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This Halloween let’s face one thing actually scary: the loss of life of American democracy.
We’re watching the beliefs of free and honest elections get additional and additional away in actual time.
Passing pro-voting payments may very well be an answer, if politicians have the gall to cross them.
Michael Gordon is a longtime Democratic strategist, a former spokesman for the Justice Division, and the principal for the strategic-communications agency Group Gordon.
That is an opinion column. The ideas expressed are these of the creator.
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At present is Halloween — so it is nearly as good of a day as any to acknowledge that the US is experiencing one thing very, very horrifying: the loss of life of our democracy. Not like a horror film villain leaping out from the shadows, it is simple to see the destruction of American democracy coming. One democratic norm falls, then one other, then one other, and earlier than lengthy we’re left with solely a shattered husk, filled with the trimmings of democracy however with none of the particular illustration. However all hope shouldn’t be misplaced. Democrats have a slender window to strengthen the muse of our nation, in the event that they’re robust sufficient and good sufficient to grab the second.Deliberate erosionAs it stands, we discover ourselves residing by way of democracy’s gradual and painful loss of life. All of the outward symbols of democracy are current: celebration leaders are nonetheless stumping for candidates in New Jersey and Virginia and political operatives are gearing up for the 2022 midterms. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless unclear simply how a lot these elections and the air of normalcy they’ve round them will assist gradual the norms being eroded.
In Virginia, the GOP has summoned an “military of ballot watchers” to assist police voting cubicles across the state throughout Tuesday’s statewide elections. Whereas ballot watchers are nothing new, an electoral technique predicated on intimidating voters with extra ballot watchers, after which claiming voter fraud earlier than the election even occurs are prime examples of long-held democratic norms being tossed apart within the identify of political expediency. In lots of different states, Republican-led state legislatures are passing legal guidelines that make the act of voting harder. In Texas, the power to request a mail-in poll and use drive-thru voting have been curtailed, an assault on the shift employees and the voters of coloration who’re extra seemingly to make use of these strategies. In Georgia, lawmakers made it unlawful to carry meals and water to voters in line, which is undeniably an assault on voters of coloration, who’re routinely pressured to face in longer traces to vote than their white counterparts. A standard theme from this erosion of democratic norms is {that a} single celebration, the Republican celebration, is accountable. And what’s worse, nationwide Democrats are not doing something about it, regardless of controlling Congress and the presidency. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which has already handed the Home, would restore components of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that have been struck down by the Supreme Courtroom. The For the Folks Act would ban partisan gerrymandering, make it simpler for Individuals to register to vote, overhaul marketing campaign finance legal guidelines to strengthen on a regular basis Individuals’ voices, and curb the corruption of massive cash in politics.
However up to now each of those payments have been stopped chilly by the specter of a Senate filibuster — one thing the Democrats won’t repair.Democrats are democracyThe deck is stacked towards Democrats, and contemplating the autocratic path Republicans are taking place, it seems the deck is stacked towards democracy as effectively. Conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Courtroom, huge benefits within the Electoral Faculty and Senate maps, and management many state legislatures, and with it the redistricting course of that may decide the way forward for the Home. That legislative management might trigger the subsequent main destruction of democratic norms as effectively: having state legislatures merely appoint presidential electors, relatively than having voters select them. Whereas this was thought of a long-shot unlikely to reach 2020, with sufficient time and sufficient will to ignore democracy, authoritarian-minded Republican legislators might absolutely work out a technique to completely rig elections of their favor. These voting restrictions and different plans to curtail democracy in america are all within the service of the de-facto dictator of the Republican celebration: Donald Trump. Whereas he has made no overt claims to be operating in 2024, the writing is definitely on the wall. The Republicans intend for the 2024 election to be a coronation, the ultimate chapter of their quest to entrench minority rule.
And in ’24 they can end what they began in ’20: overturning the outcomes of a professional election that they misplaced.The Democrats have just one extra 12 months of assured majorities in Congress. That is the pressing second for them to get Sen. Joe Manchin in line, dump the filibuster if wanted, and enact the voting legal guidelines that may solidify our fragile democratic custom.With out passing main laws that secures Individuals’ proper to vote and offers a bulwark towards democratic backsliding, they may permit the ultimate pillar of our democratic system to fall. That is a scary thought.
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