Voter Suppression, San Diego Style
A proposal by San Diego County Registrar of Voters Michael Vu to facilitate the expected increase in voter turnout for the March, 2020 primary died at the County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.
Republican Supes Jim Desmond and Kristin Gaspar voted no, denying the plan the four votes needed to pass. Desmond claimed the plan amounted to an unfunded state mandate. Gaspar is up for re-election, and potentially stands to benefit from a lower turnout caused by frustration with long lines at polling places.
Her excuse for voting against the plan amounted to a nonsensical conflating of Vu’s proposal with a “vote center” system used by five California Counties in 2018. A feasibility study on that concept was also presented at the meeting, but was not under consideration for 2020.
Gaspar is being challenged by top tier Democrats Terra Lawson-Remer and Olga Diaz. A victory by either challenger will end decades of Republican dominance on the Board of Supervisors.
What she voted against was the establishment of four satellite locations of the registrar’s office aiming to alleviate expected long voting lines during the primary caused by same-day conditional voter registration. Opening those additional locations would have required up to $615,000 in county funding.
The upcoming primary will be the first time people will be able to register to vote or change their party identification at any polling location on election day. The requested satellite locations would have beefed up technology and access to voter registration files, necessitating fewer provisional ballots.
County Chief Administrative Officer Helen Robbins-Meyer strongly urged board members to support the proposal, saying the law change “makes a very risky election that much harder.”
Registrar Vu also warned of the consequences of failing to act, saying “We should not underestimate what this means; those who are registered and not registered are coming.”
A significant backlog caused by high turnout could mean the county would be unable to certify its election results by the required deadline. In the event of a late tally, county counsel would be required to go to court to explain the reasons.
The Union-Tribune quoted Supervisor Nathan Fletcher’s reaction:
“Our democracy works best when the most people participate,” Fletcher said in a statement.
“Satellite locations for voting provide an option to vote in addition to traditional polling locations. I have had this function in my district in the past and will again in the future .... Today, Supervisors Gaspar and Desmond voted to deny that same access and opportunity to voters in other districts for the 2020 election. I only hope this item can be revisited in hopes of creating greater voter access for all.”
In California, which won’t have the choice of Republican candidates at the top of the ballot, suppression of turnout will enhance the odds for down ballot GOP candidates.
Nationally, finding ways to make it harder to vote is a central tenet for Republican strategists.
Here’s a snip making that point from Paul Waldman’s essay on the subject at the Washington Post:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who often makes plain what other Republicans prefer to conceal amid a fog of misdirection, used to say that “low voter turnout is a sign of a content democracy.” More recently he has described Democratic efforts to make voting easier, with measures like making Election Day a national holiday, as a “power grab.” In other words, he makes no bones about the fact that if we made it easier to vote, too many people would vote for Democrats.
Every Republican understands that; McConnell is just one of the few willing to say it out loud. But the truth is that suppressing votes is absolutely critical to Republican success. They know full well that their ability to compete and win in the American political process is dependent on the countermajoritarian features of our system — the filibuster, the fact that the Senate gives the same representation to the fewer than 600,000 residents of Wyoming as the nearly 40 million in California, the electoral college — nearly every one of which works to the advantage of the GOP.
And as the party grows more dependent on older, wealthier, white voters — who are more likely to be registered and more likely to turn out — Republicans know that the harder registering and voting is, the more likely they are to win. No prospect is more threatening to Republican success than high turnout.
https://twitter.com/reillybergs/status/1189364979104808961?s=20
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Lead graphic: Democracy Chronicles via Flickr