By MARSHALL WARD
The U.S. is again approaching a crucial point in our right to vote. The result will either be the biggest advance since the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964/65, or the biggest setback since the start of Jim Crow in the 1870s.
On one side are Republicans, who control most state legislatures and are using false claims of election fraud to enact an avalanche of voting restrictions on everything from early voting and voting by mail to voter IDs. They also plan to gerrymander their way back to a U.S. House of Representatives majority.
After losing the Senate and the presidency, they’re determined to win back power by rigging the rules against Democrats and especially Black and brown voters. As a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party put it baldly before the Supreme Court last week, without such restrictions Republicans are “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats”.