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Op-Ed: The Left won’t stop until all protections on voting are removed

[The Center Square]

Michael O’Neill | Landmark Legal Foundation

Democrats in Texas have fled the state to avoid voting on legislation that will ensure the integrity of the ballot box. Listening to them, you would think they are fighting against literacy tests or property ownership requirements. President Joe Biden’s spokesperson claims that states’ efforts to pass common sense voter protections such as requiring identification to obtain an absentee ballot is “the worst challenge to our democracy since the civil war.”

The Left knows they are losing on this issue and have resorted to hysterical rhetoric and temper tantrums. On the last day of its term, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the rights of states to guarantee that their voting processes are safe and fair. Last month, Republicans in the Senate blocked efforts to federalize the entire electoral process. And polls show most Americans support the Republican view.

The President should answer a simple question, “what laws should exist to protect the vote?” He won’t answer because he and all of the Left want open voting to establish permanent one-party rule. It doesn’t matter to them whether a state’s voter rolls are filled with dead people, noncitizens, or individuals who have moved away. Under the Democrats' plans, no steps can be taken to identify and remove these names.
 


Vice President Kamala Harris’s condescending comments that rural voters can’t make photocopies show how out of touch she and her party are with average Americans. They think we don’t know how to operate a copy machine. They think we don’t know how to send a piece of mail.


They will never stop until all protections on voting are gone. This means lowering the voting age to 16. It means automatic voter registration for everyone including noncitizens. It means sending absentee ballots with return postage prepaid to every name on a voting roll – no matter whether the individual has requested it. It means mobilizing radical groups to descend upon nursing homes and long-term care facilities with blank ballots to push elderly and vulnerable residents to vote a certain way. And it means setting up fly-by-night voter mobilization entities that bribe people to vote for designated candidates.

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America has made incredible progress in eliminating terrible Jim Crow era laws that suppressed the sacred right to vote. Voting today is more accessible than ever. Many of the new laws opposed by Democrats expand voting. In 2018, in Georgia for example, most individuals could not vote by mail. In 2021, those limitations have been removed. Democrats have however been so radicalized that any protections are verboten and will immediately be designated as Jim Crow 2.0.

But the radical Left’s hyperbole serves several purposes. First, it seeks to intimidate those who favor reasonable voting protections. Calling someone a racist in 2021 is the quickest way to silence him or her. Second, it paints an easy picture. Those who aren’t paying attention can be swayed by headlines and compliant media are happy to label voter security advocates as racists.

Most Americans are waking up. They understand how important voting is and they understand the need for protections. As liberals continue to lose in courtrooms, in state legislatures and in the public arena, expect their screaming and whining to increase.

Michael O’Neill is the assistant general counsel at Landmark Legal Foundation

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