The Observer - 11.08.2019

• The Observer
  11.08.19 21

ing Barack Obama, the Republican

National Committee commissioned

a so-called “autopsy report” that pre-

dicted doom if the party couldn’t right

itself: “America is changing demo-

graphically, and unless Republicans

are able to grow our appeal the way

GOP [Grand Old Party] governors

have done, the changes tilt the play-

ing fi eld even more in the Democratic

direction. If we want ethnic minor-

ity voters to support Republicans, we

have to engage them and show our

sincerity.”

T

hat hasn’t happened.

Instead of trying to

peel off voters who

typically side with

Democrats – women,

minorities, moderates

• the Republicans have aggressively
  focused on making sure people who
  aren’t likely to vote for them don’t vote
  at all. In the US, voter suppression –
  the act of denying the vote to minor-
  ity and poor communities who are
  likely to be Democratic supporters –
  is thriving.
  In the past decade 33 million peo-
  ple have been purged from voter rolls


• predominantly in districts with
  large percentages of non-white vot-
  ers. In 2013 the Supreme Court gut-
  ted the voting rights act. The state of
  North Carolina passed voter suppres-
  sion laws so fl agrant that the federal
  court said they targeted black voters
  with “almost surgical precision”.

In an excoriating dissenting opin-

ion, liberal supreme court justices

including Elena Kagan accused the

court’s majority of shirking its con-

stitutional duty. “The partisan gerry-

manders in these cases deprived

citizens of the most fundamental of

their constitutional rights: the right

to participate equally in the political

process, to join with others to advance

political beliefs, and to choose their

political representatives.

“The partisan gerrymanders

here debased and dishonoured our

democracy, turning upside-down the

core American idea that all govern-

mental power derives from the peo-

ple. If left unchecked, gerrymanders

like the ones here may irreparably

damage our system of government.

“Of all times to abandon the court’s

duty to declare the law, this was not

the one.”

Even in terms of raw numbers, the

Republicans are at a disadvantage.

There are 12 million more registered

Democrats than Republicans in the

United States, but Republican control

of the federal government is almost

absolute.

In part that’s because institu-

tions like the Electoral College and

the Senate itself are wildly undem-

ocratic – in the sense that both are

structured so that one party can claim

victory without actually receiving the

most votes. In 2016 Democratic sen-

ators won six million votes more than

Republican ones, yet the Republicans

fi rmly held their majority.

The Senate distributes two seats

per state, meaning that states with

huge multiracial populations and

more Democratic voters (California,

Texas, New York) get exactly the

same representation as those popu-

lated by older – and often Republican

• whites. As Jamelle Bouie noted in
  the New York Times: “Today the larg-
  est state is California, with nearly
  40 million residents, and the smallest

is Wyoming, with just under 600,000

people, a disparity that gives a per-

son in Wyoming 67 times the voting

power of one in California.

“As it stands now, the Senate is

highly undemocratic and strikingly

unrepresentative, with an affl uent

membership composed mostly of

white men, who are about 30% of the

population but hold 71 of the seats.”

While elected offi cials can – in the-

ory, and with ever-greater diffi culty –

be voted out of offi ce, that is not the

case for the justices on the Supreme

Court, who wield extraordinary

power. Trump has so far appointed

two Supreme Court justices.

Ian Samuel , a law professor,

explained, in relation to Neil Gorsuch ’s

confi rmation to the Supreme Court –

Trump’s fi rst appointment – that it

was the fi rst time “a president who

lost the popular vote had a Supreme

Court nominee confi rmed by sena-

tors who received fewer votes – nearly

22 million fewer – than the senators

that voted against him.”

For his second pick, Brett

Kavanaugh , Trump’s choice to replace

the moderate Anthony Kennedy, the

senators who voted against him

represented 38 million more peo-

ple than the ones who voted to con-

fi rm. With the judiciary stocked with

partisans, Republicans can hang on

to their minority rule even if they

lose Congress and the White House

because any efforts to undo their

work will be met with resistance in

the courts.

In many ways the Republican

party has been preparing for minor-

ity rule for years now. The anxiety that

drove the killer in El Paso, as well as

every other white supremacist mass

killer in recent years, has motivated

Republican politicians to steadily

demonise and disenfranchise popu-

lations that don’t vote for them. This

process long predates Trump, but he’s

removed both the mask and the leash.

LEFT

Protesters in

El Paso staged a

rally last week

against Trump’s

visit to the city in

the wake of the

murders. Reuters

ABOVE

Neo-Nazi blogger

Andrew Anglin

and, right,

Renaud Camus,

who coined the

term the ‘great

replacement’.

AP

Last year voters in Florida over-

whelmingly chose to re-enfranchise

1.5 million people with felony convic-

tions. After the vote the state legisla-

ture chose to add a requirement that

none of those ex-felons could vote

until they repa id all court fees, effec-

tively bringing back the poll tax which

restricted voting among minority

groups for decades.

Carole Anderson , academic and

author of last year’s One Person, No

Vote and a leading fi gure in the fi ght

against voter suppression, wrote in

the Guardian last week about the 33

million Americans purged from the

voting rolls.

“To put this in perspective, that is

the equivalent of the combined popu-

lations of New York City, Los Angeles,

Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia,

San Antonio, San Diego, Phoenix

and Dallas, as well as the states of

Wyoming, South Dakota , Nebraska ,

Iowa and Idaho. Not surprisingly,

these massive removals are concen-

trated in precincts that tend to have

higher minority populations and vote

Democratic. Similarly, other voter

suppression techniques, such as poll

closures , deliberate long lines on elec-

tion day, voter ID laws and extreme

partisan gerrymandering all weigh

disproportionately on minorities and

urban areas.”

Voter suppression isn’t necessarily

a new tactic. In a 1980 speech to fel-

low conservatives , Paul Weyrich , one

of the men who helped found arch-

conservative institutions including

the American Legislative Exchange

Council, the Moral Majority, and the

Heritage Foundation , said: “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.”

What’s changed is the demographic

projections. And if Republicans can’t

compete in the new electoral land-

scape, then it’s in their best interest to

freeze the offi cial electorate in place.

One way to achieve this is parti-

san gerrymandering, redrawing vot-

ing districts so that they’re easier for

Republicans to win. Incredibly, the

Supreme Court in June ruled that

federal courts were powerless to hear

challenges to partisan gerryman-

dering – even in a case in which the

party that controls the state legisla-

ture draws voting maps to explicitly

elect its candidates.

‘If we don’t defend

western civilisation

we will become

subjugated by the

enemies of faith’

Congressman Steve King
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