Photo credit: Dave Zylstra
March for Our Lives demonstrators on the morning of Saturday, March 24, 2018.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans joining demonstrations demanding intelligent gun regulations led by impassioned, young, high school students in Washington, D.C., and across the nation made me think of the rhythmic chant that repeatedly went up during similar massive demonstrations surrounding the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison in 2011: “This is what democracy looks like!” It is, and it’s glorious.
But we also remember how those protests against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to destroy union rights for teachers and other public employees ended. Walker not only succeeded in stripping public employees of their bargaining rights, but also won a recall election and then a second term.
So, why should those inspirational, young survivors fresh from a deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., be any more successful fighting intractable Republican politicians paid by the National Rifle Association not to protect the lives of their constituents? Actually, democracy is already answering that question.
Despite being in total control of the White House, both houses of Congress and a majority of the nation’s governors’ offices, Republicans are beginning to realize their ideas are currently so unpopular with the American people they really would rather not hold any more elections right now. It’s much too easy to attribute this to the historic low approval ratings of Donald Trump, whose blatant ignorance and indecency should have disqualified him from public office long ago. Besides, it lets off the hook Walker and all the other Republicans whose contempt for democracy preceded Trump’s.
Destroying Voting Rights
Trump didn’t invent Republican attempts to destroy voting rights for black and brown people and anyone else more likely to vote for the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. The same goes for the dishonest gerrymandering of voting districts into bizarre shapes, such as the tortured Pennsylvania congressional district thrown out as unconstitutional famously described as “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.”
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It’s easy to understand why Republicans don’t like democracy when they get wiped out in unlikely places such as Alabama and a Republican-gerrymandered Pennsylvania district Trump won by 20 points. Wisconsin joined the upsets in January when Democrat Patty Schachtner won a special state senate election by nine points in a rural Republican district along the Minnesota border that Trump won by 17 points.
That’s when Walker got his best, most undemocratic idea yet. If voters can’t be trusted to elect Republicans, why should the state even bother to schedule elections? Walker deserves credit for coming up with this idea first—even before Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin for winning reelection after barring his most popular opponent from the ballot and expressed admiration for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s appointment as president for life.
Walker got the chance to implement his innovative, new “no-election” policy for legislative vacancies when State Sen. Frank Lasee (De Pere) and State Rep. Keith Ripp (Lodi), both Republicans, resigned in December to take jobs in his administration. To prevent voters from joining the latest craze of electing Democrats, Walker decided to leave those seats vacant until the regular election in November for legislators taking office in January 2019.
It’s Against the Law, Walker
Not all voters in those districts were happy about having no elected state senator or state representative for more than a year. And that damned Eric Holder, former attorney general under President Barack Obama, filed a lawsuit on behalf of those voters. As attorney general, Holder always made a big deal about voting rights. That’s no longer a problem under Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
Holder nailed Walker on a legal technicality: namely, that state law required Walker to promptly call a special election to fill any legislative seat becoming vacant “before the second Tuesday in May in the year in which a regular election is held.” Walker tried to claim he didn’t have to follow the law because the vacancies occurred in 2017, not a regular election year.
Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds correctly called that interpretation absurd, since it would leave voters without representation even longer. Clearly, vacancies in December 2017 also come before the second Tuesday in May 2018. Judge Reynolds ruled that failing to schedule elections denied citizens their voting rights. “To state the obvious, if the plaintiffs have a right to vote for their representatives, they must have an election to do so,” Reynolds said.
Republicans immediately attacked Reynolds as an extreme, left-wing Dane County judge until they realized (whoops!) Walker appointed her to the bench. Nope. There’s nothing radical, extreme, left-wing or un-American about voting rights in a democracy. The radical, extreme, right-wing sabotage of voting rights, elections and democracy these days by so many Republicans is totally un-American.
The hundreds of thousands in the streets for the March for Our Lives across America were led by a generational wave of new, young voters and soon-to-be voters who reject the hypocrisy and dishonesty of adult politicians who fail to represent the best interests of their constituents. Democracy is correcting itself.
