253 Bullshit Voting Bills Being Considered in 43 States
By every measurable number, the 2020 election was the most closely monitored and fraud-free election in American history.
Knowing that, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office spent 22,000 hours looking for voter fraud and uncovered just 16 cases of false addresses on registration forms, according to The Houston Chronicle. Nearly 17 million voters are registered in Texas.
So, each case is a one-in-a-million shot
Wow.
When I mentioned that to my wife she looked up from her computer and said, “I wonder how much that cost?” Google couldn’t come up with that number for me. But more than two dozen GOP-sponsored elections bills are under consideration in the Texas Legislature. That’s more than one entire new law for each suspected fraudulent voter. Things are busy in Austin these days.
“State Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican who chairs the State Affairs Committee and introduced a 27-page omnibus bill with several new restrictions and penalties, said the 2020 election increased interest in legislation Texas lawmakers were already keen on.
"This was already in process, but then the 2020 election was so in the national spotlight, and so many people have questions, so many people have concerns," he told NBC News last week. "I would say that has raised the profile of the issue.”
Indeed it has. And already keen I wouldn’t doubt for a second.
One in a million, unpunished, might spike to two in a million
I haven’t heard the phrase so many people since Donald Trump last held a microphone. So many people are salivating to see his tax returns.
But if the Texas numbers hold as an average, there were about 160 million votes cast in 2020 and that would suggest 160 fraudulent votes. Back in the day (and I remember those days) we had a hundred times those numbers and still elected presidents without much complaint. More recently, the Supreme Court chose to stop a Florida recount in the 2000 election that probably would have given the presidency to Al Gore.
That was at least a cause for complaint
And there was a hell of a stink from Gore voters and the national press, but Al got on the phone and congratulated George Bush, offering his support and allegiance.
Yet there were not 253 bills in 43 states by Democrats to make sure Florida never happened again. My hope is that increased sea-levels will simply erase that penis-like appendage from the southeast extremity of the nation and we’ll all be the better for it.
But 147 combined Republican Senators and Representatives actually voting to disallow the Biden election? And then this business with the 43 states? It’s incomprehensible.
Today’s White Supremacy America recalls Custer’s Last Stand
Custer rode out to exterminate a portion of the Indian culture in America’s initial genocide and got his ass kicked and his hair handed to him.
What’s going on in these 43 Republican influenced state legislatures is a genocide of a different sort, not against individuals per se but the racist, structured killing off of their constitutional right to the ballot.
The U.S. white majority will soon disappear forever
So says an article in The Conversation, saying Census Bureau projections show that the U.S. population will be “majority-minority” sometime between 2040 and 2050. There were 43 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. in 2015, but foreign born doesn’t count second, third and fourth generation non-white citizens. Those millions will have children and grandchildren by 2050 and white supremacists are scared to death.
253 legislative bills to suppress minority votes are laughable. How long to they expect states’ rights to hold out against that rising sea with only Republican fingers in the dike?
The nation as a whole is getting very tired of Republicans in their current behavior, storming our cities in sometimes armed resistance to Black Lives Matter, disavowing the results of a national election, preening themselves on talk shows and threatening to shut down an already locked-down Congress.
We’ve been locked down as well and are getting testy
The virus has changed America in ways we have only begun to know and can’t possibly predict. But we haven’t failed to notice the split of the Republican party into only-Trumpers and never-Trumpers.
There can’t really be a winner in that game and white supremacists know it. The big question is, will voters forgive them two years from now for 147 election deniers and 253 voter-suppression laws?
Image Credit: The Atlantic