Voting should be easy and accessible for every citizen. Several states are trying to make it harder. Passage of the For the People Act, H.R.1, is imperative to reverse that disturbing trend.
The last election saw the largest voter turnout in 120 years, with no voting irregularities or breakdowns that affected the results. The former president and his supporters continue to scream about rigged voting machines and millions of fraudulent votes, despite the glaring fact that such fraud would require an impossible impact on nearly 50,000 votes in five separate states.
Republican legislators in at least 28 states have introduced hundreds of new laws that would make voting harder by eliminating early voting, curtailing mail-in ballots, complicating voter registration and purging voter rolls. They claim to have “lost confidence” in the last election.
Republicans didn’t lose confidence. Donald Trump lost the presidency. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., lost his Senate majority power. Those losses are not without consequence, but they hardly justify threatening the voting rights of millions of people.
In Georgia, Republicans are attacking the election officials of their own party who had the integrity to stand up to presidential bullying. In Arizona, the woman who led the party to two Senate seat losses was rewarded with another term as state Republican Party chair.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated pernicious local regulations that prevented black voters from exercising their constitutional rights to be a part of the process. Instead of championing policy positions that appeal to a majority of all voters, state Republican parties seem determined to return to those post-Civil War tactics.
Suppressing voting is the antithesis of American values. H.R.1 would go a long way toward restoring basic voter protections for all citizens. It would require states to bring their election processes into the 21st century.
It would prevent states from making rules that unfairly penalize particular groups of citizens. Three provisions would create automatic voter registration, increase transparency in political advertising and require nonpartisan commissions to draw voting districts in order to stop gerrymandering.
H.R.1 would not, as its opponents duplicitously argue, allow noncitizens to vote. It would not make voter fraud easier. It would encourage high voter turnout, which is a good thing for the health and strength of any democracy.
Fifty-six years ago, after a bloody confrontation on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the United States made a significant step toward giving all citizens an equal right to vote. Congress should recommit to that goal by passing H.R.1.
“Our View” represents the opinion of the newspaper editorial board, which is made up of members of its board of directors. Remarks may be directed to editorialboard@mtexpress.com.
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(7) comments
I hope everyone can now see how bad the media manipulated us all into going for a Biden administration. This guys policies are a total disgrace. Get ready for $5 a gallon gas, high taxes and a lower quality of life for all but the elite class.
We all got played so hard. I hope a lot of us can at least see som of that now that the smoke has cleared. We all have so much in common. The divide is top and bottom, not left and right. One love
Trump was a disgrace all of his own doing. You must be so proud of how w the aid of Twitter, Facebook, Newsmax, OAN and Fox he got his puppets to storm the Capitol.
Did his puppets storm the capital? Does the 3 hour trespass of the capital hurt your feelz more than the week long fire bombing riot outside the White House. Did you make fun of the president for allowing the secret service to escort him to the WH bunker? Remember all the derision from the alphabet propaganda media? Do you, as the same propagandists, remain silent as the dimms turn Washington D. C. Into a police state? Do you approve of big tech silencing certain expressions?
Ah yes, an attempt to overthrow the .gov hurts my "feelz." Trump lost by 6 million votes - get over it.
HR1should be voted down on Constitutional grounds. Congress' first duty is, after all, is to the Constitution. This bill does nothing but enshrine all the methods of voter fraud used in the 2020 election into law. The go to lie by liberals now is that , sure there was voter fraud, but not enough to affect the election. They can't say there was no election fraud because that is provably false. The liberals can't claim the other claim is true, but it is not provably false. Personally, I wish one court would have taken the case. The outcome may have been different. Instead of the truth voices are silenced and our representatives are cowering behind razor wire, in a new police state in DC. They know there was in the last election, and HR1 is designed to insure every future election is stolen too. No one that supports our Constitutional republic can support HR1.
Release the Kraken!
Sidney Powell, Ghouliani, Lin Wood !!! What a line-up of crackpots and losers. Not a shred of evidence resulting in billions of $$$ if defamation suits.
A Severe North Wind? A Wounded Coyote?.....a whining republican.[sleeping]
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