"Anti-Voter-Suppression" Companies Are Lobbying to Kill HR1

If corporate America cares about votes, it should back HR1, the For the People Act

By Cory Doctorow / Pluralistic

Corporate America's great and good are shocked - shocked! - at the spectacle of GOP legislature adopting nakedly discriminatory voter-suppression laws. They have spoken out and even taken some high-profile actions to punish states that are adopting these laws.

These actions have been greeted with healthy skepticism from people who've observed corporate America's longstanding indifference to - and support of - institutional racism and voter suppression

How could it be otherwise? The path to maximum corporate profitability runs right through race- and gender-justice, workplace health and safety standards, and environmental protections.

Companies that can pay Black people and women less make more. Companies that can pollute don't need to treat their waste. Companies that can dodge responsibility for their maimed and murdered workers can save a fortune in safety systems.

In other words, companies do best when the majority of us do worse.

Of *course* corporate America has a long, proud history of backing voter suppression. If the majority gets a vote that counts, then policies that benefit the elite at our expense don't stand a chance.

The proof is in the pudding. HR1 is a sweeping elections bill that Democrats *must* pass ASAP if they have a chance at keeping the House and Senate in 2022; indeed, a failure to pass HR1 might *permanently* exclude Democrats from majorities, no matter how much support they garner.

HR1 doesn't just reverse a decade of gerrymandering and voter suppression - it also heads off the upcoming redistricting fuckery and new forms of voter suppression currently working its way through state legislatures.

If corporate America cares about votes, it should back HR1.

But the very same companies speaking out so performatively about Georgia suppressing Black votes are also running the giant, influential US Chamber of Commerce, as it leads a vicious anti-HR1 campaign.

The CEOs of Microsoft, United, Deloitte  and Ford signed letters in the Washington Post and New York Times declaring "we stand for democracy" - and they all have seats on the Chamber of Commerce's Board, which authorized a "key vote alert" seeking to scuttle HR1.

Other Chamber of Commerce members whose CEOs signed the "we stand for democracy" letter:

* Facebook
* Target
* GM
* Johnson and Johnson
* Merck

These companies are funding the campaign to kill the For the People Act, the best and most comprehensive voting rights bill since the 1960s. For all the culture-war bullshit garment-rending the right is doing about "woke capitalism," they clearly have nothing to worry about.

Lead Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay