Republicans heighten their voter suppression gambit

| 1:30 pm EST February 2, 2021
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The Republicans no longer try to sway voters or expand their party to represent a broader range of views or voters. That happens when a party decides it wants to exclude the majority of the electorate and refuses to change. Because the GOP’s limited appeal makes it hard to win elections with Republican voter turnout alone, it relies on evermore voter-suppression measures. We must steel ourselves now and know that the right wing will try to disenfranchise as many non-Republicans as possible in upcoming elections.

The GOP trots out the usual excuses for its disenfranchisement proposals, usually something along the lines of restoring confidence in our elections due to (non-existent) fraud. But we all know that the Republicans are simply attempting to put as many obstacles in our way as possible. There are over 100 GOP-led initiatives in 28 states seeking to restrict voting. Many propositions deal with mail-in voting, putting into place onerous identification requirements, making it harder to register to vote, and making it easier for Republican-controlled states to purge voter registries.

There’s some good news, however. While the right can try to hinder our right to vote or make it unduly difficult, there are over 400 measures working their way through legislatures that would actually protect and expand our franchisement. We can fight GOP efforts by continuing to show up to vote, encouraging vote-protecting actions from our legislators, and keeping up the get-out-the-vote efforts we’ve gotten so good at since 2018. While it may be discouraging to see how many pushes the Republicans are involved with that aim to deter or prevent us from voting, it’s heartening to see that there are four times as many pro-suffrage proposals under consideration. We just can’t let up or take our right to vote for granted, because the GOP cannot be trusted to protect our voting rights.