Where civil rights go, so goes our great experiment.
Two stories are converging right now that will serve to either recover a democracy on the ropes or send it to the dust bin of history. “The Big Lie” of voter fraud being impactful in the 2020 Presidential election has led 40 state legislatures to introduce laws to restrict voting rights for their people. No evidence has been presented to suggest voter fraud was a legitimate concern, none of the bills are addressing real threats to the integrity of the vote. They are a desperate attempt to maintain political power in the face of dwindling support, a way of winning while losing. Nothing more.
Georgia is the first state to succeed in disenfranchising their own population. Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill on the same day that it was passed by both the Georgia House and Senate. Potentially a world legislative speed record. It is a grotesque assault on the people of Georgia and the United States of America. It is important to understand that this bill is an exact reflection of the types of absurdities passed under Jim Crow, and that it is only possible because of a disastrous Supreme Court decision rescinding parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, struck down along strict party lines. Let’s look at the lowlights of the bill.
Over one million mail-in votes were cast in Georgia in 2020, and Trump lost the state, so that was the first point of attack for the bill. The time available to request a mail-in ballot has been cut in half by the new bill from 180 days prior to the election to 11 weeks or 77 days. Georgians will also have less time to send it back in time. Previously the ballot needed to be post-marked by the Friday before the election. That has been moved back by two weeks, ostensibly to make sure all ballots arrive before election day. The GOP is characterizing this as reducing the number of votes rejected for being late. Previously the postmark determined this, regardless of when it arrived. Do the math. You can request a ballot 77 days before the election and then have 59 days from the time of your request to mail your ballot. This will include the time necessary to wait for the state to respond to your request by mailing you your ballot, a time frame that the state will control, not the voter. They will send out ballots starting four weeks before the election. That is ten days before they have to be postmarked for return. That ten days includes the time it takes Louis DeJoy’s USPS to deliver the ballot to the voter.
Your registration will no longer suffice for a mail-in ballot to be blessed. A State I.D. number or Drivers License number will be required or some other photocopy of an acceptable voter I.D. An oath will have to be signed with legal ramifications that all information provided is accurate. In the past your signature was verified with what was already on file. No credible indication of voter fraud has made these new measures necessary.
Third parties can send out applications unsolicited, but must identify the applications as not a ballot or a government publication and clearly state who is sending this application. But the hidden “gotcha” in the bill is third parties are not allowed to send out applications to people who have already requested one from the state, and face penalties if they duplicate an application. It is not clear how a third party would know if someone had already made a request for a mail-in ballot, so the risk is intended to minimize the third party solicitations.
Another feature of the bill replaces the Secretary of State as the chair of the State Election Board with an official appointed by a majority of the state House and Senate. If they are not in session the chair is appointed by the Governor. New powers to intervene if the Board determines a county Board to be “underperforming” have been established. The State Board consists of the appointed Chair, one member selected by the House and one by the Senate and one each selected by the each of the parties. In a state government dominated by one party this would prove to create a Board with a 4-1 partisan advantage. Conveniently that describes Georgia’s current political make-up perfectly. The Board will now have the power to suspend an “underperforming” county board and replace them with a single individual for no less than nine months.
Watch out Fulton County.
Food and water distribution for people waiting in polling lines has also been restricted, making it a chargeable offense if offered within 150 feet of the front of the line. Food and water. For human beings.
Early voting has also been affected. Polling places can be open as long as 7am to 7pm but don’t have to be, the minimum being 9am to 5pm, most businesses normal work hours. An additional Saturday has been made mandatory, but Sundays are officially codified as optional. This is a direct assault on the faith based “Souls to the Polls” tradition that has become enormously popular in the black churches, shuttling churchgoers to polling places after services.
These are some of the more egregious elements of the worst voter suppression law passed since the 1960’s. Thirty-nine states are yet to be heard from.
The counteracting force is the bill that passed the U.S House of Representatives, H.R.1, that seeks to protect the voting rights and opportunities for all Americans. It’s passage was a forgone conclusion, as the House is not burdened by the filibuster. It is fairly clear that the Senate will kill it in its tracks without some kind of filibuster reform, and it is just as unclear if the Democrats have the political will, or the votes, to make the necessary reforms.
The hidden weaknesses of the Great Experiment are being revealed, and it is entirely possible that those weaknesses could prove fatal to the Republic. No less is at stake. Everything is in the balance right now.
The second news front is the the start of the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. A CNN story made the case that it is Chauvin that is on trial and not the criminal justice system, but that is yet to be seen. The trial itself will determine if the true faith of the public will be invested in our blind Lady Justice or not.
This is not to say that the outcome is predetermined or that a vigorous defense is not expected. Those things will be part of our judgment of the system. The details of the weeks required for jury selection will be judged. The credibility of the defenses mitigating arguments will be judged. All of it will be, as the trial will be televised in its entirety. There will be nothing left to speculate about as there will be daily recaps of the trials highlights, albeit flavored by the news source one harvests the information from.
The trial opened with a viewing of the death of George Floyd. This was essentially the opening statement by the prosecution, adding that the jury’s eyes were not lying to them. The defense introduced the direction of their argument, which was a cornucopia of reasons for Floyd’s death other than Chauvin’s knee. The sides are engaged, and Chauvin is indeed on trial, but every element of our justice system is on trial as well. The outcome of that trial within the trial is another existential threat to America itself. It is critical that this intensely scrutinized legal drama come to a conclusion that is as devoid of doubt as these things can possibly be. The result needs to be one that we can all embrace as just, regardless of how it plays out. We need to believe this to be the only conclusion possible, that the jury had no choice but to make the determination they made.
As critical as all of this is to every American, ultimately it is the American person of color that is really on trial in both stories. The final elevation of persecuted people to a level playing field in a country that has been fighting forces of white privilege that become more creative with each defeat is the defining battle for our experiment. Civil rights are the critical element of a system intended for a people “Created Equal”. The idea has never been embraced in the United States. It was compromised at its inception with the characterization of Africans as partial humans within our founding documents and has been held at bay in a myriad of strategies, from brutalization to legislative craft. Black people have been targeted, but so have the Chinese, the Japanese, women and people with diverse sexual identities. It is a compelling motto that has had all the credible weight of the 1946 cigarette ad campaign “More Doctors recommend Camels”. Like it, the lie had a deadly result, allowing people to ignore the obvious.
Civil rights are black rights, Asian rights, immigrant rights, religious rights, gay rights, transgender rights and your rights if you are none of the above. It is the idea that the law is for the people, it is of them by representing their aspirations, and it is by them by making government accessible to everyone. The poor are represented with the same vigor as the rich. If the country has never been the melting pot that has always been imagined, it at least is a delicious stew, full of unique identifiable parts but sharing their flavorings with each other and making a greater thing than its parts. The rights are not reserved for a special class or privileged few, heirs to a self-proclaimed legitimacy. Those same rights confer to the Afghanistan refugee that swears allegiance as they embrace their new citizenship and to the immigrant who has not yet arrived. They are the property of the disenfranchised and the simply average, not a plaything of the “exceptional” who would seek to confine them to those deemed worthy.
Civil rights are the very thing an American needs to fight for. Without them we are the vaccine that doesn’t work, the anticipated cure that fails in its attempt to confront a fatal disease.
The trials have begun.
Will the United States fall victim to a placebo?