A Tale Of Two States

Posted on by under Election 2024, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary, voting rights

Back in 1980, Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich told a group of Republicans working on the Reagan campaign …

“Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Today, it seems that many, especially in the Republican Party, live by his creed of reducing the number of voters to leverage elections, and they have pulled many a stunt toward that end, such as gerrymandering; strict voter ID laws; shuttering polling places in predominantly Black, Hispanic and poor neighborhoods; disallowing postal voting in some states; and other laws that make it harder for people to register and to vote.

Only 59 miles (95 km) of water (Lake Michigan) separate the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, but oh what a difference between those two states!  Two stories about voting rights in each state highlight the differences.  Starting with the better of the two …

On November 30th, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a voting rights expansion bill intended to “ensure every eligible voter can participate in our democratic process.”  The bill will allow 16-year-olds to register before they can legally vote at 18 and will automatically register individuals to vote when they are released from incarceration.  Earlier in November, Whitmer signed a bill to no longer make it a misdemeanor for individuals to pay for rides to polling locations through apps such as Uber and Lyft. Michigan election law had previously stated that “a person shall not hire a motor vehicle” to take them to vote unless they could not walk.

Additionally, the package will further protect election officials by criminalizing acts of intimidation during an election. An individual who intimidates an election official “with the specific intent of interfering with the performance of that election official’s election related duties,” could be punished with a misdemeanor for the first two violations and a felony for the third violation, according to the law.

The goal in Michigan is to ensure that every eligible voter can participate in the democratic process of voting.

And then, 59 miles across the lake to the west, in the state of Wisconsin …

Brett Galaszewski, a member of the right-wing youth group Turning Point Action and also serves as vice chair of the Milwaukee County GOP, recently appeared on a talk show where he advised viewers to do three things: join the county party’s newly formed “Election Integrity Committee,” become a poll worker, and push to get the state’s top elections official removed from office.  In a normal world, the phrase “Election Integrity” wouldn’t throw up red flags, but after the Big Lie surrounding the 2020 election, our world is far from ‘normal’ and it sets off alarms. 🚨

Galaszewski told his host that his group has set out to recruit “upwards of 2,000 poll workers in Milwaukee County to make sure that we have our eyes and ears in all facets of next year’s election.” The purpose of this effort, he explained, is to “just shave off a small percentage of liberal votes” in order to shift the statewide outcome, because “the left is going to try everything that they can to mess with this again.”

2,000 poll workers in a county of less than a million people … to “just shave off a small percentage of liberal votes.”  He doesn’t even bother to hide the real goal.

Two states … so close in distance and yet so far in ideology, in their views of ‘democracy’, of civil rights.  Let us hope that more states are like Michigan than Wisconsin.  Better yet … let’s make sure that no matter what obstacles or hurdles are thrown in front of us, we VOTE and help our neighbors, family members, young people and senior citizens to VOTE!

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19 thoughts on “A Tale Of Two States”

  3. Jill, the goal of Republicans wanting fewer voters has been in place for many years. It was leveraged further with the 2010 mid-terms in a census year. That set us down a path of surgical gerrymandering (a judge’s term) and restrictive voter ID laws. The GOP mantra is there are votes and votes that count.

    Note Democrats have gerrymandered as well, but the surgical precision is what has worried me most. Keith

    Liked by 4 people

    • I keep seeing people calling for raising the voting age to 25! Younger voters seem to have a conscience and typically don’t vote for Republicans! I remember when the voting age was lowered to 18 during the Vietnam War, because 18 year olds could be asked to risk their lives for their country, they should at least have the right to participate in deciding who represents them!

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  4. Pingback: A Tale Of Two States | Filosofa’s Word | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  5. Well said Jill. You have made, yet another powerful plea for folk to get off of their backsides.
    The Activist Right have created a Left which is not there (you have to go back to the early 20th century to find that in the USA) and have become so subsumed in the Lie they believe it themselves. They would thus throw Democracy in a ditch and bury it in their slurry
    It is essential that those who do not buy into the current Republican mindset get out there and vote. If they do not they will live to regret it, either directly or by one or two degrees of personal separation.
    David and Rawgod have said the rest for me.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Voting, became, a form of passive rejection that we the people resort to, to, show the political party that’s currently in control of the countries we are, living in, that we are, upset over how they ruled over us like, DICTATORS, and, voting does NOT achieve a thing, especially, when, we are using, paper and pen to, vote them out of, office, and the dictator political parties already pocketed the judiciary AND the, legislative, branches of, the governments we live under, and so, we the people shall keep on, getting, ENSLAVED, there is NO way out, and, it does NOT matter, which party wins the, election, it all ends up the, same.

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  7. And for Heavens sake, turn America BLUE again.Show the Republicans that Democracy still has a voice and that it’s Shouting ‘ You have the right to vote, Use It’. Let’s see an end to all the Gerrymandering and the tricks used to deny the vote to certain ethnic groups. Let’s be sure that Trump with his Dynastic (Nasty) ambitions is thwarted and that America is porepared to move forward again in the World as a LEADER. Hugs.

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  8. Astutely said, Jill, but you could hsve been a hit more plain. Republicans do not want Blacks, Hispanics, women and university students voting. These are strongholds of Democratic voters. Tgey are racists who only want white Christian men voting. That is their stronghold, they think. I think they are wrong, although they do have a lot of voters,. Just not enough this timecsround!

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          • Me too. Now I found out South Africa is having an election next year also. I have it from the horse’s mouth the Democratic Alliance is the best party for the future of South Africa. Some want to destroy the nation, and some want to go back to apartheid. Apparently most ideals of Biko and even Mandela have been thrown out with the bathwater. There is a lot of corruption in government, and it is hurting blacks, whites, and coloureds. So I am told by my source who lives there.

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            • Hmmmm … I’ll have to look into that … I wasn’t aware of it. I wonder what our friend Orca will have to say of it, for she lives in South Africa. You would think that no South African would EVER want to return to Apartheid … but then, the U.S. seems to want to return to slavery or at the least to Jim Crow. The further into the past history recedes, the more we forget or just don’t care.

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