There’s a lot of truth to the charges that the Democratic Party became too centrist and out of touch over the last decade, but let’s not underestimate how many elections Republicans straight up stole over the last half-decade. Once they took control of state governments in the 2010 election, they began a wave of absolutely heinous and undemocratic voter suppression, which reached new highs between 2014 and 2016.
A recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that between 2014 and 2016 states purged almost 16 million voters from the rolls, four million more voters than removed from 2006 to 2008.
Jonathan Brater, a counsel in the nonpartisan center’s Democracy Program and a co-author of the report, said it’s hard to know how many voters were purged in error, “which is part of the concern.”
The 33 percent increase outpaces both population growth and the growth in total registered voters.
We can also thank the Supreme Court for encouraging this vile behavior when it struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act:
The Brennan Center found that between 2012 and 2016 these jurisdictions removed nine million voters from registration lists and that the removal rate in these places was 2 percent higher than in other areas.
Two million fewer people would have been removed from voter rolls if the rates were equal, researchers found.
The GOP is actively working to suppress votes in other ways too, including gerrymandering to create non-competitive districts, enacting voter ID laws, shutting down voting locations and ending early voting.
Remember, Voter ID laws suppressed 200,000 voters in Wisconsin alone, handing the state to Trump. Ohio purged millions between 2011 and 2016, handing that state to Trump.
If say 20% of the removed voters in America were wrongly purged — not a huge reach given the spike between 2012-14 and 2014-16 — then we are looking at millions of people who had their right to vote stolen.
One way to fight this directly is helping out candidates for state Secretary of State. It varies from state to state, but in a plurality of cases, elected Secretaries of State control a state’s elections, wielding an inordinate amount of power over our democracy.
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Republicans control 28 of those offices, while Democrats hold 17. Not a great ratio, but it’s looking like the most endangered seats this fall are currently held by Republicans, giving Democrats an excellent chance of turning the tide.
We’ve already spoken a good bit about Kathleen Clyde, the Democratic candidate for Ohio Secretary of State. That’s possibly the most crucial race, given the state’s impending voter purge — Clyde has promised to cancel it if elected. Her GOP opponent, Frank LaRose, meanwhile, openly embraces Donald Trump.
There are a number of other classic or emerging swing states that will have hotly contested Secretary of State races that Democrats have a great chance of winning. We’re supporting candidates in Iowa, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Michigan… plus Georgia and Kansas, two GOP strongholds where circumstances put the race in play.
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Michigan presents a classic swing state case. Its state government was hijacked by Republicans, who gerrymandered their way into total control of Lansing. But thanks to term limits and a lot of progressive energy, Democrats are poised to toss the GOP from office. Jocelyn Benson, the former dean of Wayne State University, is the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, a role for which she is truly prepared — Benson wrote a whole book on the importance of the position. She’s currently working as the CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, an organization that just so happens to be running a major voter education campaign right now.
Benson recently gave a great interview about the issues she’ll prioritize in office, and expanding the electorate, making it easier to vote, and protecting elections were at the top of the list.
As for Kansas and Georgia, Democrats will be trying to take advantage of voters’ exhaustion with corrupt, nasty Republicans Secretaries of State. Both Kris Kobach of Kansas and Brian Kemp are running for governor of their respective states, creating real openings for progressives to win in wave elections.
Kobach is both the most prominent and most reviled Secretary of State in the country. Not only did he create the fundamentally flawed interstate voter cross-checking database, he ran Trump’s all-too-brief “Voter Fraud” commission, which was such a spectacular failure that even the White House that embraces and promotes disasters decided to disband it. Kobach is running for governor (Republicans always fail up) and Democrats have nominated a solid outsider candidate in former tech exec Brian McClendon, giving them a better-than-usual chance to win.
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