The bitter battle between Democrats and Republicans over the fight for the right to vote for ALL Americans has kicked into high gear. If you’re unaware of what’s really going on, read on…
Politics
Huge Democratic victories in the November 2020 election caused a conniption fit within conservative circles. More specifically, Republicans are deeply concerned and downright mad over the fact that the State of Georgia handily elected Joe Biden to the presidency, then sent a Black preacher and a Jewish documentary producer to represent them in the US Senate.
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Interestingly, Republicans know exactly what happened. With the help of Stacey Abrams, Black voters in Georgia turned out to vote in record numbers unlike anything ever seen in modern state history. Or, to put it more bluntly, Black folks voted in numbers that were unexpected and totally crushed the white vote.
Now, Republicans are doing everything within their power to prevent that from EVER happening again — and Democrats are fighting back.
For 15 years, Georgia has permitted voters to cast an absentee ballot for any reason whatsoever and without excuses. However, now that it appears Black voters have decided to use the rule, it’s miraculously time for a change.
On Monday, the Republican-controlled Georgia Senate passed a bill that will make it harder for voters (read: BLACK and BROWN voters) to cast a ballot in the state. The new bill will suddenly restrict mail-in voting by the elderly, the disabled, and anyone who claims they will be out of town on Election Day.
The bill was championed by supporters of Donald Trump, who is still reeling over the fact that he lost the State of Georgia and the election. Now the ReTRUMPlicans want to change the laws and affect the right to vote (for minorities).
“It’s pathetically obvious to anyone paying attention that when Trump lost the election and Georgia flipped control of the US Senate to Democrats shortly after, Republicans got the message that they were in a political death spiral,” Democratic state Rep. Renitta Shannon said last week. “And now they are doing anything they can do to silence the voices of Black and brown voters specifically because they largely powered these wins.”
Republicans are so afraid that Georgia, Arizona, and Texas could permanently turn Blue (read: BLACK), that they have introduced more than 100 bills across 28 states in order to make the right to vote harder and their path to victory a bit easier. In fact, conservatives fear that unless they “doctor” the rules, they’ll never win another national election again.
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“People are planting the seeds, laying the groundwork, and then saying, ‘Look, people are fearing exactly what I told them to fear’ even though there’s no evidence or basis for it.” Eliza Sweren-Becker, The Brennan Center
However, President Biden is having none of it and has signed an executive order to make the right to vote easier instead of harder.
In a speech Sunday for the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast which marked the 56th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama (an event that turned voting rights into a national cause), Mr. Biden directed all federal agencies within the US government to do all they can to encourage Americans to go to the polls and to make voting easier.
“The legacy of the march in Selma is that while nothing can stop a free people from exercising their most sacred power as citizens, there are those who will do everything they can to take that power away,” Mr. Biden said. “Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted. If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let more people vote,” he added.
And so, the battle is set. Republicans are attempting to cook the books state by state to stop Black and Brown voters from making the GOP obsolete, while President Biden and the Democrats are using the power of the presidency to undo the conservative scheme.
Make no mistake, the right to vote is under siege. We must do all we can to retain our right and to prevent it from being stolen away from us by using that right in EVERY election no matter what.
CNN: Georgia Republicans have advanced a sweeping bill in the state Senate that further restricts voting — keeping a state that was pivotal to the 2020 elections at the forefront of the GOP backlash against expanded voting. The expansive package, which passed by a narrow margin Monday, would repeal no-excuse absentee voting for many Georgians — a method 1.3 million of the state’s residents used to cast ballots in last November’s general election. The measure now moves to the Georgia House, which has passed its own slate of proposed voting restrictions. The developments in Georgia come amid a flurry of activity around the country by Republican-controlled legislatures to make it harder to vote after the GOP lost the presidency and the US Senate majority in the 2020 elections. On Monday, Iowa became one of the first states to enact new restrictions as the Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new… Read more »