Republicans, having learned that voter roll growth and high voter turnout always push their candidates lower down the rungs of power’s ladder, have shepherded in a whole new flock of voting restrictions in several states since the autumn of 2020.
To diminish voter rolls they discourage new registrations in a number of ways.
To counter turnout they make it harder for voters to get to polls and harder for them to sign in.
Some eliminate ballot drop boxes. Others obstruct access to polling stations. Some prevent the disabled, for example, from using couriers to deliver their absentee ballots.
Voting restrictions are nothing new. They have come and gone before. They do drag a long, dark and shaggy bag of regrettable history, but they are not permanent.
They are as subject to change as the weather itself. The agents of that change are the voters themselves. The more voters speak the closer we get to officeholders that represent us, ourselves, the voters, instead of those shadowy figures that fund most, including the most laughable, election campaigns these days.
We can take heart in the fact that 67% of eligible voters cast votes in 2020. That was the highest turnout since the year 1900, a year when only men, and only certain ones at that, could vote.
Jim Baird
Comer