VOTER SUPPRESSION, IN THEIR OWN WORDS.

• Author: Bybee, Roger

The Republican Party's contempt for democracy could not be more obvious. Its leaders have often been frank about their desire to subvert majority rule and tilt the electoral field toward long-term Republican rule.

Here's a sampling of some of the anti-democratic views that have been simmering within the upper reaches of the Republican Party--even before Donald Trump became President:

"The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for."

--Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, interview with The New York Times, June 14, 2021. Paul also tweeted, on December 27, 2021, that Democrats were seeking "to steal an election" by "targeting and convincing potential voters to complete [absentee ballots] in a legally valid way."

This law [the North Carolina voter ID requirement since struck down in court] is going to kick the Democrats in the butt... If it hurts a bunch of lazy Blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.

--Don Yelton, local Republican leader, in an interview aired on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, October 23, 2013. He was forced to resign later that same week.

Now many of our Christians... want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

--Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, in a 1980 speech.

Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

--Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, tweet, October 8, 2020.

"I'm concerned about voter registration in Mississippi. The Blacks are having lots [of] events for voter registration. People in Mississippi have to get involved, too."

--Jones County election commissioner Gail Welch's Facebook post, reported by the Clarion-Ledger, June 30, 2020. She was...