Jennifer Rubin writes of three ideas to bolster democracy (enhanced voting rights, independent and non-partisan justice, and robust speech rights):
First, Republicans, in an effort to hang on to their declining electoral advantage based on white voters, have tried every trick in the book to limit voting by those they suspect will favor Democrats. Hence, we have witnessed the phony Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (which utterly failed to provide any evidence of widespread voter fraud), widespread poll closings, voter poll purges and, in Georgia, efforts to slow-walk voting applications. Republicans act as though they cannot win races in which an electorate that’s representative of the country gets to vote. Put differently, they can win only where democracy is thwarted.
That must end. That must end. The good news is that with control of governorships and state legislatures, a bevy of pro-democracy changes can be implemented, including voting by mail, automatic voter registration, state legislation to enhance transparency in campaign financing, elimination of political gerrymandering in favor of neutral commissions, expansion of polling places and early voting, and weekend voting days (or making Election Day a state holiday).
Second, we must protect the Justice Department from politicization and partisan micromanagement.
….
Third, the administration is attempting to enact an unprecedented set of limitations on public gatherings and demonstrations in Washington. The nonpartisan Niskanen Center this week submitted a comment letter signed onto by 35 individuals and eight groups from a wide ideological spectrum contesting the proposed rules put out by the National Park Service. In a news release, the Niskanen Center observed that “the proposed changes read like they were drafted by minions of Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, or Vladimir Putin.” The letter blasts proposals to charge for demonstrations, bar demonstrations near the White House and vastly expand permitting requirements, arguing that “we cannot even take issue with the NPS’ reasoning behind this proposal … because there is not a single sentence in the entire regulatory preamble mentioning or discussing this in any way. This is highly unlikely to be mere oversight; rather, it is a most disturbing example of the NPS’ desire to curtail citizens’ First Amendment rights even without any notice or discussion.”
Via Three Big Ideas to Bolster Democracy.
A quick word about Jennifer Rubin: some pro-Trump writers truly dislike her, and have even asked the Washington Post to stop describing Rubin as of the ‘center-right.’
Those of us who are Never Trump (that is, conservatives and libertarians who are part of a larger opposition to Trump) most certainly don’t care what these Trumpists think someone should be called. We’ll not change how we describe ourselves, and if anything we will as happy warriors hold to our own descriptions all the more firmly.