Warren's brilliant plan to neutralize Republican voter suppression

[turbinetree]

Build a wall around voting rights. If they try to go around the wall, surround them with a moat.
Ian Millhiser
Jun 25, 2019, 3:15 pm

Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a “plan to strengthen our democracy” on Tuesday.

Much of Warren’s plan tracks the For the People Act of 2019, the legislation commonly referred to as “H.R. 1,” which House Democrats passed last March. What sets Warren’s plan apart is the sophisticated mechanisms she uses to insulate voting reforms from state officials hostile to voting rights.

Warren’s plan is not a perfect solution to the problem of anti-democratic state officials, and, like nearly all laws, it is defenseless against a rogue Supreme Court that is determined to give an electoral advantage to Republicans. Nevertheless, it’s a thoughtful effort at least, to mitigate red states’ ability to sabotage pro-democratic reforms.

The Warren plan includes many of the same reforms included in H.R. 1, a bill which represents the consensus among congressional Democrats and voting rights groups. Like H.R. 1, Warren pushes for enhanced election security, automatic voter registration, early voting at least 15 days before the election, and independent redistricting commissions to thwart gerrymandering, among other things.

https://thinkprogress.org/elizabeth-warrens-brilliant-plan-to-neutralize-republican-voter-suppression-7331889580b3/

-snip-

The single biggest threat to democracy in the United States is Senate malapportionment. By 2040, according to a University of Virginia projection, half the country will live in just eight states. That’s 16 senators for half the population and 84 for the other half. In a nation where partisanship correlates closely with population density, that means that the Senate is also an existential threat to the Democratic Party.

Any serious plan to fix American democracy, in other words, must include a proposal to admit new states (and, most likely, to chop up old states) in order to mitigate malapportionment.

The second criticism is that no matter how well-designed Warren’s plan may be, it is doomed if the Supreme Court’s Republican majority is determined to strike it down by any means necessary. To save democracy, in other words, the next president may need a plan to neutralize the Supreme Court.

[pangaia]

1. republicans are a cancer on the world.

[turbinetree]

2. Yepper spot on.............................

Just like the Tories in England and other right wing factions around the world

[bluewater]

3. K&R