Editorial: Safeguarding democracy, elections

The Island Now

There’s nothing like a threat to basic freedoms to make one appreciate our democracy.

And that’s just what scores of Republican U.S. senators and House members were ready to do Wednesday by refusing to certify the election of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in a failed effort to thwart the will of the people.

Some have called this sedition. Others a failed coup. We’ll just call it an assault on democracy.

Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than seven million votes and received 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. The votes have been counted and, in many cases, recounted and then certified in all 50 states.

Courts from the state level to the U.S. Supreme Court and Attorney General William Barr have found no basis for the false claims of voter fraud raised by Trump and his minions.

And yet these Republican senators and House members are refusing to perform their constitutional duty to certify Biden’s election.

In doing so, they have disgraced their office, undermined the faith of many people in elections and diminished this country before the world.

They have also created a rift in the Republican Party between officials who believe in democracy and those who don’t.

“The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our democratic Republic,” said Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, echoing the comments of many other Republican senators who strongly opposed the refusal to certify the election. “The congressional power to reject electors is reserved for the most extreme and unusual circumstances. These are far from it. More Americans participated in this election than ever before, and they made their choice.”

So the question of a candidate’s support of voting rights and our election system is now one that needs to be asked at every level of government everywhere, including Long Island.

Those who do not accept the will of voters should be defeated.  So should candidates who try to suppress the vote with election laws that make it difficult to cast your ballot.

Republicans have for years waged a campaign to suppress Black, brown and young voters who are less like to vote for them.

But until Democrats won the state Senate in 2019, New York had some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country.

The New York Legislature voted last year for eight days of early voting before an election, synchronized federal and state primary elections, voter preregistration for teenagers, voter registration portability within the state, and the elimination of the so-called LLC loophole that allowed corporations to make virtually unlimited campaign contributions.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo also signed into law measures to make it easier to vote during the pandemic and recently directed state agencies to allow people using their services to register at the same time.

Cuomo and the Legislature should now make mail-in ballots available to anyone who wants one at any time, add drop boxes for people to submit their ballots and allow for same-day in-person registration.

Nassau County should also ensure fair representation in the County Legislature by creating a redistricting commission to determine legislative boundaries after the completion of the 2020 census.

In September, Nassau’s Democratic legislators proposed such a commission – just as the New York State Legislature had done several years before with support from both Republicans and Democrats.

The Democratic legislators said their proposal, which included a timeline in which the process would take place and the appointment of a special master in case the commission missed its deadlines, was intended to create a fair and representative distribution of legislators.

But as in the past, the Republican majority in the Nassau Legislature questioned the Democrats’ proposal, which was made following Tropical Storm Isaias in August.

“It is difficult to understand why in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, fiscal crisis, and with thousands of residents still without power after the recent storm, the minority chooses to focus their energy on changing the county’s redistricting process,” Republican spokesman Christopher Boyle said at the time.

We’ll set aside the efforts of the Trump campaign and Republicans in the Senate and House to overturn the vote of 81 million Americans at a time that the death toll from the coronavirus has passed 350,000 and that Russia has launched a cyberattack on the U.S. government and large corporations.

Instead, we will ask Mr. Boyle and Republican county legislators a question: Is now a good time to focus on ensuring equal representation and fair elections in Nassau?

Not if history is any guide.

In April 2011, less than a month after the release of the 2010 census figures, Nassau Republicans unveiled a proposal that would move about 572,000 residents – 44 percent of the county total – to new districts, put four incumbent Democrats into two districts and split up recognizable communities.

At the time, Republicans held an 11-8 advantage in the Legislature despite Democrats having a 20,382 advantage among registered voters in the county.

Two years later, after lawsuits and a deadlocked redistricting commission, the Republican legislators used a 10-9 advantage to approve a plan that gave them a 12-7 advantage among registered voters – even though there were then 37,732 more registered Democrats than Republicans in Nassau.

But there is still hope.

Republican legislators could accept a redistricting commission knowing that it would give Democrats an advantage in legislative districts.

They could then adopt policy positions that appealed to more voters, find better candidates or both. They might then keep their majority and even increase the number of registered Republicans in Nassau.

They would also demonstrate that they stood on the right side of the Republican divide between those who support democracy and those who don’t.

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