As expected, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott today signed the state's new Republican-crafted voter suppression bill into law. Abbott, who still seems to imagine himself a presidential contender and who continues to position himself as habitual me-too endorsing every other Republican governor's worst ideas, remains glibly defiant as to the new law's intentions.
The new law will "make it harder for cheaters to cast an illegal ballot," the Trump-backing goof told reporters, as reported by The Washington Post. This again ignores the plain truth of "illegal ballots," which is that the concerted efforts of every fascist-minded Republican in the nation haven't been able to ever identify more than a few such votes out of millions and millions cast—and of the illegal votes that were intentional, rather than the result of voter confusion or misinformation, most seem to revolve more around Republicans illegally voting on behalf of dead relatives or the like. There's been only one significant recent case of a coordinated, large-scale fraud meant to throw an election: North Carolina Republicans tried such a scheme in 2018. They got caught.
The law now faces many, many lawsuits, because limiting voting hours, forcing voters to jump through new documentation hoops, or otherwise limiting voter convenience in service to "fraud" claims that are provably false is egregiously crooked and everybody-but-everybody knows it. Reducing valid voting hours does exactly nothing to prevent fraud, even imaginary fraud. New Republican laws specifically targeting Sunday voter turnout efforts by Black churches isn't even vaguely connected to any supposed "fraud" case that's ever been found anywhere.
There is no non-trivial amount of voter "fraud" anywhere in the country. But there's an entire movement of fraud that uses faked data and absurd hoaxes to justify new restrictions, making it more difficult for working-class and poor voters to cast ballots against Republicans.
It's the second of the two that presents an existential crisis to the United States’ democracy. Start jailing people who use politically crafted hoaxes to justify the curtailment of civil rights and you'll get somewhere.
House and Senate Democrats need to get their act together on this, and they needed to do it months ago. New Jim Crow laws ratcheting down on who can vote and how long it will take them to do it, especially given that the laws are being used as partisan tool by a now-fascist party that literally tried to overturn an election based on false pretenses rather than stomach handing the White House over to Not Incompetent Jackass Guy, represent a danger to democracy that cannot be f*cked around with.
The senators who believe the fake comity of the ever-changing filibuster to be of more import than a wave of laws looking to curb voting itself have their heads buried in the sand. Jan. 6 turned the issue of who gets to vote and who gets to count the votes into an existential question. Republicans aren't being shy in using false propaganda to damage the very premises of elections themselves; new laws in Texas and other hoax-embracing states are only the beginning.
The new law will "make it harder for cheaters to cast an illegal ballot," the Trump-backing goof told reporters, as reported by The Washington Post. This again ignores the plain truth of "illegal ballots," which is that the concerted efforts of every fascist-minded Republican in the nation haven't been able to ever identify more than a few such votes out of millions and millions cast—and of the illegal votes that were intentional, rather than the result of voter confusion or misinformation, most seem to revolve more around Republicans illegally voting on behalf of dead relatives or the like. There's been only one significant recent case of a coordinated, large-scale fraud meant to throw an election: North Carolina Republicans tried such a scheme in 2018. They got caught.
The law now faces many, many lawsuits, because limiting voting hours, forcing voters to jump through new documentation hoops, or otherwise limiting voter convenience in service to "fraud" claims that are provably false is egregiously crooked and everybody-but-everybody knows it. Reducing valid voting hours does exactly nothing to prevent fraud, even imaginary fraud. New Republican laws specifically targeting Sunday voter turnout efforts by Black churches isn't even vaguely connected to any supposed "fraud" case that's ever been found anywhere.
There is no non-trivial amount of voter "fraud" anywhere in the country. But there's an entire movement of fraud that uses faked data and absurd hoaxes to justify new restrictions, making it more difficult for working-class and poor voters to cast ballots against Republicans.
It's the second of the two that presents an existential crisis to the United States’ democracy. Start jailing people who use politically crafted hoaxes to justify the curtailment of civil rights and you'll get somewhere.
House and Senate Democrats need to get their act together on this, and they needed to do it months ago. New Jim Crow laws ratcheting down on who can vote and how long it will take them to do it, especially given that the laws are being used as partisan tool by a now-fascist party that literally tried to overturn an election based on false pretenses rather than stomach handing the White House over to Not Incompetent Jackass Guy, represent a danger to democracy that cannot be f*cked around with.
The senators who believe the fake comity of the ever-changing filibuster to be of more import than a wave of laws looking to curb voting itself have their heads buried in the sand. Jan. 6 turned the issue of who gets to vote and who gets to count the votes into an existential question. Republicans aren't being shy in using false propaganda to damage the very premises of elections themselves; new laws in Texas and other hoax-embracing states are only the beginning.