The death blow at the beginning of the person is one vote

Just two months after Joe Biden’s inauguration, there’s another air in the U.S. There are already 90 million vaccinated. The plan is set to reach 200 million by May 1. Congressional approval of a $ 1.9 trillion reactivation package marked a milestone. Biden’s approval rating is 54%, a number Trump has never reached.

However, the Georgia state legislature has just passed a bill Radically restricts your voting opportunities. The measures aim to limit the vote by the African American population and other ethnic minorities.

The law of more than 100 pages increases the requirements for voter identification documents (in a country where there is no national identity card), limits voting hours, limits the possibilities for voting by mail, and facilitates Questioning the right to vote Of the citizens at the polling stations. In revealing detail, it is even prohibited to bring water and / or food to people in line to vote, in a situation where it is common for black citizens to queue for long hours to do so.

Perhaps the worst are the procedures that give the legislative authority itself control over the electoral process, and end any separation between the electoral administration and the machinery of political parties. The goal is clear: to prevent what happened in November and January from happening again in GeorgiaThe Democrats who won the presidential election in a state dominated by Republicans for decades, Then the Senate elections, which gave the Democrats a majority in the Senate.

The problem is that this, far from being confined to Georgia, is part of a nationwide Republican campaign for voting rights. It did not happen in the history of the United States And more voted than in the elections on November 3No candidate got the same number of votes as Biden – 81 million. Republicans concluded that the more voters voted, the worse it was for them, so today’s arrangement is vote suppression.

And since black residents tend to vote Democrats, the plan is clear: Anything that restricts voting opportunities for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians is implemented. Iowa has already passed legislation on the issue, and Arizona and Texas are working to do so. With 23 states in which both the state legislature and the governor are in Republican hands, Georgia’s prescription will expand to include them all. If so, then the basic democratic principle of “one person, one vote” could take a fatal blow.

In the Federal Congress, bills have been introduced to legislate on the matter and prevent these violations, but many Democratic senators do not support them, and the bills will not have a majority. What has always been considered the great virtue of the United States election system, decentralization and local control, may well end up as Achilles’ heel.

To the epidemic and the urgent need to revitalize the economy, another task has been added no less than Biden: to save democracy, in a country that boasts possession of the oldest of the modern era.