Sherrilyn IfillVerified account

It happens often when you take a principled stand & find yourself in a deadlock w/your opponent, that opponent will send an emissary. This emissary will calmly & reasonably tell you that there’s a way out. That your conviction is too strong, he will say, and unreasonable.

By employing the “both sides” framing that effectively robs the holder of the morally sound position of its power by equating it w/the morally indefensible, this emissary will encourage you to abandon the core of your principles & encourage you to settle for a dubious “win.”

The terms of the “win” will not be without any value. But this compromise will demand that you abandon the core of your principled stance & deny what you identified as the core of the issue. If you do it, yr opponents will praise you for yr pragmatism. For “getting things done.”

Republicans fantasies about voter fraud are refreshingly recognized as fantasy, but voter suppression is also described as fantasy (“both sides”), despite documentation, evidence, and litigation - much of it ongoing.

Indeed the 2021 voter suppression efforts in the states are a direct response to the resilience & determination of Black voters in particular, in 2020. How else to explain the insanity of a law criminalizing the provision of water to voters in line, as Georgia’s law does?

Weaponizing our resilience as evidence that voter suppression does not exist is part of the larger project of gaslighting the legitimate grievances of Black voters who are targeted by laws that create hurdles for our participation as equal citizens.

It is also an erasure of Congress’ special obligations set forth in the Enforcement clauses of the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution to protect the right of Black voters to participate equally in voting & the political process.

To be sure, I too believe that we must address flaws in the Electoral Count Act and protect against state law provisions designed to allow a partisan hijack of election outcomes. It is a grave danger indeed.

But we must not deny the truth: that voter suppression schemes create obstacles designed to frustrate voting & drive down turnout among Black, Latino, Asian American, student & disabled voters. It is an affront to democracy & a denial of full citizenship that must be addressed.

It is anti-democratic, immoral, indefensible, and finds no comparable action on “the other side.” That one political party, which until 2013 also believed this to be true, now abandons this belief is evidence that a deeply corrosive antidemocratic strain has infiltrated politics.

The message of this op-ed is targeted at Sen Manchin, moderate Dems & certainly the White House. There is a compromise that would effectively address the most urgent voting issues & offer a way forward. But it would not leave voter suppression behind.

And it would not free Republicans of the obligation to stand before the American people and defend their embrace of voter fraud fantasies and their support for the erection of increasingly arcane & cruel barriers to voting. It would also ensure the integrity of the vote count.