The Knives Are Out for Voting Rights
The Knives Are Out for Voting Rights
It's a smorgasbord of voter suppression today
Welcome to a Tuesday evening edition of Progressives Everywhere!
I hope that all of our members who live down in Texas are safe, warm, and comfortable. I remember losing power for a week after Hurricane Sandy here in NYC — it was truly miserable and I was lucky to have a couple of friends with whom I could crash for a few of the nights my apartment was dark. But in Texas, the ongoing threat of COVID-19 makes staying with friends or family more of a risk while the freezing cold renders staying at home in the cold untenable.
While this kind of winter storm is certainly a rarity in Texas, power grids should be able to handle surprises. That this one failed so completely isn’t a fluke but instead the consequence of the state’s stubborn attachment to stupid traditions in service of its self-image.
The Texas Tribune and Houston Chronicle each have a good explanation of the public-private partnership that operates the Texas power grid and why it’s such a bad system (and emblematic of so many public-private partnerships). It’s going to be days before power is restored in some places, which will prove catastrophic in places such as this Fort Worth medical prison. What a nightmare.
Here’s a good thread on it from Beto O’Rourke, who has rebuilt himself as a dynamic local advocate:
I’d say that this horror show could be an important political turning point for Texans, but right-wing media has spent the day blaming the blackouts on green energy, so who knows what narrative will ultimately emerge.
In this issue: There is a stunning number of new and crucial voting rights stories to discuss tonight, so that’s going to be the main focus. I usually have a bigger variety of items, but these are all urgent and need our attention. But don’t worry — I’ll mix it up more later this week!
Important News You Need to Know
Voting Rights and Elections
Kentucky: We’ve good news and bad news coming out of the Bluegrass State.
First, the bad: Republican sewer monster Mitch McConnell has given his blessing to Republicans in the state legislature to push a bill that would strip Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, of the right to appoint a successor should a US Senator from the state leave office in the middle of their term. (I imagine that may have been an awkward initial conversation.)
Instead, the proposal would require the governor to choose a successor from a list of three names provided by the executive committee of the same political party as the departing senator.
And now the good news: While Gov. Beshear restored voting rights for 170,000 disenfranchised formerly incarcerated Kentuckians in 2019, the state still has a huge number of people who cannot legally vote due to past convictions. Now, some lawmakers in the state are considering ending felony disenfranchisement altogether — including GOP Rep. Jason Nemes, who is sponsoring a bill in the State House to do just that. If it passes, it’ll have to go on the statewide ballot in 2022.
Ohio: This fall, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose insisted that he could only legally allow one absentee ballot drop box per county, regardless of how many people lived in said county. When the Ohio Supreme Court told him that was not at all the case, he just shrugged, said “meh,” and refused to permit additional drop boxes anyway. It was blatant voter suppression for the sheer sake of suppressing votes and now he’s just doing it again for the May primary. It’s not as pressing an election, obviously, but limiting votes any time is a bad thing!
Georgia: He oversaw a smooth general election that saw a record number of voters cast, so it was only a matter of time before Fulton County elections director Richard Barron was fired. A vote to end his stewardship of elections in the state’s largest county came last week and was reiterated today, though it may need to be certified by the Fulton County Commissioners — that part is TBD.
Now, one of the Democrats on the board did side with the Republican majority, citing problems in prior year elections. We’ll see who they get to replace Barron and whether they’re committed to making elections happen.
On the bright side, a federal judge allowed part of Fair Fight’s lawsuit over voter suppression to move forward in court. The surviving elements include the voter purge laws that strip people of their registration if they don’t vote for five years in a row as well as the exact match clause that stops many people from registering.
Florida: Legislative Republicans are trying to force Floridians to request an absentee ballot every year instead of every two election cycles, which has a bipartisan group of election administrators very upset.
Pennsylvania: I’ve been following this story for a while and now it’s starting to blossom. While a source told me last week that it’s not likely to happen in time for the May primary, Republican legislators are looking to gerrymander the state Supreme Court by breaking it up into geographic districts. Right now, the entire state votes for each justice, but Republicans want to have judges be elected by district.
Given their control over the district lines and the concentration of Democrats in cities and suburbs, this would very likely benefit Republicans. As it stands now, Democrats have a 5-2 advantage on the court and the Republican chief justice is about to hit mandatory retirement age, putting his seat in play this November.
Democrats face-planted in their efforts to flip the Pennsylvania legislature last year (despite major investments by this newsletter and its readers). Now they’re trying to figure out what went wrong (besides underestimating Donald Trump) and where to go from here.
Iowa: Another Republican triumvirate, another set of nefarious voter suppression proposals from the GOP. After seeming as if they’d compromise with Democrats, legislative Republicans are going all-in on making it difficult to vote, especially by mail. The party’s proposals — which look likely to become law — are
Arizona: The Supreme Court will hear a case over two controversial voting laws that could have a significant impact not only on the state’s elections, but more broadly, how SCOTUS evaluates voting rights cases altogether. The laws themselves require the tossing of a ballot that’s cast in the wrong precinct (something I do nearly every time I vote here in NYC) and ban “ballot harvesting,” which is a scary term for simply turning someone else’s ballot in on their behalf. As with all voting limitations, both of these laws have a disproportionate impact on people of color.
According to SCOTUS Blog, the court’s decisions here could have broad national implications because it will help dictate what determines a “clear framework” for ruling that a law has discriminatory intent. Given the current Supreme Court’s far-right bent and its obvious hatred of voting rights, it feels almost inevitable that it will rule in favor of disenfranchisement.
Supreme Court: Hey, you know what would make the current Supreme Court’s distaste for voting rights and democracy totally moot? That’s right, expanding the Supreme Court!
President Biden has empowered a commission to examine the current legal system and recommend reforms to the federal courts, but not everyone on the commission is likely to be in favor of adding justices to the Supreme Court. Because he’s so obsessed with bipartisanship, the commission has a number of conservatives like former Bush administration officials on its roster, making court expansion a long-shot to make the final list of recommendations.
As former Obama counsel and Demand Justice co-founder Christopher Kang told me last week, it makes no sense to include people who are against judicial reform on a committee explicitly charged with recommending judicial reforms. It’s a set-up, ensuring the report is watered down so that no big changes wind up being made. Here’s what Aaron Belkin, who I spoke with last week as well, had to say about it when asked by Bloomberg:
“There’s no path to restoring Democracy and there’s no path to address planetary emergencies if you fail to expand the court, so that’s what the commission needs to say,” Aaron Belkin, director of Take Back the Court, which advocates for expanding the Supreme Court.
“If the commission says anything else, then it hasn’t done it’s work, and it’s not taking the issue seriously, and it’s frankly engaging in bullshit,” Belkin said.
It feels like that just about says it all. Just look at all the voter suppression and gerrymandering laws that I’ve covered in this newsletter alone — democracy is on the verge of being rigged for a generation thanks to existing gerrymanders that give the GOP a lock on many state legislatures. Expanding the Supreme Court — which has been done seven times and only takes a simple majority in Congress to enact again — is the only way to avoid that. And personally, I think it’s more important to preserve democracy than an arbitrary number of justices or the racist old filibuster.
For more, check out my story from two Sundays ago.
Healthcare Policy
Medicare for All: If you don’t spend much time on Twitter, you’ve probably missed out on the endless and exhausting debate between leftists over how to pressure Democrats on Medicare for All. God bless you, I’m jealous.
Long story short, a very loud faction of lefty Twitter has been insisting that progressives should have withheld their vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker until she agreed to schedule a vote on Medicare for All. The idea was that it would create pressure on Democrats to take a stand on the matter and make it clear who was on board and who had yet to be convinced that giving trillions to health insurance companies instead of just paying for people to get medical treatment is a bad idea.
Others thought that it was sort of a waste of time and leverage since it was largely clear who supported the policy already, anyway. The debate has become painfully acrimonious and navel-gazing, so I recommend skipping it altogether and reading this very interesting piece by a community organizer and activist who provides some actual insight into the tactical fight for Medicare for All.
No matter where you stand on the tactics debate, however, this is much inarguable:
Medicaid: Speaking of health insurance corporations getting paid egregious sums to provide nothing but complications, Oklahoma Republicans are moving forward on privatizing the Medicaid expansion that voters just passed last summer. People are not happy about it!
Mental Health: COVID-19 is going to leave scars on us long after we reach herd immunity. Especially young people.
Dystopia: Student debt is also crushing young people. I will soon be picking up on and helping out the campaign to cancel this immoral generational nightmare, so stay tuned for that!
This is Fun
As most of you know, I’m helping Wisconsin Democrat Tom Nelson with his campaign for US Senate. Last week, we put up a billboard in Ron Johnson’s hometown, calling him out for spreading the Big Lie and helping to incite the Capitol insurrection. It earned a fair amount of attention online, and as it turns out, Sen. Johnson himself has seen the billboard.
Spoiler alert: He hates it! Just listen to his complaints in the Twitter post below.
Isn’t that cool? Ron Johnson doesn’t seem to have a soul, yet he’s really annoyed by our billboard.
Tom was the State Assembly Majority Leader for a time and has been the County Executive in Outagamie County, near Green Bay, for nearly a decade. It’s a solidly red area, but he’s managed to win by being a popular populist, connecting with people in ways no other candidates can boast. He’s in favor of Medicare for All and very focused on unionizing and supporting workers, which also separates him from others that might run.
Giving his background, his reputation, and his willingness to take risks (see above), he’s going to be the most electable candidate in this race. But with two potential self-funding rivals (including the 34-year-old son of a billionaire), he' needs to raise money ASAP. I’d be so grateful if you’d chip into the campaign:
Help Us Fight
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