Around the country, Republicans have sought to implement new voting restrictions under the guise of election security despite the fact that no systematic security problems have been discovered with the U.S. electoral system. In other words, Republicans are essentially responding to a problem that doesn’t exist — and making it punitively more difficult to vote in the process. During an event with the Economic Club of Chicago this week, former President Barack Obama called out the suppressive new restrictions pushed by the GOP, describing Republicans as “rigging the game.”
The former president also condemned Republicans for their “embrace” of the “patently false narrative about the election being stolen.” As he put it:
‘In the aftermath of January 6, the degree to which we were witness to an insurrection, and you had one of the major American political parties not only fail to condemn some of that behavior but embrace a patently false narrative about the election being stolen — that is being still perpetuated — and now, that same major political party being willing to initiate legislative actions across the country, where they’re saying we’re gonna let partisan state legislatures decide whether or not to certify an election and institute voter suppression measures… that’s the kind of dangerous behavior that we’re going to have to push back on.’
The exact forms of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts vary. In Georgia, Republicans have enacted new voter ID requirements for mail-in voting, despite the fact that no systematic security problems were discovered with the state’s previous system of relying on submitted signatures to verify mail-in ballots. A post-election audit of 15,000 signatures submitted with mail-in ballots in Cobb County, Georgia, uncovered zero instances of fraud. Zero.
Obama pointedly added as follows:
‘I think the corporate community has a responsibility to at least call folks out on that. Because that transcends policy… This really has to do with the basic rules by which we all have agreed to keep this diverse, multiracial democracy functioning. Are we going to stick to those rules or are we going to start rigging the game in a way that breaks it? And that’s not going to be good for business, not to mention not good for our soul.’
Obama’s comments can be seen in the video below:
Republicans have propagated their phony election security concerns in connection to the continued lie from former President Trump that last year’s presidential election was somehow rigged for Biden. In Arizona, Republicans in the Arizona state Senate are leading an ongoing audit of the election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, helping keep the election conspiracies going.
