Voting Isn’t Just Another Political Issue
It’s fine to argue about election rules. But some recent Republican bills are simply a threat to democracy.
Some things are more important than others.
Photographer: Bryan Bedder/Getty
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National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar is confused:
Okay, let’s try to straighten him out, because I don’t think there’s any inconsistency — and it’s important to understand why.
What many businesses understand about the Republican state-level laws is the larger context, which is more or less a rejection of democracy. That’s not true of every provision of every bill; indeed, there are some portions of the recently passed law in Georgia that expand voting, and others that are reasonable good-government reforms. But overall, these bills can’t be understood without reference to Republican attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election and other recent efforts to overturn legitimate votes — indeed, Arizona Republicans are still, almost three months into Joe Biden’s presidency, trying to perform bogus audits of the vote there.
That’s why it’s reasonable to worry that future Republicans may — as Jonathan V. Last argues — simply throw out an election’s results and declare their candidate the winner. To think that’s a threat doesn’t require any exotic theory; all it takes is remembering what many Republicans, including the then-president, tried to do a few months ago, and realizing what would happen if the party was a bit more Trumpy, the laws a bit more favorable and key elected positions a bit more Republican.
All of which means that democracy could well be on the line in the fight over these bills.
Turning now to HR 1: The Democratic bill is a grab-bag of election reforms (see this summary from the Brennan Center; see also Matt Yglesias on the campaign-finance section). A lot of those provisions are very good. I’m a strong supporter of automatic voter registration, for instance, which would reduce unnecessary burdens that exist mainly to deter the “wrong” people from participation. But do I think that anyone who supports democracy must agree? No. The same with ensuring that former felons are enfranchised — I’m strongly in favor of it and find the arguments against it dubious, but I’ll admit it’s not make-or-break for democracy. Likewise with provisions on election administration and security.
Other provisions have even less consensus. I’ve been a backer of partial public financing of federal elections, but this is one where reasonable supporters of democracy can easily disagree. Similarly, I’m more inclined now than I used to be to remove elected officials from the job of drawing district lines. But anyone who says that current levels of gerrymandering make democracy impossible is pushing hype, not reality.
On balance, I think HR 1 is a good bill that would strengthen democracy. But many aspects of it can be argued either way. Overall, I just don’t see it as the kind of life-or-death issue that the state Republican bills, individually and collectively, really are.
We need to distinguish between things that any supporter of democracy should favor and those that are the basis for legitimate disagreement. Trumpy Republicanism and its various threats are simply not part of the normal ebb and flow of policy debate. That’s why I support Rick Hasen’s call for the Democrats to refocus their top election agenda on a new bill containing only the most urgent reforms — even though it would, unfortunately, leave out some of the items I like most.
1. Lindsay Chervinsky and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas on diversity in the cabinet over time.
2. Dalia Dassa Kaye at the Monkey Cage on Israel and Iran’s nuclear program.
3. Jonathan Cohn on the FDA pause.
4. Adam Serwer on the Republican attack on trans men and women.
5. Daniel Dale on how Republican-aligned media invented an insurrection in Iowa.
6. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Stephen Mihm on the Consumer Price Index.