Know Your Enemy
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Democracy and Its Discontents
🕑 Added 2021-04-14 00:26:24 +0000 UTCIn state legislatures across the country, Republicans are unleashing a fierce assault on voting rights. Hundreds of proposals aimed at restricting ballot access are being considered, and in a few states—most notably Georgia—have already become law. These obvious efforts at suppressing turnout have been justified by the deranged lie that Donald Trump had a landslide victory stole from him in November, along with the usual evidence-free worries about election integrity peddled by conservatives. Of course, the debates all this has generated have been remarkably unintelligent—just more fodder for the culture wars.
Matt and Sam breakdown where voting-rights bill have been passed, what provisions they include, and how it all fits into both the GOP's current strategy of minority rule and the right's longstanding suspicion of mass democracy.
Sources Cited and Further Reading:
Brennan Center for Justice, "Voting Laws Roundup," April 1, 2021
Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein, "What Georgia's Voting Law Really Does," New York Times, April 2, 2021
Ari Berman, "Republicans Say the Georgia Law Wasn’t Designed to Suppress Voting. Don’t Believe Them," Mother Jones, April 8, 2021
Ari Berman, "361 Voter Suppression Bills Have Already Been Introduced This Year," Mother Jones, April 1, 2021
Daniel Dale, "Fact Check: Biden and Kemp Misleadingly Describe Parts of Georgia Elections Law," CNN, April 2, 2021
Daniel Dale, "Fact Check: Republicans Falsely Equate Georgia and Colorado Election Laws," CNN, April 7, 2021
Michael Wines, "In Statehouses, Stolen-Election Myth Fuels a G.O.P. Drive to Rewrite Rules," New York Times, February 27, 2021
Glenn Ellmers, "'Conservatism' Is No Longer Enough," The American Mind, March 24, 2021
William F. Buckley, Jr., "Why the South Must Prevail," National Review, August 24, 1957
Kevin Williamson, "Why Not Fewer Voters?" National Review, April 6, 2021
Comments
Andrew McMahon
James MacGregor Burns had it right in '68. He couldn't have been more right. He said of the U.S. electoral process: "It's a game of Russian roulette, and one of these days we are going to blow our brains out."
Nora
Just anecdotally, I knocked doors in Gwinnett County for the January run-off supporting Warnock and Ossof with my union. I was chased off of my turf by white people twice, and had the cops called on me on Election Day. The neighborhood-level anti-democratic behavior was palpable.
Terence
Love that you teased a Baseball and Conservatism episode at the end there. Obligatory request to book the great David Roth if he's willing!
