GOP-led legislative bodies continue assault on voting rights of minorities

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020 | 2 a.m.

The Republican Party threw a one-two punch last week in its relentless attack on fundamental American rights. It happened in Tennessee, where the GOP-controlled state government passed a law that would make protesting on state property a felony offense.

Not only does the new legislation restrict freedom of assembly, but it would rob the voting rights of those convicted of the crime. In Tennessee, those convicted of felonies can’t vote — even those who have served their time, paid their fines or otherwise settled their debt to society.

Technically, the law prohibits “camping” on state property, which used to be a misdemeanor offense. Now it’s a Class E felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 days imprisonment and a maximum of six years.

Clearly, the bill targeted Black Lives Matter protesters. Tennessee’s mostly white lawmakers not only want to silence this ethnically diverse group of demonstrators, they want to disenfranchise and disempower them as well.

But in a show of cowardice, they sneaked the bill through a three-day special session and the state’s white governor, Bill Lee, signed it quietly without an announcement. In Tennessee, whites used to hide behind hoods and show up at the homes of Black residents in the middle of the night to kill, terrorize and intimidate them from voting or speaking out. Today, lawmakers use under-the-radar attacks in the Legislature to oppress people of color.

Hoods, robes and burning crosses have given way to suits, ties and extremist fear-mongering over peaceful protests. Let’s be clear: Anyone committing violence or destroying property should be charged. But there are already laws on the books in Tennessee for those offenses, and anyone who’s simply gathering to demonstrate peacefully against social injustice should be left alone.

That’s not the way the GOP sees it in Tennessee, though, or in other states where Republicans are in control.

Voter suppression has become a main priority nationally for the corrupt party, starting with the figure at the top. A leading example is President Donald Trump’s smearing of mail-in balloting provisions that have been adopted in Nevada and elsewhere as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19 this fall. Trump is bent on limiting voter access, as only a small turnout that is artificially heavy with GOP voters will save him.

Meanwhile, Republicans have undermined voter rights and sabotaged fair elections in all kinds of other ways. They’ve thrown out thousands of ballots on overblown technicalities, forced voters in the Wisconsin primary to the polls in a sickening show of disregard for their health and well-being, closed polls in Democratic-leaning areas or otherwise made it less convenient for voters in those places to cast ballots, etc.

And when that wasn’t enough, they simply committed voter fraud in any number ways — falsifying voter registration documents, hijacking ballots, distributing phony ballots meant to deceive voters into thinking they were filing legitimate ballots and therefore skipping the actual vote, and much more.

It’s all a bid to establish minority rule for the Republican Party. The party knows that demographic trends represent a tsunami that will crush it. The nation’s increasing ethnic diversity and the rise of an enormous generation of young voters spell doom for the GOP, because voters in those groups tend not to support Republicans — especially not the Trump Republicans who oppose social justice reforms, vilify and oppress protesters, try to rig the system against young voters and Americans of color, and otherwise sabotage our democracy and basic freedoms.

The “camping” law in Tennessee is just the latest example. There will be more until the GOP is swept out of office and can no longer take a blowtorch to the Constitution.