New York Times reporters Reid Epstein and Nick Corasaniti consoled the Democratic Party and lamented its electoral prospects in 2022 in Sunday’s lead story, “With Voting Rights Bill Dead, Democrats Face Costly Fight to Overcome GOP Curbs.”
Evidently, moves by Republicans in various states to roll back pandemic-inspired loosening of the vote, such as ballot harvesting and vote drop boxes, are prima facie examples of “voter suppression” (a phrase used twice in quoted material here) that will doom the Democrats – as if an objective press would pick a side. The party now will need to do it (gasp!) To convince voters to vote, they will need to spend money.
With the door slammed shut this week on federal legislation to create new protections for access to voting, Democrats face an electoral landscape in which they will need to spend heavily to register and mobilize voters if they are to overcome the hodgepodge of new voting restrictions enacted by Republicans across the country.
….Republican-controlled state legislatures have since enacted a range of measures that undo those policies, erect new barriers to voting and remove some of the guardrails that halted former President Donald J. Trump’s drive to overturn the election.
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Democratic officials and activists now say they are resigned to having to spend and organize their way around the new voting restrictions — a prospect many view with hard-earned skepticism, citing the difficulty of educating masses of voters on how to comply with the new rules.
It would mean that they will have to spend tens of millions, or even hundreds of million more on voter registration and turnout programs. These funds could otherwise be used to promote Democratic candidates.
Times journalists write as if voting had no history before 2020: The state of Georgia evidently employed zero drop boxes in that long-ago year of 2018. They are allowed under pandemic rules and now they are considered permanent fixtures on the electoral landscape by the left.
Republicans have been attempting to restrict voting access for decades. was put into overdrive by Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud after his defeat, are planning a renewed push to enact new restrictions during this year’s state legislative sessions.
They are also pushing to recruit thousands of Trump supporters as election workers come November.
Democrats believe that voting in 2022 in Republican-controlled states may prove more challenging and expensive than in previous generations. This is especially true if there’s a coronavirus pandemic.
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….Minimum 12 states have passed legislation that prevents nongovernmental entities from financing elections administration. It is an extensive legislative response. false right-wing suspicions that $350 million donated for that purpose by another organization with ties to Mr. Zuckerberg was used to increase Democratic turnout. (The money went mainly to administrative expenses and safety gear for poll workers.
But the Associated Press story linked above doesn’t absolve Zuckerberg’s partisan activism, funneled through the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Even the Associated Press admitted that Democratic county in Pennsylvania and Florida received significantly more money than Republican counties. Nothing “false” there.
Epstein and Corasaniti made civic participation in elections sound sinister.
Republicans, whose most avid voters remain animated by Mr. Trump’s false stolen-election claims, have had no such trouble recruiting election workers….Urging rank-and-file Republicans to work as poll watchers plays on their fears of voter fraud and helps reinforce party loyalty, G.O.P. Officials say.
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