Garry Trudeau has a primer on how to hold onto political power when faced with an election where the numbers are against you.
Jim Crow is the protagonist today. In the teaser above, he’s demonstrating one way to tilt the playing field: make it easier to vote with longer hours and more voting machines in certain districts with the ‘right’ kind of voters. In a country where time off from work with pay to vote is not a right, long lines and limited hours can effectively make it impossible for people to vote. Early voting — where people can cast their votes days or weeks ahead of time at special polling places — are one way around this. That’s why Republicans are rolling it back where they can. Ditto for voting by mail.
Jim Crow continues by explaining this is all about preventing voter fraud. (Voter fraud, in this case, is GOP codespeak for voting for someone besides Republicans.) Mr. Crow then goes on to show another of his favorite tools: voter ID laws. (Check out the little tweeting bird on his head!) By carefully defining what is a ‘valid’ ID, it’s possible to exclude whole groups of people from exercising their franchises.
This is not to say Jim Crow is having it all his own way — there’s still those pesky judges who insist on calling this vote suppression. (One reason why the GOP Congress is pushing conservative Federal judges through as fast as they can.) They’re also taking steps to use voter registration cases to block certain people from voting. And let’s not forget the Trump regime’s commission to ‘prove’ massive voter fraud in the 2016 election. They were pushing that one for all it’s worth. It may have dropped off the radar for the moment, but they haven’t gone away.
Jim Crow is seriously worried that the 2018 elections could see the wrong people getting to vote — fortunately his good friend Gerry Mander shows up in the last panel to save the day. Project REDMAP shows Gerry has been pumped up with the computer equivalent of steroids when it comes to targeting voters — and it was one of several factors in What REALLY Happened.
As Trudeau reminds us, we may be hoping for a wave election in 2018 — but the GOP is building the biggest breakwaters they can everywhere they can. The world is made by the people who show up for the job — and that means showing up at the voting booth. Let’s get this done, because it may be our last chance.