Democracy’s Refugees: Offer Them Sanctuary

By Colleen O’Connor

What a time to be alive.  Wake up early and pay attention.

Tuesday offers all manner of news about chaos; pandemics, culture feuds, cyber-terrorism, domestic terrorism, racial and sexual cruelties, financial and food insecurities, raging fires, and devastating drought, alongside a couple billionaires blasting into space.

Forget the World Soccer Cup matches that unleashed hideous social network racism against Black players on England’s losing team; or the nail-biting (and history-making) Wimbledon finals or even the coming fan-less Tokyo Olympics.

The most riveting political spectacle (with massive consequences for the future of democracy) is Tuesday’s duel between Texas and Washington, D.C.

67 Democrats in the Texas legislature, flew to D.C. on Monday, and have temporarily deprived their Republican-controlled statehouse of the quorum needed to pass a regressive voter rights bill, and generated much needed publicity about the GOP’s voter nullification project.

Had the Democrats not flown to the nation’s capital, they would have been subject to arrest by Texas Rangers.

“This is a now-or-never for our democracy. We are holding the line in Texas,” said Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer. “We’ve left our jobs, we’ve left our families, we’ve left our homes. Because there is nothing more important than voting rights in America.”

And they intend to stay away for weeks or months to make their case for a federal voting rights bill.

This is the latest chapter in the longest-living feud in American history.  Also known as states’ rights v. federalism.  One enshrined in the U.S Constitution.

This country fought a Civil War to settle the issue, but it lives on. The federalist won, but the states’ righters now want to overturn those results with new Jim Crow laws.

Before 1800, local sheriffs controlled all county elections.  When, where, and whom to notify.  Registration was not required and voting was done orally.

Often, sheriffs would simply notify their preferred local landowner to bring his “guys” between a precisely given time.  Sometimes as short as an hour or two.  These “voters” would show up with their overseer, state their bosses’ preference, or (if illiterate) just mark “X” on the spot designated.

Then quickly, before the opposition could arrive, the sheriff would “close” the polls.  Efficient, corrupt, and common.

Elections have improved.

A series of changes to the election process in the late 1800s made it a more fair and complex undertaking, requiring voter registration, applications to vote, maintenance of voter rolls and eventually, the secret ballot.

Bigger changes arrived with Women’s Right to vote, and the far-reaching Voting Rights Act of 1965; protecting the rights of racial minorities.  Ironically, signed by the Texan President of the U.S., Lyndon B. Johnson.

Today, Joe Biden will probably wish he could build on LBJ’s legacy with a speech damning the new states’ right actions of GOP state houses and trying to guarantee federal standards for any American citizen wishing to vote in a “free and fair” election.

Currently, stuck in the Senate’s version of limbo.

Texas, by contrast, is fast joining the “Big Lie” crowd of 48 other states pushing 389 voter suppression bills to make votes vanish from the rolls; especially in heavily Democratic and minority populated counties and precincts.

According to the New York Times, the pending Texas legislation “is among the most expansive and sweeping efforts to restrict voting in a state that already ranks as one of the most difficult in the country to cast a ballot.”

It targets mail-in ballots, shortens hours and days for voting, restricts polling places (again, targeting Democratic and minority neighborhoods), and forbids food and/or water service to those in long lines.

Early attempts to stop “Souls to the Polls,” (in Georgia) where Sunday minority worshippers could congregate and accept rides to their polling places, is still alive.

Should those 67 fleeing Democrats become permanent refugees, offer them sanctuary.  Our fore bearers did as much and more to protect democracy.

Try to keep up and pay attention.  It is a great time to be alive.  Your country needs you, now more than ever.