Republicans and Democrats have very different views about how elections should work. Democrats want everyone to vote, even if changes in the process create the possibility of voter fraud. Coincidentally, they also believe that Democrats do better when the turnout is big. Republicans believe that we must completely eliminate any possibility of illegitimate votes, even if there is no evidence of voter fraud AND restrictions may prevent some legitimate voters from voting. Coincidentally, Republicans believe that they do best when voter turn-out is small. While these differences have always existed, both sides are now drawing red lines about exactly how we will address big vs. small voter turnout.
Let’s be very clear, America has always been trying to stop one group or another from voting. Ongoing efforts to gerrymander, or draw voting districts in such a way that one party of the other gets an unfair advantage. That’s pretty common, and it’s a game that both Republicans and Democrats play. But when it comes to disenfranchising the poor and minorities, you have to hand it to conservative Southerners. Slavery pretty much did the job for the first 100 years of American history. After the Civil War Southerners tried Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, prevented Women from voting, and for extra credit created the KKK.
Ironically, in the first half of the 20th Century, southerners were Democrats. By the second half of the 20th Century, conservatives started moving to the Republican party. The great Conservative Migration was cemented by Ronald Reagan’s administration, where white conservative Southerners began to dominate the Republican party. Now it was the Democrats that fought for open elections while the Republicans, once hated by the South for promoting integration and voting rights, became the party of voter suppression.
Republicans claim that they are right to restrict how we vote because the outcome of an election could be changed if there are fraudulent votes. Of course, there is overwhelming evidence from the last century of voting records that no such fraud has ever happened, or could ever happen. All of the evidence that possible fraud occurred in the 2020 election, came from the election process successfully identifying and rejecting fraudulent votes, or as was the overwhelming case… mistakes that might make a ballot invalid.
Yet, this is why Republicans firmly support id checks, on-site only voting, elections monitoring, and other processes that reduce the number of voting places and poor/minority voters. Alternatively, Democrats believe that we need more votes, and that millions of American vote are suppressed by these limitations. Therefore, Democrats support expanded voting rights, more polling places, longer hours of operations, and new forms of voting, even if it raises the possibility of a small number of mis-counted, mis-entered, or illegitimate votes. In fact, if you take a careful look at the “StopTheSteal” campaign, the evidence of fraud they exposed (i.e. less than a handful of ballots) proves that there is no widespread fraud. Certainly, nothing that could impact the Presidential election.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but what Donald Trump said in 2020, “They (Democrats) had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Just a week ago, in a session with SCOTUS justice Amy Coney Barrett, GOP Lawyer Michael Carvin made it clear that increased voter participation “puts us (Republicans) at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats… Politics is a zero-sum game”.
If this was still 1980, then voter restrictions might work and benefit the Republicans. Wealthy neighborhoods would have a lot of voting places, and neighborhoods with the poor and minorities would have few voting places. By having limited hours of voting, and long lines from too few voting places, hourly (working-class) voters would be limited.
But it isn’t 1980. It’s the 21st Century. Now, the most loyal and steadfast voters for the Republicans (or is it just for Donald Trump?) are MAGA, a new faction element in the Republican Party. MAGA/Trump supporters have flooded into the Republican party, and at the moment seem to be in charge. This group overlaps with several demographics. They tend to be older, white, Christian males. No surprise there! They also tend to be less educated than other Republicans and make less money.
Everyone is different and no two Trump supporters are identical, but when you add up all of these characteristics, you get a pretty decent overlap with older white males that used to be in a labor union until… the mine closed, the factory close, their jobs was automated, or their work was sent offshore. This is the group, and the anger, that Trump spoke to for 4 years. Trump spent a lot of time talking about creating work in coal mining and bringing back factory jobs. Not every red MAGA-cap wearing Trump supporter fits this profile, but many do.
And that’s the problem for the Republicans. While Republicans have been exceptionally successful at limiting the vote if you are black, or Hispanic, or poor, Republicans have not exactly been cooperating with unions to get their workers into the elections. Since Reagan’s administration, Republicans have been working to break the unions, weaken union contracts, increase globalism, and ship jobs overseas. It was the Democrats who used to be against globalism… because it hurt unions!
If Republicans succeed in further restricting voting, will this help or hurt the MAGA crowd? It’s certainly going to take a reworking of their goals and the areas they have targeted for restrictions. Even if they succeed and get more MAGA into the Republican Party, how will the Republicans pay off a group that they have been trying to destroy? Or will there be Holy War between the old and the New Republicans?
I’m not sure if we can call it War, but lines are being drawn. Republicans have left the party in record numbers. Independents are now the #2 “political party” in America. They might even be the leading party. But Independents are hard to track. Are they independent only when they resign from their former party affiliation? Or do they become independent when they stop voting for the party they registered for decades ago? If a few more Republicans become independents, there just might be enough votes for a new centralist or progressive party between the Republicans and Democrats. One thing is for sure. A continued move to the right by Trump Republicans PLUS the declining demographics of the MAGA crowd means that Republicans may no longer have the votes to elect a Presidential candidate. Perhaps as soon as 2024.
What happens next? Hard to say. It may all come down to how independent those Independents are! While the Republican party is bleeding members, the Democrats may not be doing all that much better. With Independents growing faster than either major party, perhaps any hope of ending the gridlock in Washington will come from a third party. If Independents can win just a few senate and congressional seats, they could form a coalition with one of the other parties. While Republicans and Democrats are locked into their own narrow politics, perhaps the threat (or opportunity?) of a third party might just change things?
What do you think? Tell us what you think is the future of American Politics… we’re listening!