 curse I wrote about earlier. It will possibly be because of voter suppression nationwide.

Once the Republicans realized that more young people, old people, poor people, and racial and ethnic minorities voted in 2008 and helped elect Obama President, swinging several key states in the Electoral College, it was inevitable that they would exploit the drop-off in interest among many of these traditional Democratic groups (except seniors, who can easily be coaxed into voting Republican on social issues) in the 2010 midterms and win enough state legislatures and governorships to pass voter restriction laws over Democratic opposition (what there is of it) at the state level. Now, in many states, residents must have a photo ID - usually a driver's license - to register to vote, early voting opportunities have been severely limited, and stricter residency requirements have been set into place. This has a disproportionate impact on traditionally Democratic voting blocs - poor people who can't afford a car and thus don't drive, urban residents who don't need a car and thus don't drive, working poor people who can't vote on the first Tuesday after November 1 because they have a job they have to show up for, and those who don't live in any one place for long, including college students. Folks who gave Obama his victory in 2008 likely won't be able to vote in large numbers in 2012.

I was going to suggest, when I planned to write on this subject, that progressive activist groups who register voters work with these laws, even if it means buying more buses to get more people to the polls in a shorter time frame and paying for driving lessons to get people who don't own a car a driver's license, but it turns out that Republicans have also enacted laws designed to curb mass registration by such groups. The nonpartisan League of Women Voters finds the new rules in Florida - which, among other things, reduce the number of early voting days from fourteen to eight - so restrictive that they've ceased voter registrations efforts in the Sunshine State indefinitely.

At the federal level, congressional Republicans are pushing to abolish the Election Assistance Commission, the four-person group created in the wake of the 2000 Bush-Gore and debacle in Florida to keep elections fair and honest through testing voting machines and offers assistance for proofing ballots. Republicans, who are so concerned about voter fraud that they restrict ballot access at the state level, say the commission has served its purpose in cleaning up voting (even though the new state restrictions cry for the commission's input), and that re-absorbing its duties into the Federal Election Commission will save the government $33 million in five years. $33 million in five years . . . in a budget of over a trillion dollars!

If these anti-initiatives are allowed to stand, the Republicans will undeservedly yet effectively ensure themselves as a permanent right-wing governing elite in America, with only a neutered political opposition - which, after 2012, will not be the Democratic party, which I predict will go the way of the Whigs and die a richly deserved death after caving on their principles one time too many.

Imperial Walker

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is moving once again to ensure that his state's name ought to be spelled with a K, no longer even to disguise the fascist nature of his policies. Democratic State senator Fred Risser, who has represented his legislative district longer than Walker has been alive, was speaking against a Walker-backed bill that will restrict voter registration and participation by eliminating party-line voting, lengthening the residency requirement before registering to vote from 10 to 28 days, and - the icing on the cake - requiring voters to carry photo ID in the form of a driver's license or a passport, which will deter poor people (who don't normally own cars or travel abroad) from voting. The Republican Senate president cut off Risser before his time expired. When I saw the video of the incident, I thought I heard someone to tell Risser to shut up. The bill was passed 19-5, declared passed before some Senate Democrats could even vote.

Walker - who wrote the bill - is expected to sign it next week.

Wait - there's more! Walker is going after against gay and lesbian couples by trying to undo a law that allows basic rights such as taking leave to care for a sick partner and making end-of-life decisions. It's bad enough that homosexual couples aren't allowed to marry in Wisconsin, and now apparently they're not allowed to live together as if they were married.

Scott Walker is a disgrace and a detestable excuse for a human being.