You may think of Jeff Rasley as a travel writer and Himalayan trekking organizer. His last post for us-- over at our travel blog-- dealt with his cross-country drive through the American pandemic. Jeff describes himself as "an elderly white-male person, whose tongue is getting sore from pressing against his cheek (sort of)." But as a young attorney in a firm in Indianapolis, he was a supervisor of Mike Pence, when Pence was a summer legal intern with the firm. Rasley is the author of Polarized! The Case for Civility in the Time of Trump, and nine other books. His website is jeffreyrasley.com. Let’s Do Voter Suppression The Right Way! -by Jeff Rasley
"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." -Karl Rove
Republicans have routinely engaged in voter suppression efforts since the 2000 Bush v. Gore election. Rather than trying to attract black and brown people to vote Republican, the GOP has strategically reduced the political power of racial-minorities by reducing the number of eligible voters. Republicans have managed to swing several close elections their way. Rather than being outraged about the fundamental unfairness of their tactics and filing lawsuits, let’s turn the tables and suppress their votes. Let’s disenfranchise one of the pillars of the Trump base, elderly white people.During Jim Crow, southern segregationist-Democrats used literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise African-Americans. In the 21st Century, Republicans employ more sophisticated strategies to deny just enough votes of black and brown voters to tip certain elections in favor of Republican candidates. Gerrymandering, burdensome registration and ID requirements, throwing out votes by Republican Secretaries of State, and voter intimidation at polling places are the techniques employed by Republicans.The most recent ploy was the April 7, 2020 Wisconsin election. Governor Dan Evers ordered the election postponed out of concern for health risks to voters during the corona-virus pandemic. The Republican-dominated legislature and state Supreme Court over-turned the Governor’s order. But-- ha ha!-- it backfired. Democrats won most of the contested elections.The Democratic win in Wisconsin was, however, an anomaly. Despite the health risks, voter turnout was high; probably due to fury over Trump’s bungled response to the pandemic.Republican vote tampering in Florida (remember “hanging chads”) gave us W instead of Al Gore in 2000. Think how different the world would be, if Gore, not W, had been President. How many fewer Iraqis, Afghanis, and U.S. soldiers would have died? Would the Great Recession of 2008 been as bad?One of the most egregious examples since then was the Maryland gubernatorial election in 2010. Republican candidate Bob Ehrlich's campaign manager, Paul Schurick, was convicted of fraud and other charges. Republicans placed thousands of Election Day robo-calls to black Democratic voters telling them that the Democratic candidate had won, so they didn’t need to vote. The calls reached 112,000 voters in majority-African American areas.Former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach was repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas. In July 2016 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down North Carolina’s photo ID requirement, finding that the law targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision." In 2018, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp was also running as the Republican candidate for Governor. As Secretary of State, Kemp suspended the applications of 53,000 voters, most of whom were African Americans. Kemp also upheld strict voter registration deadlines, which prevented 87,000 Georgians from voting, because they missed the deadline.Those are just a few of the many times Republicans have suppressed minority-voter turnout in the last 20 years. (For a more complete list, check out Wikipedia’s entry on “Voter suppression in the United States.”) They will be up to their usual hijinks this fall to try to keep the Orange Clown in office. So, if you can’t beat them, join them.What I propose is a straight-forward approach to voter suppression. It is a return to what Democrats used in the segregated South during Jim Crow. It’s a voter intelligence test in the form of a three-part questionnaire.1. Were you unable to discern that Richard Nixon was a crook, and you voted for him in 1968 and again in 1972?2. When George W. Bush ran for a second term as President, did you still fail to realize he was incompetent to be President and you voted for him a second time?3. Did you vote for Donald Trump in 2016 because he appealed to you for any of the following reasons? a) He is a successful businessman and we need a brilliant business mind like his to run the country. b) He will drain the swamp and blow up the Washington political establishment. c) He will restore America’s greatness and regain the respect we lost under Obama’s weak leadership. d) No woman should ever be President. e) He was chosen by God to turn the country back to its divinely ordained Christian values.Under my proposed “voter discernment law,” anyone who answers affirmatively to the first question will be denied the right to vote, unless redeemed by negative answers to the second and third questions. Correcting that initial mistake would prove that “an old dog did learn a new trick.” But unredeemed Nixon voters would be scrubbed from the polls due to their stupidity. That would rid us of a large swath of elderly white people, which would likely guarantee that Trump will not be reelected.But to make sure of that result, anyone who voted for W a second time must be purged on the basis of a clear inability to discern incompetence. Younger or older voters, who voted for Trump in 2016 for any of the listed reasons-- maybe any reason-- should also be struck from voter rolls. Thus, anyone inclined to vote for future candidates, like crooked Nixons, incompetent Ws, or narcissic-fascistic-crooked-incompetent Trumps will be spared the trouble of casting a vote.The law will allow those failing the voter-intelligence test to vote in local elections. We’ll let these partially disenfranchised voters to screw up the communities where they live, and then have to live with the consequences. But they should never again be allowed to fuck up an entire state, let alone the whole country with their uncanny ability to make the worst choice on Election Day.Although voter suppression has a foul and dirty history, consider a brighter future in which the proposed voter-intelligence test will save the world from the disastrous consequences of electing the likes of the three afore-mentioned U.S. Presidents. At the very least, by culling these foolish voters the Republican Party might be goaded into nominating candidates worthy to serve as President of the United States.Now, if this voter-intelligence test offends your democratic principles, the author admonishes the reader (with tongue partly in cheek) to consider that: 1. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it; and the voting history of those who voted for all three of those historically bad presidents proves they lack capacity in discerning who is unworthy to become leader of the free world. 2. Whether it is insanity or stupidity, making the same mistake repeatedly is a really bad thing to do. Shouldn’t there be consequences?
