John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist wrote the famous quote, "In the long run we will all be dead", to convince governments to stimulate their economies in the short run in order to improve the lives of their citizens. What was true in the 1930s about the economy is now true in the 2020s regarding voting rights.
50 Republicans voted against engaging in debate over the Democrat sponsored For the People Act. The bill ambitiously protects voters from the kind of suppression being enacted in state legislatures around the country in the name of election security. Most of the initiatives are relatively innocuous, like the requirement for a voter ID. Some liberals maintain even this requirement is too onerous, but up to 80% of Americans support it. Properly used, voter ID could drive turnout among potential voters.
The dark side of Republican voter suppression legislation is the enabling of partisan supervision of elections and the willingness of state legislatures to overturn legitimate elections based on intimations of fraud. This is the death of democracy.
Thanks to Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and a few fellow travelling Democrats in the Senate whose devotion to the filibuster overrides their allegiance to democracy, there is little to be done in the short run except pressuring them to change the Senate's rules and pass an amended version of S1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as soon as possible. Otherwise we will just be another illustration of the timelessness of Keyne's famous quote.
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