Rep. Walt Blackman’s Voter Suppression Bill To Please Donald Trump

Elvia Diaz of the Arizona Republic writes, Still think voter suppression is a myth? This Republican bill proves otherwise (she’s talking to you, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema):

Arizona state Rep. Walt Blackman is busting the Republican narrative that voter suppression is just a myth.

There are a flurry of bills being introduced at the Arizona Legislature that Republicans say deal with “election integrity” but are just tools to make it a lot harder for people to vote.

Don’t believe me? I give you Exhibit A.

Blackman is proposing that early voting occur only by request, and that non-early voting must to take place in a polling place or a center.

Note: More than 80 percent of Arizona voters vote early by mail, a privilege they have enjoyed for 30 years. Early voting by mail was enacted by a Republican controlled legislature with Democratic legislators’ support.

Blackman also wants to require a new voter ID card, which would require a passport or citizenship certificate and other documents, to vote. On top of that, anyone voting in person would also need either fingerprints or a “unique security code” issued to the voter.

This is exactly the kind of thing that traditional conservatives and Republicans have always decried as “big brother” government overreach from 1984. So this guy is neither a traditional conservative nor a Republican. He is, however, a MAGA cult member in the personality cult of Donald Trump.

It’s a hurdle to keep people from voting

Don’t tell me this isn’t a blatant hurdle to discourage people, especially minorities, the poor and Native Americans from voting.

The proposed legislation, House Bill 2577, would replace existing voter ID requirements, including driver’s licenses and all forms of tribal IDs.

Arizona already doesn’t issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, which means none of these people could vote illegally, as some Republicans have falsely claimed.

But even if we were to give them the benefit of the doubt and agree to extra layers of security, requiring fingerprints and a passport or naturalization papers is just over the top and nothing more than a hurdle to voting.

Why is this voter suppression if the requirements apply to everyone? Because so many people of color don’t have equal access to these types of ID.

Unfortunately, too many minorities still need multiple jobs to make ends meet and are more likely to rely on public transportation to go anywhere. They don’t have money to spare for a passport or may not even know how to navigate the system to get one.

Rural voters and Native Americans are particularly vulnerable to these types of hurdles. Arizona has 22 tribes, many in remote areas where residents already have to travel long distances just to vote.

And now, Blackman is proposing to invalidate their tribal ID card for the purpose of voting. You don’t call that voter suppression?

This isn’t about ‘election integrity’

Blackman’s legislation has nothing to do with “election integrity” and everything to do with keeping certain segments of the population from voting. [Including African-American voters like himself who are not subservient to white nationalist Republicans. What does one say about a brother so willing to sell out his own people, all in pursut of Donald Trump’s Big Lie.]

Republicans in Arizona and across the nation will keep invoking Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him to push through restrictive election laws.

They’re free to do so after the U.S. Senate failed this week to approve sweeping federal legislation that would have overridden state voter suppression bills.

Blame Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia for that. They joined all 50 Senate Republicans in opposing changing the filibuster to approve the federal voting legislation.

Democrats like Arizona House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding are vowing to keep fighting, but the near future is bleak.

“History will remember those who chose to silence the voice of voters for their own political gains,” Bolding, who also is running for secretary of state, said in a statement about the U.S. Senate’s failed attempt to pass voting legislation.

“But like those before us, we cannot give up. We cannot sit down. We cannot tolerate the efforts by the Right to take away our most sacred American right, our freedom to vote.”

That sounds great. Meanwhile, though, Republicans like Blackman are free to try anything to discourage people from casting a ballot – the cornerstone of any democracy.