Jim Crow in Georgia Tyrannizes Every American

 

When Georgia's governor, in a statement accompanying the signing of new voter suppression measures in that state, whined about the out-of-state money which might eventually be devoted to overturning the legislation, he clearly did not understand that his state's repressive measures impact every American, and not only Georgians.

 

And when attorneys for the state of Texas, while advocating in the courts on behalf of Donald Trump's malicious "stop the steal" campaign, argued that states which hold illegitimate elections are violating the rights of voters in states that conduct elections honestly, they were absolutely correct, and voters in California, New York, Massachusetts, and other states ought to wake up, at last, to this important fact.

 

The Texas argument failed in the courts, as it should have, because the state elections cited were not, in reality, illegitimate.  However, the principle that people in states with free and fair elections are in fact tyrannized by the unfair elections in other states, even those states which may be geographically remote from them, is a little-recognized truth which our devotion to so-called “federalism” (a.k.a. states rights) masks.

 

If I, as a citizen of the United States, end up being governed by politicians in the Congress and the White House whose racist views and economic theories are loathsome to me because voters who agree with me in far-away states are routinely suppressed and disenfranchised, am I not also oppressed, as well as are the more directly disenfranchised voters?

 

Whenever a federal office is involved, every state needs to be held to uniform election standards which ensure that every citizen has equal access to the polls and that elections are held in such a way that a paper trail allows the results to be transparently audited if challenges arise.   Proper distribution of polling places so that there are not long lines in some districts and short lines in others, and universal mail-in balloting and early voting would do a great deal to ensure fairness.

 

While the current chaotic system of election administration is only one of the many ways that democracy in the United States is routinely subverted, it is a significant one which demands immediate remedy – immediately, that is, before the Congressional elections of 2022.  And while we must stop the practice of routinely stealing elections through voter suppression, in the long run we must also address the undemocratic  Electoral College, the anti-democratic structure of the Senate and of its procedural rules, the gerrymandering of House districts, and the idiotic ideas that money is speech and that corporations are persons.