Republicans Might Be Better At Governing If They Weren’t So Busy Suppressing Voting
By now, everyone is aware of what has been happening throughout Texas and other parts of the South. Extreme temperatures have crippled power grids in the region and has left millions of people without power and water for days. Dozens of people have died from the cold weather and lack of electricity.
Officials were repeatedly warned that the Texas power grid, which stands alone from the rest of the country and is completely privatized, needed to be winterized after frigid temperatures also shut down energy resources in the state in February 2011, exactly a decade ago.
It was estimated in 2011 that to winterize a third of the natural gas wells in Texas it would have cost about $1.75 billion. Seems like a lot of money, but according to the Texas Oil & Gas Association, energy companies in the state paid $13.9 billion in taxes and royalties last year alone, eclipsing the winterization numbers.
Besides taxes, energy companies have also been busy spending their profits on political donations. Governor Greg Abbot has received over $150 million in campaign contributions during his tenure, more than any other governor in U.S. history, with over $26 million of that coming from the energy industry.
Members of Congress weren’t left with their palms out either. Between 2019 and 2020, Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, as well as Rep. Dan Crenshaw, received a total of over $1.1 million in campaign donations from the energy industry. Cruz wasn’t even up for reelection at the time.
Despite the obvious need for the energy infrastructure to be updated, GOP lawmakers in Texas have been a bit busy tackling a different problem they swear is rampant.
Over the past decade, the Republican-held Texas legislature has introduced or passed dozens of bills designed to suppress voting rights for many of its citizens. One bill introduced in 2019, SB9, basically allowed intimidation and disenfranchisement of some voters and imposed draconian fines and impediments on volunteers in blatant attempts to suppress voter turnout.
Even as recently as last month, bills that would widely purge voter rolls and would keep mail-in ballots from being sent to every registered voter ahead of election were introduced by Republican members of the state legislature.
Despite claims of massive voter fraud from Republican state leadership, like Attorney General Ken Paxton, there were only 16 minor election fraud prosecutions in the wake of the 2020 election. In a state where over 11 million people voted, that’s ridiculously insignificant.
Texas is not alone in state governments who have been busy trying to suppress voting rights while ignoring a large problem that has left people dead.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently pushed for tighter voting laws in the state despite saying that “Florida had the most transparent and efficient election anywhere in the country” in 2020 at a news conference on February 19th.
Like Texas, one of DeSantis’ proposed measures would ban sending out mail-in ballots to all registered voters ahead of elections. The banning of ballot drop boxes, which Republicans argue is a form of “ballot harvesting” somehow, was also among the proposals.
All this while Covid-19 is continuing to rage throughout the state.
Florida ranks third out of all U.S. states in the number of average new cases over the past week, at 5,914 new cases per day. The state also ranks sixth in new cases per 100,000 residents during the same time frame, at 28. During the same week, an average of 161 people have died from Covid every day in the state, the second highest rate in the country.
Adding to this has been the criticism of DeSantis’ vaccine rollout plan and the claims of favoritism for political allies.
Publix was selected as the only distributor of the Covid vaccine in some counties after they made a $100,000 contribution to the DeSantis’ reelection PAC. The grocer has also been in the headlines as of late thanks to the involvement of the company founder’s daughter, and heir, in the January 6th Capitol insurrection.
Rep. Charlie Crist sent a letter to the Department of Justice on Sunday, calling on them to investigate the distribution of the Covid vaccine under DeSantis after the governor announced “pop-up” vaccination sites in communities around the state.
One of these sites happens to be in Lakewood Ranch, an extremely affluent community in Manatee County.
According to Crist’s letter, the parent company of Lakewood Ranch is one of the largest Republican campaign donors in the country, and has contributed over $900,000 to DeSantis himself. Crist also points out in his letter that the community has one of the lowest Covid infection rates in the country.
If Republicans spent half the energy fixing problems afflicting their constituents as they do on making sure those same constituents can’t vote, perhaps more people would be alive. Hell, they might even get more people to vote for them.
Legally, of course.
