Mitch McConnell, Enemy of the Vote
Suppressing votes is not merely a racist act, nor it is simply the last resort for a party out of ideas. Voter suppression is traitorous. Intentionally restricting access to the ballot is a violation of the ideals that we have been told are inherently American. The United States government is of, by and for the people. Yet we are barred from the fundamental democratic process by those in power merely because our skin color predicts our political persuasion. The Supreme Courts 2013 Shelby vs. Holder decision should have had people marching in the streets to restore that landmark civil rights legislation to its full powers or at least made that a key topic of the subsequent presidential election. We are lucky if outlets use racially tinged or other cowardly terminology to reference it. Voter suppression is not an accident, as Chief Justice John Roberts would have us believe, some benign exclusion from the small-d democratic process. It is a form of violence.
Mitch McConnell is okay with this. The Senate Majority Leader, the longest-serving Republican to ever hold that position, all but admitted on the Senate floor Wednesday that having more Americans vote is bad for the Republican Party. H.R. 1, the omnibus package of ethics and civil rights reforms proposed by the newly elected House Democratic majority, was McConnells target.
One day after the House Judiciary Committee had its first hearing for H.R. 1, the testudinate majority leader mocked the bill that would make Election Day a holiday for federal employees and encourage private businesses to do the same.
Just what America needs, another paid holiday and a bunch of government workers being paid to go out and work for I assume our folks our colleagues on the other side, on their campaigns, McConnell said, essentially promoting President Trumps invented framing that all of the furloughed federal workers during the shutdown were liberals. He added, This is the Democrat plan to restore democracy? A brand-new week of paid vacation for every federal employee who would like to hover around while you cast your ballot?
McConnells histrionic floor speech echoed a remarkable bit of projection that he published on January 17th in the Washington Post. Alleging that H.R. 1 should be called the Democrat Politician Protection Act, his rather hysterical op-ed warned that the bill was not about making elections fair, but about having the government control them. H.R. 1 would actually do serious injury to gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts, which in various states serve as the Republican Politician Protection Acts. In addition to the Election Day holiday, H.R. 1 would end partisan redistricting, create automatic voter registration, prohibit voter roll purging and would recruit additional poll workers to help ease the experience of voting.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/mitch-mcconnell-enemy-of-the-vote-787596/
TwistOneUp
(1,020 posts)You got dat right! Democracy means voting. Taking the vote away from peeps is THE most traitorous act that can be done, and manipulating the vote is the second.
And both happened last year in Georgia. If I was Stacey Abrams, I'd be hopping mad. That POS stole the election, and we better get our shit together before it happens again.