In the wake of the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee published the Growth and Opportunity Project. Nicknamed the “Republican autopsy,” the document was Republicans’ effort to rebrand themselves as a kinder, gentler party. Part of the report called on Republicans to commit themselves to rebuilding relationships with “the African-American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”
Some Republicans this cycle are clearly ignoring the advice of their pathologists.
Donald Trump has seemingly gone out of his way to offend various racial and ethnic groups, and blacks have been no exception. Consider his belated and begrudging rejection of former KKK grand wizard David Duke’s endorsement. No wonder Trump’s unfavorable ratings among blacks are in the ’90s and only 18 of 2,472 delegates at the GOP convention were black, the lowest in at least 50 years.
Trump hasn’t been alone in alienating blacks. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has a long history of making bigoted remarks. In June, he called a proposal to place abolitionist Harriet Tubman on American currency “racist” and upsetting to “this society and this civilization.”
But what may turn off black voters more than a few bigoted and bizarre incidents like these is the GOP’s relentless pursuit of more restrictive voting laws.
Republicans often seem baffled by black voters’ allegiance to the Democratic Party. Republicans claim that black support is taken for granted by Democrats, whose policies have demonstrably failed them. But it’s not really that difficult to understand. Most blacks simply do not feel welcome in the GOP, and restrictive voting laws are a big part of the reason why.
According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 43 percent of blacks say they are treated less fairly than whiles “when voting in elections.” Only 20 percent of whites feel blacks are discriminated against in voting.
Conservatives see voting laws as simply safeguarding the integrity of our elections. But millions of black voters see them as harkening back to the days of poll taxes and literacy tests and the type of systematic and institutional discrimination that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 promised to end.
This year, 17 states will have new voting laws in place on Election Day. Among the new laws are provisions to curb early voting, tighten voter identification rules, prohibit same-day voting and other measures that generally make it harder to exercise the franchise.
Studies are mixed on whether tighter voting laws actually reduce turnout among minorities. But the point is that many blacks perceive them as being designed to do so.
Those who doubt whether this issue matters should read a November 2015 cover story in National Review by Theodore Johnson headlined, “Yes, Republicans can win black voters.”
Johnson, who is black, wrote that, “Everything the Republican party needs to know about the African-American electorate is bound in this one truism: Once civil rights protections are guaranteed, African-Americans will feel free to vote in accordance with their varied economic and social interests.”
In the 1920s through World War II, blacks voted in roughly equal numbers for Republicans and Democrats because the parties took somewhat similar positions on civil rights. But as Democrats began to embrace civil rights more strongly, and Republicans began to run against them, blacks migrated leftward.
Democrats, Johnson wrote, have simply done a better job of standing up for blacks’ civil rights protections, and that’s really the only thing that matters. “There is no mystery here. For the past 150 years, history has shown, black political allegiance is not to a party but to equality and the full rights of citizenship. It really is this straightforward and simple.”
Johnson called on what he calls “civil rights Republicans” to support efforts to roll back laws that have resulted in disproportionate sentencing for minor drug offenses as well as laws that make voting harder. “The Republican Party will be far better off over the long term if it reclaims the mantle of properly enforced civil rights,” he wrote.
That includes not just “speaking out against racially disparaging remarks,” but also “calling out policies that have a disparate impact on minority voters,” including many of the provisions in the new voting laws.
This should matter to Republicans, and not just for moral or philosophical reasons. Black voters are not the fastest growing demographic group, but they are growing. Between 2012-16, the number of eligible black voters rose 6 percent, while among whites it went up just 2 percent. Blacks now make up 12-13 percent of voters, and almost all of them vote for Democrats.
Voting laws are intended to reduce voter fraud, but incidents of fraud are vanishingly rare. And while the potential for some fraud does exist, Republicans need to ask themselves: Is championing these laws worth the harm being done to their party with black voters?
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
