The Republican Party has throughout most of its history been far more concerned than the Democratic Party with the task of expanding the franchise.
Founded by militant abolitionists, many of them radicals who had fled Europe after the failed revolutions of 1848, the Grand Old Party was in the forefront of the fight to allow freed slaves in the South and landless immigrants in the North to cast ballots. Radical Republicans secured the enactment in 1870 of the 15th Amendment, with this declaration: “The right of U.S. citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Republicans controlled the U.S. House and Senate when the 19th Amendment, proposed in 1878 by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in order to expand the franchise to include women, was finally submitted to the states in 1919. Indeed, Republican senators had to overcome a Democratic filibuster to advance the cause of women’s suffrage.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have passed without the overwhelming support of Senate Republicans, who provided critical votes to break a filibuster by Southern Democrats.
Snyder’s vetoes were entirely in keeping with the values of the Republican Party for the vast majority of its history. It is the other Republican governors, the ones who have signed these noxious measures — including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — who have broken faith with their party’s better angels.
It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who wrote to Congress in 1970 expressing his strong support for a constitutional amendment extending the right to vote to 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds.
The history of the Republican Party when it comes to voting rights has been a proud one. But it has been diminished in recent years, as the party’s governors and legislators have moved in states across the country to enact anti-democratic voter ID laws that are, as the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and other groups suggest, nothing more than crude voter suppression schemes.
So it was noteworthy when Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, vetoed election law bills pushed by Republican legislators seeking to require a ballot box affirmation of citizenship, restrict voter registration drives, and require photo ID for obtaining an absentee ballot.
Warning that the measures would create “confusion,” Snyder declared: “Voting rights are precious and we need to work especially hard to make it possible for people to vote.”
Snyder’s taken some harsh criticism from the right for his move.
But the Michigan governor did not suddenly go “liberal.” Nor are his vetoes evidence, as some media outlets have suggested, that Snyder had adopted a “middle-of-the-road” stance when it comes to the nationwide push by groups such as the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council to restrict voting rights.
Snyder’s vetoes were entirely in keeping with the values of the Republican Party for the vast majority of its history.
It is the other Republican governors, the ones who have signed these noxious measures — including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — who have broken faith with their party’s better angels.
They are the ones who have dishonored the once-proud name “Republican” — and a once-great party’s finest tradition of working across the decades to extend the franchise to all Americans.
Read the Rest: John Nichols: Voter ID laws insult GOP’s better angels.
