Former President Barack Obama was wrong to wait until his 2nd term to attempt immigration reform. President Joe Biden is wrong now because he is attempting immigration reform too soon in his 1st term.
Barack Obama made the huge mistake of not attempting immigration reform during his 1st term as President when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. President Biden provided proof last week that he learned from Obama’s mistake, by launching his own attempt at immigration reform while Democrats are in control of both the House and Senate. Unfortunately for both American democracy and immigration reform, President Biden might have over-learned from Barack Obama’s mistake.
President Biden is right to honor his campaign pledge to make immigration reform a 1st term priority and he is doubly right to attempt immigration reform while Democrats control both houses of Congress. But President Biden is wrong to attempt immigration reform before he honors another campaign pledge he made just as emphatically as his immigration reform pledge. This pledge like immigration reform can only be accomplished while Democrats control both houses of Congress. Unlike immigration reform failure to honor this pledge could make all other pledges honored by President Biden null and void.
After the Covid-19 virus relief legislation, President Biden’s next priority must be to restore the Voting Rights Act, specifically the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, not immigration reform. Because the Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of the American Civil Rights Movement, the fact that it has been renamed after John Lewis who co-led the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King Jr., and since American Blacks were the first and most loyal citizens to support Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Some might argue that President Biden owes it to American Blacks that the Voting Rights Act be his next priority after virus relief and not immigration reform.
By his own admission, Joe Biden does owe his presidency to American Blacks but this is not why restoring the Voting Rights Act has to be his next priority. Restoring the Voting Rights Act has to be his next priority in order to save American democracy. The Voting Rights Act is not an American Black law and while immigration reform is a must the viability of American democracy does not depend on it becoming law. The Voting Rights Act is the law that guaranteed and protected all Americans, both black and white, right to cast a vote and have their voice heard in decisions that affect their lives.
The fierce urgency of restoring the Voting Rights Act immediately after the Covid-19 virus relief law is because as the Brennan Center for Justice has noted, in the 3 short months since the November 2020 elections 165 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 33 states this year already!!! 2 weeks ago Iowa Republicans introduced a sweeping voter suppression bill cutting early voting and restricting mail-in voting, and Florida Republicans introduced a bill that would end the long-standing practice of automatically sending mail-in ballots to voters who regularly vote by mail.
In Georgia where a lengthy hand recount of every one of the 4 million ballots cast found no vote fraud, a bill was introduced in the Republican-controlled House to significantly change voting procedures by limiting the weekend early-voting period to only one weekend before the election, its specifically aimed at eliminating early voting on multiple Sundays, when Black churches traditionally hold “Souls to the Polls” get-out-the-vote drives. And last week the Republican-controlled Georgia Senate passed a law requiring additional ID when requesting an absentee ballot, currently all that’s required is the signature of the voter which is matched to one already on file.
2 additional vote suppression bills have been introduced in the Georgia Senate:
SB 68 would ban the future use of the secure 24/7 monitored drop boxes for returning absentee ballots. State elections officials implemented their use in the 2020 elections because the coronavirus pandemic forced many counties to operate fewer polling places with fewer workers and fewer machines.
SB 69 would get rid of automatic voter registration, also known as the “Motor Voter Law,” that updates or creates a voter registration application any time someone interacts with the Department of Driver Services (DDS). Georgia Republicans want to eliminate the “Motor Voter Law” even though according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office last fall more than 5 million of the state’s 7.7 million voters were registered through DDS.
Unfortunately the U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to vote suppression in 2013 when it gutted the enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act
In Arizona, Republicans aren’t satisfied with mere vote suppression. A state representative, whose husband is a current justice on the Arizona Supreme Court, has introduced a bill that would allow the Arizona Legislature to overturn the vote results of a presidential election, even if the votes of Arizona citizens have been formally certified as legal and correct by the governor and secretary of state. The new law would accomplish this by allowing the Arizona legislature to substitute the presidential electors citizens voted for with its own chosen set of electors, who would then vote for President based on the choice of the state legislature and not the will of the Arizona voters.
And in Pennsylvania Republicans have blown way past vote suppression and overturning the results of a 1 person 1 vote election, to gerrymandering the Pennsylvania legal system. Pennsylvania Republican attempts to overturn the 2020 vote for Joe Biden were so outrageous that Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David N. Wecht ruled: “It is not our role to lend legitimacy to such transparent and untimely efforts to subvert the will of Pennsylvania voters, courts should not decide elections when the will of the voters is clear.”
The unanimous decision by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court not to subvert 1 person 1 vote democracy, made Pennsylvania Republicans madder than they were over Donald Trump’s election loss. As a result, Pennsylvania Republicans are now proposing to change the way state Supreme Court justices are elected. Currently, each justice is elected state-wide. Republicans want to change that to each justice being elected by individual districts. State-districts that would be drawn and gerrymandered by a Republican-controlled legislature to advantage conservative voters, with the intent of changing the current slate of justices that uphold the rule of Pennsylvania constitutional law to a slate of justices that will uphold the rule of Trumpology.
These vote theft and Trumpology attempts, along with the other 100-plus anti-democracy initiatives taking place in 33 Republican-controlled states in the 3 months since the 2020 election, are missile strikes against democracy that culminated in the January 6th full frontal assault and fortunately failed attempt to overthrow a democratic 1 person 1 vote election. It’s proof that most Republicans in any American state north, south, east, or west cannot be trusted to do the democratic thing because they are more committed to Trumpocracy than democracy.
More importantly, it’s proof positive that after virus relief President Biden’s priority must be to restore the Voting Rights Act, not immigration reform. And because Republicans east, west, north, and south have shown they are more committed to Trumpocracy than democracy, the pre-clearance enforcement in a restored Voting Rights Act should apply to all 50 states and not just the southern states it traditionally applied to.
There is another democracy-saving reason a restored Voting Rights Act must come before immigration reform, the upcoming release of U.S. Census figures, and the mandatory redrawing of all election district lines throughout the United States. Trusting Republican-controlled states anywhere in America to fairly draw new election districts without a restored Voting Rights Act in place, is like trusting Bernie Madoff to invest your money.
These words are just as true today as they were 60 years ago when former President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Right Act into law
In the last 5 years there have been the following 7 confirmed cases of vote fraud in all of America:
- Terri Lynn Rote, a 55-year-old registered Republican Des Moines, Iowa resident, was arrested in 2016 for attempting to vote twice for Donald Trump.
- Phillip Cook Jr., a 62-year-old Richmond, Texas resident who claimed he worked for Donald Trump was also arrested in 2016 for trying to vote twice
- Audrey Cook is a Republican election judge in Illinois. She and her husband applied for absentee ballots because he was ill. He died before completing his, so she filled it out for him and sent it in.
- Gladys Coego was hired to open absentee ballots in Miami-Dade County. One of her co-workers noticed that she was going a step further, she was caught in the act of filling in the bubble for a mayoral candidate with a pen she had in her purse.
- 3 of the vote fraud and vote theft attempts are tied to two North Carolina counties and one Republican operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless, the vote fraud and theft was so egregious the State Board of Elections decided not to certify the election for the state’s 9th Congressional District, because of “claims of irregularities and fraudulent activities.”
1) More than 40 percent of the ballots requested by African Americans and more than 60 percent of those requested by American Indians, did not make it back to elections officials because of possible theft. For white voters, that figure was just 17 percent.
2) A third party collecting absentee ballots is illegal. A woman, Emma Shipman, stated in a sworn affidavit that she was visited by a person who claimed to be a government official gathering absentee ballots. Shipman filled out the ballot while the woman waited outside. According to Shipman the woman “took the ballot and put it in an envelope and never sealed it (another illegal act) or asked me to sign it. Then she left.”
3) Typically, there are a wide variety of witnesses who sign absentee ballots because the witnesses are usually relatives or close friends of the absentee voter, but in the case of Bladen County absentee ballots, there is a small group of people who individually signed more than 40 absentee ballots.
All 7 of these vote theft and fraud crimes have 1 thing in common, they were all committed by Republicans for Republicans. These 7 instances of vote crime, the 147 Republican Senators and Congresspersons who voted not to certify the 2020 presidential election, and the 165 vote suppression laws currently being introduced in 33 Republican-controlled states lead to an inescapable conclusion. Republicans are willing to lie, steal, and cheat and so, therefore, cannot be trusted to uphold or abide by principles or laws of 1 person 1 vote American democracy.
The ultimate prevention to the subversion of democracy is the voice and the will of the American people expressed through their God-given and constitutional right to vote.
Restoration of the Voting Rights Act should have happened yesterday so now it must happen today not immigration reform. Failure to do so will mean immigration reform, the soon-to-be laws to fight the coronavirus war, and the America we know today will all crumble to dust as American democracy transforms into American Trumpocracy!!!