The nationwide knee- jerk (emphasis on jerk) reaction of the GQP cult to the defeat of cult leader Donald "Big Lie" Trump has manifested in voter suppression bills and ludicrous efforts to de-legitimatize Joe Biden's victory.
Amy Gardner has a good look at how one particular voter suppression measure -- restrictions on absentee voting -- may well have unintended consequences for the GQP. She takes Florida as her example:
Virtually every narrow Republican victor of the past generation — and there have been many, including two of the state’s current top officeholders, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott — owes their victory, at least in part, to mail voting.
Now, some Florida Republicans are reacting with alarm after the GOP-dominated state legislature, with DeSantis’s support, passed a far-reaching bill Thursday night that puts new restrictions on the use of mail ballots.
Not only are GOP lawmakers reversing statutes that their own predecessors put in place, but they are also curtailing a practice that millions of state Republicans use, despite former president Donald Trump’s relentless and baseless claims that it invites fraud.
Even as Democrats and voting rights advocates accuse the proponents of Senate Bill 90 of attempting to suppress the votes of people of color, these Republicans say their own political fortunes are in peril, too.
The potential fallout in the key swing state illustrates how the Republican Party is hurting itself in its rush to echo Trump’s false allegations, they said.
“Donald Trump attempted to ruin a perfectly safe and trusted method of voting,” said one longtime Republican consultant in the state who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.The craven cultists, responding to self- serving Trump's Big Lie, have essentially made a form of voting largely utilized by their own cultists, but recently utilized by Democrats due to Trump's rhetoric and concerns about the pandemic, much more difficult:
Because more Democrats voted by mail in 2020, Republicans may assume that curtailing mail voting will have a larger effect on the other party, several voting rights activists said.
Kirk Bailey, political director for the ACLU of Florida, said he thinks that’s a mistake.
“This bill is so restrictive for all voters that it’s going to impact all the parties in ways that I’m not sure anybody really knows,” he said.
Schale cautioned that the shift of Democratic and Republican voting habits in 2020 is by no means assured to continue. Two huge factors were at work — Trump’s rhetoric, plus fears of the coronavirus — that will wane in time, he said.
“Any time either party tries to make a change in the way we think about elections because of one election cycle, it’s kind of fraught with danger,” he said. “I do not believe we know enough about voting behavior to know that Democrats are going to vote by mail forever going forward. In the same way, Republicans have voted by mail for 20 years, and we don’t know they’re going to stop just because Donald Trump doesn’t like it.”
We'll have to see if courts let these restrictions stand, and/or if Democrats can pass voter protections through the current Congress that limit or mitigate the damage that's being done to our democracy. Though, in the meantime, it would be richly deserved, and much to be desired, if these anti- democracy dimbulbs inadvertently immolated themselves at the altar of their dimbulb cult leader.
