Numerical thresholds are both completely arbitrary and deeply meaningful. Rationally, there is nothing inherently important about being in the top ten — versus 9 or 11. A person who lives 99 years has achieved as much in my book as someone who makes it to 100.
Yet, I found myself deeply affected yesterday when the Democracy Docket case tracker hit 200 voting cases for the election cycle. It was simultaneously utterly routine and completely extraordinary.
The case that hit this milestone is emblematic of the current political era. Brought by the Republican National Committee, it challenges electronic ID issued by the University of North Carolina. If successful, it would disenfranchise students and faculty at the state’s flagship university who are otherwise eligible voters.
North Carolina already has one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country. And the only university that went to the trouble of qualifying their IDs was UNC. Yet, as the Republican Party has grown more desperate, they saw fit to file this lawsuit.
The dispute underpinning this lawsuit, like so many of the other 199, is not about a good faith disagreement over public policy. Rather, it is nothing more than an effort by the Republican Party to disenfranchise voters and subvert election results.
As I said, the milestones we choose are in many senses arbitrary. Lawsuit number 200 was a Republican case challenging University of North Carolina IDs. Predictably, Lawsuit 201 will no doubt follow soon — in some other state on some other issue.
Together, however, these lawsuits tell a story about politics today. Unfortunately, it is a sad tale of a political party once confident enough to think it could command popular vote majorities that has sold itself simply for the approval of a conman election denier.
In this edition of my weekend reading list, the lawsuits that got us where we are and why you should pay attention to them.
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