Republican Party Will Pay a Price for Trump Turning GOP into Party of Voter Suppression

As a Republican, I have long had to deal with the negative stereotypes Democrats have peddled about members of my party.  We in the GOP are racist, sexist and xenophobic.  We don't care about the poor and the disadvantaged.  We only care about the wealthy and making rich people richer.  Republicans aren't truly worried about election security, they just want to suppress the vote.

Those allegations against my Republican Party are were absolute crap.  Then Donald Trump came along

and made them all true.  And 90% of Republicans went along.   The damage Trump has done to the reputation and legacy of the Republican Party cannot be overestimated.

Let's double back to "voter suppression."  Democrats have long claimed that requiring a photo ID to vote suppresses the vote.  I've looked extensively at the issue after Indiana adopted which is called one of the most strict ID laws in the country, and there just is no evidence that turnout in Indiana fell as a result of the requirement.  

There needs to be much more focus on Democrats' position that voters should be able to cast a ballot by just announcing their name to election officials and signing beneath the signature of that declared voter in the poll book.   Combined with the problem of voter rolls inflated with voters who are dead and have moved, that creates an opportunity for people to cast ballots for others simply by signing a name.  Detecting fraud of this sort is very difficult and usually relies on the poll worker knowing the person is not who he or she claims to be.   While widespread fraud in such circumstances is highly unlikely, we should, nonetheless, be worried about isolated cases of fraud too.  There are down ballot races that might be decided by a handful of votes, after all.

Likewise, it is ridiculous how Democrats always fight the periodic purging of inactive voters, who most certainly have ceased voting because they are dead or have moved.  These purges are required by the National Voter Registration Act ("Motor Voter Bill") passed in 1993 by a Democratic-majority Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton Clinton.    The purges only happen after several elections are missed and postcards to their residences have not been returned.  The notion that there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of these purged voters getting turned away on Election Day is utter nonsense.  Democrats like failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams are allowed to constantly peddle this ridiculous claim without ever being fact-checked by the media.

Contrary to claims of Democrats, getting registered and voting is much easier than it has ever been in this country's history.  That is until Donald J. Trump became President.  As the 2020 election approaches, Trump has demonized mail-in voting (while requesting a mail-in ballot himself), instead suggesting people risk getting exposed to a deadly virus by going in-person to the polls.  Yesterday, Trump said he is against an additional appropriation going to the Postal Service because the money would be used to process process and deliver mail-in ballots.  There are also stories of mail sorting machines being removed from post offices.   The U.S. mail service delivery has slowed down significantly under the leadership of recently appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, 

Make not mistake about it, Donald Trump is trying to suppress the vote.  Big time.

Trump has turned the Republican Party into the Party of Voter Suppression.  We Republicans don't just want honest elections, we want to make it difficult for people to vote.  I'm sure the Republican Party won't be a price to pay for that down the road ... I say with utter sarcasm.

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• I ran across a video from 2019 when Senator Kamala Harris is attacking a judicial nominee for joining the Catholic auxiliary organization, Knights of Columbus, because the Knights are against abortion.  Of course, so too is the Catholic Church.  Harris' approach would mean that no Catholics are acceptable for public office, including her running mate Joe Biden.  I'd like to address Harris' views about Catholicism (as well as her support for unbridled executive power when she was running for President) but when the Republican nominee is someone who is so spectacularly unqualified for office, someone who advocates for unbridled executive power and is utterly hostile to American democratic values, someone whose re-election might well end the Republic as we know it, those otherwise major concerns about Kamala Harris no longer seem very important.
• A new forecast says the hotel business won't recover until 2023.  According to the study, revenue per available room has dropped from $86.64 in 2019 to $41.31 this year.  Which makes it more absurd that city officials think this is the perfect time to build two more large downtown hotels and expand the convention center.  Of course, Indianapolis taxpayers assume the risk and the private companies get the profits.  That, after all, is how Indianapolis public-private partnerships work.