April 06, 2022
o piNioN
Page 9
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Making It Harder to Vote
A five-alarm
emergency for
democracy
“Voter suppression” is a divi-
sive and highly politicized term.
But for the slate of bills Republi-
cans are pushing across the coun-
try, it’s the only correct one.
They’re introducing these bills
in virtually every state, but three
— Arizona, Georgia, and Wis-
consin — are especially worri-
some. These swing states, along
with Pennsylvania and Michigan,
helped decide the last presidential
election. Each flipped from Trump
in 2016 to Biden in 2020.
But now, in these states and
elsewhere, Republicans want to
make it harder to vote by mail, get
rid of same-day voter registration
and ballot drop-off boxes, limit
early voting, reduce the number of
voting booths at polling locations,
and much more.
If you’re not paying attention
to these election bills, you should
be. They might determine the next
president of the United States.
Joe Biden won Arizona, Geor-
gia, and Wisconsin by a com-
bined 45,000 votes. He didn’t
win because of widespread voter
fraud or some liberal conspiracy.
He won because more people vot-
ed for him.
The GOP response hasn’t
been to win more votes. It’s
been to make sure fewer people
get to vote.
Voting rights should be a bipar-
tisan issue. Instead, we’re seeing
Republicans throw every voter
suppression idea they have at the
wall of their Capitol buildings
Robert Alvarez
hoping something sticks. A big
part of this is Trump’s iron grip
over the Republican Party.
To appease Trump, Republi-
cans have spent the last two years
trying to overturn the last presi-
dential election. They failed. But
if the election bills they’re push-
ing are signed into law, they may
not have to overturn the next one.
Texas Senate Bill 1 is a good
example of the kind of restrictive
bills Republicans are pursuing
in at least 40 states — including
those three swing states.
The new Texas law makes it il-
legal for election officials to send
mail-in ballots to voters unless
they ask for them. It requires a
voter identification number to be
included with mail-in ballots. And
it bans 24-hour polling places,
among other things.
In the first election since the
law was implemented, over
27,000 mail ballots were flagged
for rejection in Texas. Most re-
jections were due to a technical-
ity — forgetting to include that
newly required voter identifica-
tion number.
In the end, 23,000 ballots were
thrown out, which was about
13 percent of all mail ballots. In
Democratic-dominated
Harris
County around Houston, that fig-
ure rose to 19 percent — nearly
one in five ballots.
For comparison, less than 1
percent of mail-in ballots in Texas
were rejected in the 2020 general
election. When ballot rejections
increase by 10- to 20-fold, that’s
not a free and fair election.
If we see rejection numbers
like Texas’s in a general election
— especially in swing states like
Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin
— we’re talking about control of
the House, Senate, and presiden-
cy being stolen. Not stolen from
Democrats, but from voters.
According to the Voting Rights
Lab, which tracks state-level
election legislation, 565 election
bills that restrict voter access or
election administration have been
introduced so far this session. Of
those 565 bills, 129 are courtesy
of Republicans in Arizona, Geor-
gia, and Wisconsin.
Elections should be about the
person with the most votes win-
ning. For Republicans, it’s about
putting up as many barriers to vot-
ing as possible and shrinking the
electorate until it churns out the
result they want.
The good news for voters and
for supporters of free and fair elec-
tions is the vast majority of those
bills haven’t made their way out
of their state legislatures. There’s
still time to stop them.
Robert P. Alvarez is a media
relations associate at the Institute
for Policy Studies.
c Lassifieds /B ids
GENERAL CLEANING AND UNIT TURN
SERVICES FOR FEDERAL PROPERTIES
The Contracts and Procurement Manager of the City of Salem
on behalf of the Salem Housing Authority (SHA) will receive bids
electronically through Equity Hub’s Bid Locker, until, but not af-
ter 11:00 a.m., (Local Time) APRIL 27, 2022,
2022 at which time said
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PUBLIC NOTICE
Request for Proposals
NextGen Youth Services
Worksystems is seeking qualified, experienced, and emerging
organizations to provide career services to diverse populations
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