No, it wasn't a "free and fair" election

Unless words no longer mean things

Jan 09, 2025

First of all, I’m not suggesting Democrats should’ve stormed the capitol or anything. I’m just saying the superior self-satisfaction with which they are willfully handing the country over to the very people they just told us will destroy it? Well, that doesn’t feel quite right either. It’s got some real passengers-must-go-down-with-the-ship vibes, especially as we all watch Los Angeles burn.

Yes, I know we need to accept this because Trump won a “free and fair election”. I understand both Democrats and Republicans are saying that. The only problem is that it’s not true.

This photo of Fannie Lou Hamer and Muhammad Ali isn’t directly related to this piece. I just like that it exists.

Did you know that not too long ago, if states, counties and towns had established histories of racist voter suppression, they’d have to preclear any potential changes to their voting laws with the Department of Justice? Yup. This preclearance was part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a big move towards actually having free and fair elections. But then came nearly forty years of dipshit bigots whining about how “that was a long time ago”. In 2013, their relentless racism won out, the Supreme Court officially sided with the bigots and preclearance ended because, in the words of the Court, it had “no logical relationship to the present day”.

Wanna guess what happened next?

Within hours of that Supreme Court decision, one of those previously restricted states—Texas—announced a voter ID law so fucking racist that the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas itself said the law was “enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose, has a racially discriminatory effect, is a poll tax, and unconstitutionally burdens the right to vote.” Again, a Texas court said that.

With preclearance gone, bigoted districts nationwide joined Texas in its effort to restart Jim Crow. Electoral racism covered the country like an interstate Klan robe and now, over a decade later there are 114 voter restrictive laws in at least 31 states.

These laws attack voter registration and voter assistance and early voting and mail-in voting. They establish racist voter ID restrictions and close polling places. And, as evidenced by the outrageous, ever-growing racial turnout gap, they fucking work. Also, while 114 is a staggering amount, it doesn’t quite express the size of the problem because many of these laws—like these from Ohio and Texas and Iowa—contain multiple restrictions.

On top of that, some of these laws are stacked on top of other racist laws. Mississippi wrote a disenfranchisement clause into its 1890 constitution that stole voting rights away from anyone convicted of a felony. Since Black folks could be arrested for breathing back then, the Black vote was naturally suppressed. And because it worked so well, other states soon followed and now nearly every state in the country practices some form of felony disenfranchisement.

Back in 2022 Florida’s excruciatingly humiliating governor, Ron DeSantis established a goon squad called the Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS). One of the OECS’s first acts was to arrest twenty Floridians with past felony convictions. Because they had voted, these Floridians were charged with voter fraud, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Why did these former felons vote when the should’ve known better? Well, there’s a pretty good chance it’s because the goddamn state had sent them voter registration cards.

Thanks for reading Banned Histories of Race in America! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Have I mentioned the Electoral College, the anti-democratic mechanism designed to dilute democracy in exchange for giving enslavers more political power? This trash apparatus has acted completely against the will of the people by appointing popular-vote-losing-presidents who’ve then selected a majority of un-fireable Supreme Court Justices who’ve been steadily stripping away our rights ever since.

Should I get into gerrymandering and redistricting, practices that are frequently racist and lead to politicians picking their voters instead of the other way around? Last May the Supreme Court made it virtually impossible to stop racial gerrymandering. And a week before the 2024 election, the Court also gave their blessing to a Virginia voter purge.

Is it too abstract to mention that the census—which is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives—is notorious for undercounting Black and brown people?

“Free and fair”?

Whenever Trump claimed the system was rigged, the Democrats or the media or any opposition could’ve easily countered with, “Yeah, in your favor!” and pointed to any of what I’ve listed here. Instead, they’ve defended not just the status quo, but this particular status quo. I guess it’s not all bad. At least there’s bipartisan agreement on the meaning of “free and fair”.

Anyway, that was pretty bleak, so here’s some words of hope I wrote a little while back… and here’s an incredible legend playing a beautiful song: