Even for the Republicans, this is ridiculous
Republicans suck. I know, tell you something you don’t already know. One of the things they most suck at is lying. The Republican led states have been enacting voter suppression laws since President Biden won the 2020 race. They vehemently denied that any of their laws area aimed toward suppressing votes, but we knew better. Now, a group of them have been caught in their lies.
Republicans claimed that they were restricting access to voting to prevent election fraud, which we all know never occurred in 2020. In most cases, they limited the number of drop boxes. In Georgia, for example, Fulton County had 37 drop boxes to permit unfettered access to voting by its residents. Huffington Post reported that SB 202 limited drop boxes to one for every 100,000 voters, leaving Fulton County with only 9 boxes, and they are now limited to specific hours. Fulton County also had two mobile voting centers to take voting to people with limited accessibility, which has been banned by SB 202. Florida’s new laws are just as bad.
The funny thing about Florida is that many — including Republicans — criticized Florida’s new laws because of “a trouble-free election” in 2020. Yet, Ron DeSantis signed it into law. Like Georgia, Florida’s law restricts access to drop boxes and placed restrictions on mail-in voting. All the while, Republicans claimed they were making “it as easy as possible to vote, and hard as possible to cheat,” Politico reported. This is such a crock. There was no cheating in 2020, so there was no need to make it “harder to cheat.” While Florida’s law may not be designed to directly impact minority communities like the Georgia law, it was still enacted for nefarious purposes.
According to Politico, the Republican Party’s top lawyer in Florida helped to draft the law. Because Democrats did so well via mail-in voting, that is what they decided to attack. Republican Party chair and state senator Joe Gruters was in the mix of everything, as demonstrated by text messages between Gruters and Blaise Ingoglia, discussing shortening the mail-in ballot period. They whined about how many more Democrats used mail-in ballots than Republicans and that if they did not change the law, they would continue to lose. Gruters has even filed legislation to make school board races partisan because “our board members got killed” in the last contest. Gruters admitted that his text messages were “accurate” because “the failure to do a reset will have a detrimental impact going forward.” And they think Democrats cheated to get Biden into the White House? This is cheating at its very core, and they are getting away with it because they run the states.
If these revelations do not make your blood boil, nothing will. Republicans do not believe in our form of democracy, nor do they care about the people they are allegedly representing. Given these activities and an upcoming redrawing of districts, Democrats stand to be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. This means we will have to work harder, not give up. Republicans cannot be allowed to prosper from cheating.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years