New York Times columnist Charles Blow had a typical histrionic piece earlier this week accusing Republicans of “passing regressive voting laws that will disenfranchise primarily voters of color” that threaten “our democracy.”
If you read through the column, though, you might notice that Blow never identifies a single law that he believes will “disenfranchise” anyone.
A Politico article (also from this week) does a better job, identifying items such as Georgia’s new voter ID requirement and reducing the number of ballot drop boxes.
But according to Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, no Democrat has ever been against voter ID, so that portion of the law shouldn’t be a problem. And Georgia didn’t have any drop boxes before 2020. They were a “temporary” creation of the Georgia State Election Board adopted to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Getting rid of drop boxes (and the Georgia law only reduces them!) would only return Georgia to the status quo of 2018.
What’s so bad about returning to voting laws as they were pre-pandemic?
Everything, according to the Democratic activists Politico talked to.
“If there isn’t a way for us to repeat what happened in November 2020, we’re f***ed,” Nse Ufot, the CEO of the Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project, says in the piece.
Like Blow’s column, Ufot’s prediction that the Democratic Party will collapse if the nation returns to pre-coronavirus voting laws seems a bit unreasonable.
And it turns out the vast majority of people agree.
Echelon Insights recently asked 1,000 registered voters:
Forty-seven percent of registered voters, including 49% of independents, said states should return to pre-pandemic voting rules.
Just 41% of voters, including just 37% of independents, said states should make their pandemic voting rules permanent.
Separately, Echelon also found that 82% of voters support requiring identification to vote, 61% supported banning ballot harvesting, and 60% supported banning unsolicited vote-by-mail applications.
Blow, President Joe Biden, and Democratic activists such as Ufot and Abrams may talk as if democracy will end if Democrats don’t pass their favored election reform laws. But the reality is that the specific changes implemented by Republican states are entirely reasonable and supported by most of the public.
