THE GOP'S SHAMEFUL WAR ON VOTERS.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: VOX POPULIST

As a general rule, I don't agree with Republican lawmakers, since they're generally wrong. But after looking into one of their main issues, I must agree: Our elections are being rigged.

Anyone who takes an honest look can see that the electoral process, all across the country, is being stolen in broad daylight--by Republican lawmakers. In state after state, GOP governors and legislators are on a rampage to rig the system so you can't vote.

By "you," I mean Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and most other voters of color. Also, seniors, union members, poor people, college students, immigrant families, and others with a tendency to vote for Democrats.

By fraudulently shouting that "you people" are engaged in massive, orchestrated campaigns to vote illegally, GOP officials insist that they must steal your democratic right to vote in order to protect the "sanctity" of the vote!

Bizarrely, they are actually confessing their own embarrassing weakness. In short, they are practically shouting: "We can't win!" The party's lineup of squirrely, increasingly kooky candidates and its anti-people, corporate-serving agenda have no ability to draw majority support. So, Republicans' only hope for getting elected is to jury-rig the U.S. electoral process with a slew of barriers, locks, red-tape, bans, and other gimmicks to shut millions of citizens out of their polling places.

Donald Trump's seven-million-vote defeat in last year's presidential race has spooked Republicans into a stampede of voter suppression initiatives in Congress, the courts, and state legislatures. The Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks such maneuvers, reports that, through mid-February, at least 253 bills had been introduced in forty-three states to further obstruct Americans from casting ballots.

The new schemes are aggressively repressive--preventing absentee voting, cutting early voting, eliminating mail-in voting, restricting the number and convenience of polling locations, and otherwise making it harder for people to vote. Some proposals target specific groups, such as by disallowing voting booths on college campuses and preventing early voting on Sundays (when many Black churches provide rides to the polls following services). And some are flagrantly autocratic, such as an Arizona bill allowing legislators to dismiss the voters' choice in presidential elections and name the winner themselves.

In February, Texas Senator Ted Cruz was roundly denounced for running off to a...