“A Roofie for Democracy”
“They can’t say no if they can’t say anything”
It feels like that statement could just as likely to come out of the mouth of a creepy frat boy as the memorandum chains of Kris Kobach, the vice-chair of the President’s Commission on Election Integrity. Rather than sell the public on his party’s ideas or adapt his party’s ideas to what the public wants, he’s decided everything would be better if those who are skeptical or opposed to his party’s ideas were simply unable to democratically resist. Sometimes I can’t help but marvel at how certain kinds of people rationalize truly monstrous behavior.
Voter suppression isn’t just monstrous and violatory. It’s also profoundly self-defeating. Whether it ends up being directly asked or not, one of the most common initial questions any would-be leader must face is “well who exactly put YOU in charge?” It’s common in criminal circles, indigenous societies, office teams and I would argue Westernized societies as well. From the time we are children, our first way of asserting autonomy is informing anyone who is not a parent or teacher that “you’re not the boss of me!” Expressions like “who put you in charge?” and “you’re not the boss of me!” are often framed as signs of working poorly with others or general bad behavior but they’re also very important statements of “self” that reinforce the need we all have to be able to intuitively how an purported authority figure is or has been legitimized before we will willingly yield to said authority.
Consider our parents. They give us life, feed us, clothe us, house us and take responsibility for our survival. Those things legitimize their authority over us, and when push comes to shove we tend intuitively understand the need to eventually yield, at least until we take over the responsibility for our own survival and can credibly assert our own autonomy with no reservations.
Consider our teachers. Our parents drop us off at school and through the enforcement that comes with parent-teacher conferences we come to understand that while we are on school grounds our parents have transferred part of their authority to the teachers. To willfully defy our teachers is to willfully defy our parents. A chain of transferring power has been established.
Consider our police force, at least as an abstract concept. The federal government to which we currently submit legitimizes the policing powers of the state and municipal governments. A chain of transferring power is established. State and municipal governments theoretically put police academy trainees and candidates through rigorous training which we intuitively understand grounds them in a series of protocols and ethics preparing them to deal with policing situations beyond the capabilities of the rank-and-file citizen. A understanding of special qualifications for authority is established. In the theoretical sense we also intuitively understand that police officers are working to protect and serve their communities, us, and that often involves their personally assuming grave risk to life and limb. An understanding of service and sacrifice is established. Along these lines of credible power transfer, qualification-building, service and sacrifice, most average citizens theoretically can intuit a basis for respecting or yielding to police authority.
Part of what has been so troubling about police brutality is that unchecked police brutality undermines the perceptions of adequate qualifications, service or sacrifice necessary for minority citizens to feel right as autonomous humans about yielding to their authority. They are only legitimized by the general authority of the government and minority inability to resist power at that scale. Police brutality is a time bomb because its chipping away at the answers to questions we’ve all asked since childhood “why are YOU the boss of me?”. Right now it seems to be only because police officers have guns. That’s no way to build good will with any community.
I would argue a similar dynamic plays out on the scale of government, particularly democracies. Elections are the act of answering “who made you the boss of me?” WE did. We join together to choose our leaders, with the understanding that while our choice may not carry the day we all have equal voice in helping to choose. We can submit because we were part of the process and we signed on for it with an understanding of how things work. I’m upset Hillary Clinton lost but I don’t think the President is illegitimate simply because he only won by virtue of the electoral college. If anything he is delegitimized by electoral interference, people having involvement in the electoral conversation who are procedurally and legally not allowed to have any say or involvement. The President may have assisted their involvement, definitely encouraged it. That’s a problem, and the perception of possibly criminal illegitimacy has dogged his entire presidency so far. Legitimacy of authority over a people is established by having the properly authorized voices in the leadership conversation and keeping unauthorized voices out of the leadership conversation.
The election integrity commission as defined by its current mission is going to delegitimize the very democracy it says it seeks to protect. If you strip a bunch of eligible voters off voter registration rolls, if you block minorities from voting then you corrupt the entire case for authority and peaceful transfer of power. In my mind this is little different conceptually than assassinating or bribing a Supreme Court judge or a few inconvenient members of a jury. It calls the whole case into question. Nothing can be believed and no result can be trusted. Why should any free and free-thinking people yield to invalid or even questionable results?
If people have no reason to yield to invalid results they can’t have any logical or moral reason to long yield to authority chosen by those invalid results. Not all of the people who were supposed to get to help choose the leader were allowed to help choose the leader. Why should the people who were boxed out of choosing submit to a leader chosen in such a manner? If you run the line of though to its logical conclusion point the only compelling end-use answer is “Because we’ll kill or imprison you if you don’t.” That’s no way to build good will with any community. That’s no way to bind a nation together or make it believe in the validity of its own democracy. That’s how unrest is born, and eventually revolution.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this style of voter suppression represents a huge win for white supremacy. If a bunch of minorities are prevented from voting then that means white voters are artificially restored as the definitive voting majority. That means no social or political changes can occur in the nation without the express permission and mandate of white voters. That means there will never be equality in America, as 1) equality is too often seen as a threat to white interests and 2) equality is not really equality in the full sense of the word if it’s something to be “granted” by one end of a power imbalance. Voter suppression efforts are foundation stones for white supremacy.
Are you are as tired of thinking and talking about white supremacy as I am? Are you tired of being held indirectly culpable as the beneficiaries of violatory exploitations of our democracy as a foundation for your oblivious well-being and unquestioning compliance with an inequitable class structure? Then demand that it be torn down. The best way to silence irritating conversations about a problem is to go ahead the problem.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/17/trump-election-integrity-commission-voting-rights-kris-kobach?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other