What is the Fight Over Voting Rights and Gerrymandering About?

The Fight is About Class, Not Race 

The fight over voting rights and gerrymandering seems to be about race, but it is really about class. It is about preserving the control of our government by great wealth. It is about sacrificing the well-being of working Americans of all races to preserve the wealth and power of a few extremely wealthy people.

The Fight is About Preserving Republican Power

The Republicans are pushing gerrymandering and  restrictions on voting rights because they believe that, without such restrictions, they will not be able to win national elections in the future. So, we can see what this fight is about by examining the Republicans’ legislative priorities. The record shows that Republicans want low taxes and minimal regulation of business. Republican candidates run on cultural issues like abortion or gun rights that animate elements of our working class, but once in office, the Republicans do very little about those issues. Instead, they pass a big tax cut, gut environmental regulations and oppose programs like affordable child care, free post-secondary education or national health care that might actually benefit the working-class voters who put them in office.

The Fight is About the Well-Being of Ordinary Americans of All Races

Why do Republicans oppose such programs? They do it because they know that such programs will have to be paid for by raising taxes and by (choke, gasp) collecting the taxes that are owed. Republicans oppose such programs because they know that much of the money to pay for them will come out of the pockets of the party’s wealthy donors who use their power to make sure that the party’s priorities continue to be low taxes and minimal regulation of business.

The fight over voting rights is really about preserving the wealth and power of wealthy donors to the Republican Party. The fight is really about preventing our country from enacting programs to benefit members of the working class of all races.  The fight over voting rights is really about the well-being of ordinary Americans of all races. Do we want to have a decent national health care system? Do we want to preserve our Social Security system? Do we want a system in which young people are not saddled with crushing educational debts? Do we want affordable child care? If we want any of these things, we have to fight to preserve everyone’s right to vote. That is what this fight is about.