by Marshal Trigg
President Biden, Vice President Harris, and their allies on the activist left insist that voter suppression is running rampant in the United States. In fact, the opposite is happening.
DNC surrogates are fond of crying “voter suppression” wherever laws strengthen election security. Joe Biden infamously dubbed Georgia’s election integrity package — instituting such reforms as voter identification for absentee ballots and monitored drop boxes — as “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
Here are some examples of what the left says is the “new Jim Crow”:
- Citizenship verification laws, in a country with tens of millions of non-citizens residing permanently within its borders;
- Voter photo identification laws, in states that make qualifying identification widely available to every citizen at no charge;
- Laws prohibiting third-parties from filling out and mailing ballot applications to citizens, non-citizens, non-residents, the deceased, and even cats and dogs;
- Laws requiring applicants to personally sign their voter registration forms, or sign and date their absentee ballots, just like people sign and date myriad of other government forms.
We should never forget that Jim Crow 1.0 included such grave injustices as racially targeted violence and intimidation, as well as unlawful “literacy tests” which turned people away from the polls for failing such absurd tasks as having to guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap.
Comparing today’s election integrity measures to the horrors of the past isn’t even apples to oranges. It’s apples to outrageous.
Beyond the egregious analogy, the facts do not support the left’s voter suppression narrative. For one, while turnout fluctuates from election to election, it has been on a steady rise over the past 20 years. And in states like Georgia – ground zero for the suppression fabulists – voters of all types report that voting is easy and not at all a burdensome activity.
Recent court cases support these conclusions. Courts in Florida, Georgia, and Ohio examining drop box regulations, ballot harvesting rules, and voter photo ID requirements have searched high and low for suppressed votes, and found none.
So, what is really going on here? Well, money for one. The democracy-industrial complex is big business. It supports massive non-profits. Multimillion-dollar revenue law firms. And even whole bureaus at the nation’s leading media outlets. One Democratic insider recently confirmed that much of this lawfare purportedly about protecting the right to vote is little more than a “business strategy” designed to line the pockets of lawyers.
The other thing that’s going on is politics. The left long ago abandoned strategies that relied on motivating people to vote for a party’s ideas. That takes a lot of work. It is far easier – and more reliable – to rely on activists or state bureaucrats to secure political power. That is why the left wants third parties or the state to register you to vote. They want third parties or the state to fill out your ballot applications. They want third parties or the state to collect and submit your ballots for you. For the left, elections are not solemn, considered engagement between citizens and those who wish to lead them. They are about getting people to sign on the dotted line by any means necessary.
In an older time, those who campaigned against voter suppression aimed to enfranchise citizens who truly were sidelined. In an era of unprecedented suffrage, however, the new campaigners can identify almost no one who is locked out of the process. Of course, that hasn’t stopped them because ending voter suppression isn’t the point. The point is to harvest votes from otherwise unengaged citizens – and to make a buck or two along the way.
Marshal Trigg is a Junior Counsel for Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) and a Daily Caller Election Law Contributor.
Photo “Busy Polling Place” by Ben Schumin CC3.0
