As expected, the Republican Party killed the fair election bill in the Senate. This allows Republican states to enact the scores of voting suppression laws they are enacting all around the country, including closing polling booths in black and brown areas, eliminating voting drop boxes for early voting, restricting mail in voting, etc. In other words, the Republicans in the South, and around the country, are doing what the Democrats in the South did during the Jim Crow era after 1876 – doing all they can to keep minorities from voting – i.e. white supremacy rule.
One of the reasons I left the Republican Party long ago was because of the voter ID laws they wanted. At the time, I thought voter IDs were a fine idea, what would be wrong with that? But, what I soon had to admit was that the Republicans did one thing – required voter IDs – and didn’t do what was necessary – political outreach to make voter IDs free and easy to get in areas (brown and black areas) where people didn’t have driver’s licenses. So I reluctantly saw that the Republicans were not concerned about voter fraud, but rather they were concerned about people of color voting at all.
Going forward, I am happy for voter ID requirements if and only if they are as free and easy to get as driver’s licenses. Meaning, government locations throughout minority, and poor white, communities where free IDs are easy to get.
The Republican Party has become the Jim Crow Party. They have to other way to cling to power, or at least that seems to be what they admit by their actions.
