The writing is on the wall for Republicans, and it has been for some time now. Across the nation, year after year, they see the numbers steadily move away from them. They already represent tens of millions fewer Americans in Congress, and if recent polling is even close to accurate, they are on the verge of a bloodbath in less than two weeks that could tip the power to Democrats for generations to come.
Facing such a bleak reality, it might be reasonable forjm to the party platform, discouraging the archaic fights over thinly-veiled racism and bigotry. To stop the never-ending coddling of racists and America’s worst humans.
But no, that is not their tactic. Their tactic today is the same tactic of yesterday.
Fight democracy.
Because the enemy that Republicans can beat is not the better ideas, better leadership, better governance or better humanity of today’s Democratic Party, it is access to the voting booth.
And they are fighting like hell.
Gone are the slick talking points and the insistence that every shady hurdle placed between a voter and a ballot is a matter of fraud prevention. Now, they’re not even hiding what they’re doing, nor offering half-baked excuses for doing it.
Whether it be limiting polling locations or providing fewer voting machines to predominantly minority neighborhoods or removing polling locations from college campuses or allowing for only one ballot drop-off location or faking drop-off locations, there is an all-out, last-ditch, shameless, desperate attempt to stave off the coming defeat by Republicans.
And there is no bottom to what they will pull.
As is usually the case, it was in Alabama where they tested just how low they’re willing to sink. In Alabama, in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed nearly 220,000 Americans and nearly 3,000 Alabamians, they fought everything.
Even when they knew that doing so would likely — very likely — cost voters their lives.
And they had a Republican-packed U.S. Supreme Court to go along with them.
On Wednesday evening, that court ruled, 5-3, that Alabama officials could ban curbside voting, even though there’s no law in the state preventing it and several counties have used it successfully in the past.
Curbside voting is utilized to aid people with disabilities. In the time of COVID, it was going to be used by several counties in Alabama to make it easier for the most at-risk individuals to safely cast a ballot. They would pull up to the curb, sign the poll book without exiting their car, fill out a ballot, hand it to an official poll worker who feeds it into a voting machine, and, tah-dah, a safe vote has been cast.
A number of at-risk Alabamians filed a lawsuit against the state saying the ban on curbside voting, coupled with the requirements for absentee voting in Alabama — which state officials also went to court to keep in place — would very much force them to risk their lives in order to cast a ballot.
It will come as no surprise to you that the majority of those who planned to utilize curbside voting, it was projected, were Black Alabamians. COVID-19 has proven to be particularly lethal for Blacks, and the counties of Jefferson and Montgomery — both with high minority populations — had already planned to implement curbside voting.
Secretary of State John Merrill and Attorney General Steve Marshall smelled something fishy, which is oddly common among white Republicans in Alabama whenever large numbers of Black people are planning to vote.
But don’t worry, if you were expecting their reasoning for opposing curbside voting to be either absurd or callous.
In a brief filed in the case, Merrill argued that “some level of risk is inherent in life and in voting.” Merrill also went into a lengthy speculation on how curbside voting could possibly be conducted safely and securely in these counties.
Again, curbside voting has been done in Alabama numerous times. And figuring out the logistics certainly would have taken less time and money than fighting this ridiculous case all the way to the Supreme Court.
But, again, fairness, security and safety weren’t the objective.
Suppression was.
Because right now, that’s the only hope Republicans have left.
