The Republicans’ War on Vote by Mail
The 2022 midterm elections are quickly approaching and, while Trump will not be on the ballot, the remnants of the damage he did to America’s electoral system remain. Leading up to and after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump took aim at what he perceived to be his greatest threat to his reelection efforts: mail-in voting.
After losing the election, Trump’s team filed a frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit claiming election fraud. Between court filings, Trump and his team would take to Twitter and Fox News to falsely claim the election was stolen. However, nothing was stolen. Trump lost.
In the days after the election, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis went on television and applauded the Sunshine State’s handling of the election, “The way Florida did it, I think inspires confidence, I think that’s how elections should be run.” Several months and one insurrection later, Governor DeSantis introduced election security and integrity legislation. The legislation sought to amend mail-in voting, limit access to ballot drop boxes, and all around suppress the vote. It is important to note, Florida Republicans were not the only state legislators that have passed restrictive voting bills. Fellow battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Texas have also joined in to restrict ballot access. This year alone, 18 states including the aforementioned have enacted 30 laws that restrict access to voting.
The Republicans’ war on mail-in voting and passing restrictive voter laws in the wake of Trump’s loss paints a grim picture of the state of the Republican party. In the wake of the 2012 election, the Republican party did a post-mortem on why they lost and how they could improve in the cycles ahead. Eight years later, the GOP’s response to losing the White House is to rewrite the rules on voting and restrict voter access. They are weaponizing legislation to strip Americans of their fundamental right to vote.
The slippery slope created by these restrictive voting laws has the potential to come back to harm the Republican party in future elections, specifically in the battleground state of Florida, where Republicans usually win by mail-in ballots. Since the 1990s Republican, campaigns in Florida have spent millions to encourage voters to use vote-by-mail. The 2020 elections were no different; 35% of Republicans voted by mail. Not to mention, razor thin victories for both Governor Ron DeSantis and now Senator Rick Scott can be attributed in part to mail-in voting.
For most of the electorate, elections and voting are a civic duty exercised once every two years, and mail-in voting offers a convenient way to ensure their voice is heard and vote is counted. The false claims of the election being rigged and stolen, and Trump’s blatant lies about vote-by-mail being “ripe with fraud,” led to an increase in voter disenfranchisement. Coupled with restrictions on voting, voter turnout may be hampered in future elections. No one wants to vote if they think their vote doesn’t count.
Even with Trump out of office, the damage to our democracy and our electoral process he left in his wake will be seen in future elections. Not all hope is lost. There is an opportunity to restore integrity to elections and instill voter confidence, but to do so, it will take an act of Congress, literally.
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA), which the House passed in August, offers a chance for Congress to strengthen American democracy and provide a critical update to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. One of the hallmarks of the VRAA is a provision to restore preclearance that requires states to consult with the federal government before making major changes to their voting rules. Decades ago, preclearance was a process which required states who had a history of racial discrimination and voter suppression to get preclearance from the Department of Justice before any newly restrictive voting laws could be passed. In 2013, the Supremes issued a decision in the case of Shelby v. Holder, stated preclearance requirements were unconstitutional and overstepped Congress’s power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The restoration of the preclearance requirement would prevent voter suppression laws from being passed at the state level and protect voting rights.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, where the country saw historic voter turnout, the GOP became emboldened to engineer an electorate in order to make up for losing a presidential election. While this a new low for Republicans, it most certainly is not rock bottom. If there ever was a time when Congress needed to uphold the Constitution and protect the rights of Americans, it is now. The time to pass the VRAA has come, and the Senate must act to ensure all voters can make their voice heard and not only those of the GOP’s choosing.