Will the Mid-Terms Matter?
When I hear some Republican politicians say they’re worried that voting for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” mean they’ll be drowned by a blue wave in the upcoming mid-term elections, I wonder if they mean it.
When I hear pundits say that voters are so angry that Democrats may take over Congress and even the Senate in 2026, I wonder what dope they’re smoking.
In any mid-term during my lifetime, those questions wouldn’t have crossed anyone’s mind. Not only would there have been no doubt that mid-term elections would be held, but there would have been no doubt that, at least outside of the South, everyone’s vote would be counted, the vote would be certified by election officials, and the victorious candidate would take office.
The fact that all but three Republican Senators voted in favor of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that, if ratified by the House, will strip 17 million citizens of health care, will give huge tax cuts to multi-billionaires, and will add over three trillion dollars to the national debt makes me wonder if the rest of them aren’t secure in their belief that betraying their own voters won’t matter, not because they’ll woo them back again with lies and more lies about the Democrats, but because Republicans are busily engaged in rigging the system so that the popular vote against them won’t matter.
For at least the last 20 years, the GOP has been engaged in a campaign to limit voting to only those people likely to vote for the GOP.
It began with the time-honored tactic of gerrymandering. Where Republicans control legislatures, they draw legislative districts in such distorted ways that Republicans can maintain control of legislatures and congressional seats even if the majority of votes, overall, go to Democrats.
Take my old congressional district in Texas. Thanks to Austin, its largest city, Travis County is a blue dot in a sea of red. But I was “represented” by Mike McCaul, a congressman who never met with any constituent unless that person was a high dollar campaign contributor. He didn’t have to. His — and my — congressional district ran in a fat ribbon from the wealthy suburbs of north Houston through seven or eight rural Texas counties to clip off just a slice of Austin. Other congressional districts were drawn the same way, diluting Austin’s Democratic voters with buckets of rural GOP voters. That situation’s not likely to change. The Texas legislature is controlled by Republicans despite the fact that Democrats have almost a 10-point lead in party identification statewide.
Then there are the states where the Republican-controlled legislatures are taking more and more actions meant to shrink the electorate, to make it particularly hard for the less-educated or less-determined to vote.
Just since last November, Utah has eliminated universal mail-in voting. Where once it mailed ballots to every registered voter, now voters have to either vote in person or apply for an absentee ballot. Who does that affect most? The less-educated, the poor, the disabled, and the elderly, exactly the voters who are going to be hit the hardest by what the “Big, Beautiful Bill” is doing to Medicaid.
Utah also has joined Kansas and North Dakota in eliminating grace periods for mail-in ballots, so now, even if a ballot is postmarked well before an election, it won’t be counted unless it arrives before 7:00 p.m. on election night. Who does that affect? Rural voters, the less-educated, the poor, the disabled, and the elderly, who are being hit the hardest by what Republicans in Washington are doing.
Some states — Indiana being the most recent, following the path of Ohio, Indiana and Missouri — have eliminated student IDs from the list of acceptable voter identification methods. Who does that most affect? Students, who tend to vote more for Democrats than Republicans.
Wyoming now requires documentary proof of citizenship, although a Real ID will suffice — currently. If you had to prove you’re a citizen, how would you go about it?
Between 45 - 50% of adult Americans have a passport, which suffices. But how are the other 50-55% going to do it? And who’s least likely to have a passport? People who can’t pay the $125 fee or the supporting documents. People who don’t have the time or the interest or the money for overseas travel. The poor, the less-educated, the disabled, and many students.
Oh, and by the way, Republicans nationally are pushing the SAVE Act, which would eliminate Real IDs as acceptable proof of identification for voting.
Arizona Republicans recently tried another tactic: the Legislature passed a bill that eliminated early in-person voting and shielded county election officials from prosecution if they refused to certify election results. Fortunately, the Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, vetoed the bill. But you can be sure it will rise from that grave, if not in Arizona, then in other Republican-controlled states.
Just four days ago, the Republican Party of Arizona filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of allowing overseas citizens to vote. If successful, that measure would bar voting by every member of the U.S. armed forces stationed overseas, diplomats and their spouses, travelers, as well as ordinary Americans working and living abroad.
What I’ve listed above is just a sampling of what the Republican Party is doing to minimize the participation of those who might vote for Democrats or be angered by the pain that Trump and the GOP are inflicting on massive parts of the electorate.
If you want a more complete list, go to democracy docket.com. If you search “voting,” there’s a 50-page list of just the current lawsuits attempting to affect voting rights, redistricting, and elections. Of course, some are pro-voter. But many are not.
I leave you with one last thought: what difference can the mid-terms make if the Republican-controlled House and Senate simply ignore election results and just refuse to seat duly-elected Democrats?
Fascists aren’t all that interested in elections unless, as in Russia, the current regime always gets re-elected by fantastic margins. Trump cannot abide any intimation of defeat or any constriction of his power. Do you doubt that, if there is a blue wave in 2026, Trump will direct his compliant, supine Congress to prevent it from mattering? Do you doubt that all those proto-fascists who voted for the “Big, Beautiful Bill” will comply?
Do you think that can’t happen? See January 6, 2020.