This is the strangest thing:
For years, campaigns and other groups have distributed water, sent food trucks and had pizza delivered to voters waiting in long lines to cast a ballot. Amid a nationwide effort by Republican lawmakers to tighten voting laws in the wake of an election their nominee lost, the practice has come under fire.
It’s tempting to think the intention here is simple cruelty, but I think it’s even dumber than that. It’s not that the Republicans are overly interested in voters being hungry and thirsty, but rather that they’ve convinced themselves that these practices actually harm their chances of winning elections.
It’s not entirely clear why they think this, but one factor is that it diminishes the suppressive effect of long lines. If someone gets hungry enough or thirsty enough, they might change their mind about voting. But that’s true about the loss of time involved in waiting in a long queue, where simple frustration or competing obligations might force someone to bail before their vote is cast. The benefit here is marginal, and that’s before you account for the added determination these measures inspire in folks. It gives the Democrats very valuable ammunition when they’re doing voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns when they can point to this blatant kind of suppressive behavior. I think the black community is especially responsive to this kind of messaging, and they tend to be clustered in the urban districts where long lines are most likely to form.
There’s one other factor here that has a bit more justification. We try to keep campaigns away from polling station lines to protect people from harassment or intimidation, and we don’t want voters paid off to vote one way or another. Theoretically, a campaign that’s offering pizza to everyone in line might win over a few votes, although I don’t think very many people make up their minds in this way. In most of these urban lines, the Republicans aren’t going to get more than a handful of votes in any case, and they’d be more likely to benefit from some cockamamie plan to sway voters with food and drink.
I have trouble believing that even in their imaginations the Republicans believe these restrictions will help them much. Yet, they’ve seized on this as a key component of their state-level election “reforms.”
Florida Republicans are considering a bill that would effectively make it a crime to give voters food or drink, including water, within 150 feet of polling places.
State law currently prohibits campaigning within 100 feet of polling locations, but an elections bill introduced last week, H.B. 7041, expands that zone to 150 feet and includes a prohibition on giving “any item” to voters or “interacting or attempting to interact” with voters within that zone…
…The proposal is similar to a measure in Georgia’s sweeping new election law that bans giving water, food or gifts to voters waiting in line, among many other restrictions.
In my view, this is a gigantic gift to the Democrats. It gives them a devastating talking point and provides cover for Democratic senators who might want to eliminate the filibuster to pass overriding federal legislation that will nullify these state laws. This is so obvious that it’s impossible to see the advantage in the Republicans including these measures in the first place.
It could just be as simple as that they’ve suffering from a collective brain rot. I have no better theory.
What about the part in the law that takes power away from election officials?
that isn’t hard to figure out.
Are Manchin and Sinema going to side with the fascists, or democratic government, concerning HR1?
If those two Senators are so afraid of Republicans that they have to rely on Stacey Abrams having to save the country, then we literally need to make a state out of the DC suburbs and Puerto Rico so that Manchin and Sinema can run as Republicans to maintain their personal egos going forward or whatever the fuck they’ve convinced themselves and everyone else is “necessary”.
There is no way to guarantee that the Democrats hold the House and/or Senate after 2022, so “keeping the powder dry”, which is what Democrats always do, is just another way of saying that they’re going to just go ahead and let the fascists win.
It’s a chicken and egg thing here. It isn’t that Democrats are so radical that Republicans win elections. It’s that Democrats are so afraid of playing the role of Democrats that Democratic voters just stay home since voting for the Democrats never pans out anyway. Excite some fucking 18-30 year olds with actual bold legislation that is popular and polling above 65%. And then allow local/city/state organizations to brag about it where they see it: their social media.
If the Republicans take the House and Senate in 2022, and the White House in 2024, it’s done. All the competent fascists have learned really well from the clown fascist.
There is no other time than right now to save the country. Manchin and Sinema, even with their heroic votes for centrist nominees and bills, are not heroes. They’re potentially the slow poison that kills this country.
Anyone still arguing that 2020 was a major victory for democracy and/or the Democratic Party is delusional.
This is my “progressive” rant for the week. Arguing that Democrats should perhaps start acting as a unified Democratic party by passing actual Democratic legislation they run on and then seem to forget about because acting as Democrats might scare away the mythical Trump-to-Biden voter. Either turn people the fuck out, or shrug while they stay home. Trump picked up 11m voters from 2016 to 2020, so Biden’s win wasn’t a Trump-Biden voter swap, it was people voting against a clown fascist. Trump ain’t on the ballot in 2022. Thinking 2022 will be like 2018 or 2020 is a huge mistake.
What is going to increase turnout from 2018 and 2020? Passing 3 bills and stalemate, or Democrats passing the legislation they were god damn fucking voted into office to pass?
Jesus, it’s really frustrating having to hope Democratic politicians act like Democratic politicians.
The truest,bluest repubs I know take enormous pride in being assholes. That means they do whatever they want to, no matter how much it shocks others. I’ve had it explained to me by some of them. Like the boss who fires an employee bc the guy had a flat on the way to work,but he was late, so he gets fired. And also,bc his boss is a self-declared asshole,and giddy about it.
This water thing is just one gear in the voter suppression machine. But they came up with it specifically bc it is another way to deny someone else a basic need. Just like a living wage, fair hearing in court, medical insurance, on and on. And they do it bc they are assholes. It’s symbolic, for assholes.
The Republicans have disavowed any need to camouflage their racist policies. It’s Trump’s party now. Just come down the escalator in your gold plated tower bloviating about rapists and murderers. How far can this go? I’d like to think the GOP is like that mythical bird that flies in tigher and tighter concentric circles until it disappears up its own asshole. I’ll believe it when I see it. But the huge gaping asshole that is the modern GOP would seem to provide an ample target.
I think this is exactly right. Republicans, particularly at the state level are full blown Trumpeters. It doesn’t really matter whether it works or not and it doesn’t really matter that it gives Democrats great talking points. None of that stuff mattered to Trump. The only thing that matters is whether they can sell the lies to the base and this sort of pettiness delights the base.
The premise is that the Democrats cheat and if they win it had to be fraudulent. This kind of voter suppression does not really make a difference but it shows the base that Republicans are doing everything they can to “protect the integrity of the vote”. When Stacey Abrams et al scream about it… Good! If it causes Democrats to unilaterally pass a voting rights act, they are enabling fraud. If the new Democratic rules lead to larger majorities, it will be proof that the fix was in.
The point of these bills is not really to suppress the vote in my view because they do not work very well anyway. The point is to reinforce the idea that the 2020 election was stolen. Their unspoken argument is that if they let everybody vote, real Americans, white Americans lose their voice. In other words, Republicans do not believe in democracy and they do not want their base to believe in it either.
No matter how this turns out, if the intent is to damage democracy – and I do think that is the play – it will work. The next few elections are really between the authoritarians and the defenders of democracy. In that context, the Republican strategy makes sense. They aren’t trying to win elections. They are trying to win power and do away with elections.