for the president Joe Biden American democracy faces a threat that is almost existential. At least that’s what he said this week during a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, where he denounced the efforts being made by republicans to modify the electoral laws in some states and facilitate their victory in future elections.
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If a brake is not put on them, said the president, “their votes will not count, the facts will not count. They will just do what they want. It is the type of power that is seen in totalitarian states but not in a democracy.”
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According to the president, the situation is so critical that it is worth using what the United States has baptized as the “nuclear option”: that is, to modify the laws of the Senate to allow the approval by a simple majority of a series of measures that are ongoing at this time and that would establish a national voting standard and other series of protections to the suffrage of the Americans.
This is a major change, since historically the Upper House has required 60 votes to pass legislation, which generally guarantees the participation of the opposition. But, according to Biden, it is a necessary path to protect the most basic and foundational principle of democracy in U.S and that the whole world uses as an example.
Starting tomorrow, in fact, the Democrats – who have the majority in the Senate – will try to approve this modification to the internal rules of the legislature. Which, among other things, is cried out for by the base of the democrat party.
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However, his prospects, at the moment, are not the best. In order to make the change and pass the new electoral laws, the Democrats need the support of all 50 members of their caucus. But there are already two senators, Joe Manchin, from West Virginia; Y Kyrsten Synema, from Arizona; They have indicated that they will not accompany them in their attempt to shield the vote, especially from minorities, by force.
Although both agree that the reforms are necessary, they believe that destroying the structure of the upper house – the 60 votes needed to pass a law – would be worse for democracy in the long run.
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And despite the fact that Manchin and Sinema are Democrats, they represent very conservative states that classify themselves as centrist. In fact, it was these same senators who blocked Biden’s environmentally focused economic stimulus package late last year.
Without them, in any case, the chances of approving the reforms to the electoral system are non-existent. Which, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, would be dramatic.
“We are seeing an assault on the right to vote that is unprecedented in recent history and seems straight out of the Jim Crow era (from 1865 onward) when racial segregation in some states was the norm,” says Michael Waldman, president of this center of thought.
According to a study carried out by this institute, from January of last year to date, 19 states, all controlled by Republicans, have approved 34 laws that in some way restrict the right to vote. And for this 2022 there are already another 100 bills taking course with this same purpose.
The effect of the presidential elections in the United States
The laws are of all kinds and some seem more serious than others. But, in large part, they all originate as a product of last year’s presidential elections.
Although Biden outperformed his Republican rival, the former president donald trumpBy a wide margin both in the Electoral College count and in the popular vote (by 8 million), many in the party have used their accusations of fraud to carry out electoral changes, alleging that there is mistrust in the system.
This despite the fact that more than 50 courts in the country, including the Supreme Court -which is dominated by conservatives-, dismissed the claims of fraud for lack of merit and even the Prosecutor’s Office itself -controlled by Republican sympathizers- concluded that there were no irregularities in The elections.
However, the moves to restrict the vote is something that they have been able to do because in the US it is the states that define their electoral model following minimum guidelines established in the Constitution and by subsequent laws. One of them established that all changes must be authorized by the Department of Justice to prevent them from violating the Voting Rights Act, which was passed in the 1960s and under which minorities, especially african american and the womenThey acquired full voting rights.
But in the last decade, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court eliminated this requirement, leaving almost absolute power to the states to make changes and impose restrictions at will.
According to David Becker, director of the Center for Election Research and Innovation, the new measures are not as draconian as those that existed in the past, when African-Americans were required to know how to read or guess the number of candy in a jar like requirement to vote. But as a whole, Becker believes, they do contain a clear element of suppression that could impact the outcome of the next election.
How are the vote restriction measures in some states of the United States?
In general, the measures go in two directions. On the one hand, by limiting the option of voting by mail and early voting, and on the other, by giving state congresses powers over the administration of elections, which previously fell to independent electoral courts or the executive branch.
In the first case for an apparently mathematical reason. In the 2020 election, 46 percent of people, according to national census data, voted by mail while another 26 percent voted in person but early.
In other words, only 28 percent voted on election day. To a large extent, that was associated with the covid-19 pandemic given the fear that existed against a possible contagion.
But the same statistics suggest that Democrats used the first two methods more while Republicans opted for the third.
Although voting by mail or early voting has been used in the US for more than two decades without fraud, Republicans allege that it lends itself to various irregularities.
In several states, including Georgia, Arizona, Texas and Florida, new laws raise the requirements for voting by mail, for example, now requiring the signature of witnesses and other measures to verify the voter’s identity. Likewise, they limit the period of time in which it is allowed to vote and the hours in which it is possible to go to the polling stations for early suffrage.
Additionally, several states have banned Americans from automatically being sent an early voting form and will now require them to request the form in advance.
But there are other more intrusive. As of the next elections, the four most populous counties of Atlanta – where the majority of African-Americans live, who tend to vote for Democrats – they will only have 23 voting precincts of the 94 that were available in 2020, which will translate, experts say, into long lines that can discourage black voters , as well as those who cannot afford to wait long to vote given their extensive workloads.
Additionally, they approved a measure that criminalizes offering water or food to people who are in line with the supposed intention of avoiding proselytism, but which is seen as another way to make the voting process more cumbersome.
Many of these efforts have focused on so-called “swing states,” which often define US elections.
In Georgia and Arizona, for example, Biden won by less than 15,000 votes. A difference that could easily be reversed, says Becker, through the new restrictions that were approved. Especially since the Republicans have faith in the more disciplined character of their base when it comes to voting.
But if the numbers don’t add up once the votes are counted, the new laws – especially those in Georgia, Texas, Florida, Arizona and Arkansas – would give the state congresses the power to question the results and even annul them if it is not convenient.
In the case of Arkansas, a state electoral board was created, made up of five Republicans and one Democrat, which can review the result and “institute corrective actions” if the majority so decides.
“It is an absolute usurpation of the electoral process by one party. It is obvious that the objective is to retain power at all costs and not guarantee the right of the people to freely elect their representatives,” says Helen Butler, who is part of the electoral board in the state of Georgia.
Of course, many of these new laws have been challenged. But without a reform approved by the United States Congress that establishes minimum standards, they will probably die before a Supreme Court that has not shown the greatest interest in intervening. That is the reform that Biden is pushing, but whose fate is up in the air today.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERI
Correspondent of THE TIME
WASHINGTON
On Twitter: @ sergom68
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