Though Joe Biden won the
popular vote by more than seven million ballots in 2020, his electoral college
victory over Donald Trump was very slim—fewer than 43,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and
Wisconsin separated the candidates. Biden’s win was helped by unusually high turnout,
fueled largely by expanded mail voting.
There was no
evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020, but Republicans in
state governments have used Trump’s “Big Lie” narrative as a
cover to try to transfer election oversight from bipartisan boards to
partisan Republican officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and Georgia. If successful, these moves could allow Republicans
to refuse to certify
presidential election results they don’t like, leading to a constitutional
crisis.
But the GOP could
avoid a messy public fight by suppressing Democratic turnout in
key states to such an extent that it
would be virtually impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the electoral
college. Prevailing at the ballot box (by any means necessary) could give the
Republican candidate a patina of legitimacy among a critical mass of the
American public and press, ending democracy with a whimper, rather than a bang.
To this end,
Republican legislatures have muscled through dozens of voter suppression bills
on party-line votes. Senate bill 1 in Texas received a lot of media
attention, but Democrats haven’t won Texas since 1976. The 2024 presidential
race will likely be decided in the five states which flipped from Donald Trump
in 2016 to Joe Biden in 2020. The GOP would need to win three of these states
to regain the White House. They could be well on their way.
Last year, the
Georgia legislature passed Senate bill 202 (SB 202), also known as “The
Election Integrity Act of 2021.” SB 202 bans
public officials from sending out unsolicited absentee ballots, reduces the
window of time allowed to request or return absentee ballots, and increases ID
requirements for absentee ballots. SB 202 also limits the number of
absentee-ballot drop boxes and the hours drop boxes are available.
These changes
will disproportionately harm Democrats in a state where Biden received 65% of the absentee vote. The omnibus
bill will have an especially adverse effect on Black and Latinx voters, who
wait around 45% longer to vote in person and
have faced notoriously long lines in Georgia.
Arizona’s
legislature passed SB 1485, which purges infrequent
voters from the early voting list, and SB 1003, which limits the amount of time
voters have to fix unsigned absentee ballots. Both bills will likely have an inordinate impact on
voters of color. If historical patterns hold,
and Arizona Republicans expand their majorities in the 2022 midterms, they
might be able to pass other laws which restrict the franchise, including HB 2793, which prohibits automatic voter
registration.
Taken
together, these bills could tip the balance in a state Biden won by only 10,543 votes, where nearly 90% voted by mail in 2020 and 75% are registered on permanent early
voting lists.
If the
GOP legislation works as designed, Arizona and Georgia—the two tightest
contests in 2020—may effectively be gerrymandered in the 2024 presidential
election.
Which would leave Democratic
hopes tied to the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,
all of which have Republican legislatures eager to follow Georgia’s lead and
Democratic governors up for re-election in 2022. To ensure that America has a
legitimate presidential election in 2024, Democrats may need to run the table
in these races.
Michigan’s Republican-led
legislature is trying to slip absentee ballot restrictions
and voter ID laws (which could harm Black voters) past Democratic
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Taking advantage of an obscure provision in the state
Constitution which has only been used nine
times in the past 58 years, Republicans are attempting to gather
340,000 signatures—less than 10% of the number of voters who cast ballots in
the last gubernatorial race—for the “Secure MI Vote”
initiative.
If 340,000
signatures are collected in a six-month span, Republicans will pass the bill
into law while avoiding Whitmer’s veto pen. If they fail to get the signatures
needed but Whitmer loses her re-election bid, a new Republican governor would
rubber-stamp any of several
dozen voter suppression bills drawn up by Republican legislators.
Joe Biden won
Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes out of more than three million cast. If
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers loses his bid for re-election bid this fall, the GOP
legislature has voter suppression legislation ready which
would harm disabled Wisconsinites and make it very
challenging for a Democratic presidential candidate to win the state.
Even if
Whitmer and Evers win, the GOP could cement control in Pennsylvania, where the
Republican legislature passed House Bill 1300. The “Voting Rights Protection Act” toughens voter
ID requirements, reduces the window of time to register to vote and request
absentee ballots, and limits the use of absentee ballot drop boxes. Democratic
governor Tom Wolf vetoed the bill; his Republican opponent
in 2022 would have no such reluctance.
Given the polarized and closely-divided nature of the
U.S. electorate, a big enough voter suppression boost in Pennsylvania,
Michigan, or Wisconsin in conjunction with the same in Arizona and Georgia
could give the Republican presidential candidate a virtual mathematical lock on
the electoral college in 2024.
A Republican presidential
victory would further strengthen the right-wing tilt of the federal
courts and the erosion of voting rights for the foreseeable future.
Optimists
believed that the 2020 election proved the system works, as Republican judges
and state officials followed the rule of law despite Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn
the election results.
2021 showed
that the
ranks of Republicans willing to oppose undemocratic power grabs is smaller than
expected.
The 2022 midterms could determine whether U.S. democracy stays on life support or flatlines.
A shorter version of this piece appeared originally at
the Progressive and was later picked up by the Miami Herald and MSN News
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