The power of the vote and the peaceful transfer of power

Jane Scarborough   Guest Columnist 

Published Jun 7, 2021 

Never has the power of the vote been clearer than it is today. With one of our two political parties conducting a nationwide campaign to create legal roadblocks for millions of citizens’ ability to access the ballot, current Republican senators vote with impunity and without regard to the wishes of their constituents — so confident are they of reelection in their “safe” districts back home.

The current efforts to “gerry-rig” our election process go hand and hand with the “gerrymandered” safe districts.

While the Constitution was amended twice in the last century to extend the vote to women and 18-year-olds, this is the first time in our modern history there has been a national effort to restrict citizens’ ability to vote. Equally disturbing is that the new state law restrictions rekindle the memory of post-Reconstruction in the South over 100 years ago. At that time, Jim Crow laws were passed to circumvent the 14th and 15th Amendments that granted citizenship rights, including the right to vote, to the newly freed Blacks. The parallels have caused some to label these new GOP voting restrictions “Jim Crow 2.0”.

At this point, President Biden and the Democrats should abandon all talk of bipartisanship in Congress since that requires two good-faith partners for it to succeed. The GOP leadership has clearly indicated they have no intention of negotiating in good faith as demonstrated in the talks leading up to their vote blocking a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The GOP’s transparent hypocrisy in their denial of the significance of the insurrection may have given the Democrats an unexpected gift, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can now create a commission of her choosing and whose members will have subpoena power.

In addition, the Democrats should move swiftly to alter or abandon the Senate filibuster rules. Passage of HR 1 (“For the People Act”) would override most of the states’ restrictions on voting procedures and set national standards for modernizing voter registration. Together with the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, restoring the pre-clearance requirement eliminated by the Supreme Court in its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, Congress would be exercising its broad powers under the Constitution to regulate federal elections and to enforce the 14th Amendment’s protection of the right to vote.

The right to vote is the hallmark of a free democratic society. This past presidential election was the first time in our history that the peaceful transfer of power was challenged by the defeated incumbent president and his enablers. The results of the 2022 mid-term elections will either be a rejection of GOP efforts to control who can vote or it will further embolden Republican leaders to continue “gerry-rigging” the vote and gerrymandering the districts in violation of their oath of office and at the expense of our democracy. This is the test of our lifetime, one we cannot afford to fail.

Trump and the Republican Party must be defeated and our democracy preserved at the ballot box at the hands of the voters. 

Jane Scarborough, of East Falmouth, is a retired law professor at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. She taught Constitutional law for many years.