Gov. Edward T. Breathitt made the history books for signing the landmark Kentucky Civil Rights Act of 1966.
Gov. Andy Beshear might not earn as much ink for vetoing SB 2, the Republican voter suppression bill. “But he’s what Kentucky needs at this moment,” said Murray State University historian Brian Clardy, a Democratic and civil rights activist. “He is willing to stand up against voter suppression.”
Passed on a near party-line vote, SB 2 requires a government photo ID to vote. The bill’s supporters said it will make cheating more difficult. Clardy said the measure is really geared to make it more onerous for minorities, poor people, the disabled and the elderly to vote Democratic, the GOP fears.
The coronavirus pandemic will make it doubly-difficult to get a photo ID, Clardy said.
“I’d be against his bill even if the coronavirus wasn’t here,” LEX-18 quoted Beshear, a Democrat like Breathitt. “I want to be transparent about that. I think more people should vote. And I was the attorney general for four years, and we never had one case of someone trying to impersonate another because they didn’t have a photo ID. It didn’t exist.”
Even the Republicans can’t produce any evidence of voter impersonation.
The GOP enjoys hefty margins in both houses of the legislature, so Republican lawmakers will almost certainly override Beshear’s veto. Though all it takes is a simple majority, the Republican bulge in the Senate is 29-9 and 62-28 in the House.
Anyway, I’d bet that behind closed doors, Kentucky Republicans are high-fiving one another for steamrollering neo-Jim Crow SB 2, figuring it will help pave the way for Sen. Mitch McConnell and other Republicans this November.
Click here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here to read about Republicans across the country admitting to voter suppression.
McConnell is going for a seventh term. Clardy wonders why now, after the majority leader has mowed down a sextet of Democrats, some stronger than others, the opposition has finally “scared his mule,” as we say in westernmost Kentucky.
“Is McConnell that frightened?” Clardy mused.
McConnell’s opponents on the voter ID bill
Three main Democrats want McConnell’s job: State Rep. Charles Booker of Louisville; Lincoln County farmer, educator, ex-small-town newspaper editor, and Marine veteran Mike Broihier; and Georgetown’s Amy McGrath, a former fighter pilot who is also a Marine vet.
McConnell has token opposition in the GOP primary, which has been pushed back to June 23 like the Democratic intramurals. There’s a Libertarian running, too.
“We know the history behind bills like [SB 2]…,” said Booker. “Poll taxes, literacy tests, felony disenfranchisement, all stem from a shameful past that once forced my own grandfather to guess the number of beans in a jar before he could vote.”
“Republicans know that Mitch McConnell is vulnerable, and they’re willing to disenfranchise Kentuckians to save his seat,” said Broihier. “This voter ID law is a cowardly attempt by the Kentucky GOP to further limit access to the ballot box, at a time when we should be expanding that access.”
Legislators “should be making voting easier for Kentuckians, not harder,” said McGrath, who also cited the coronavirus health crisis. “How are people supposed to get a photo ID when everything is shut down?”
From the “center”?
GOP Secretary Michael Adams, a Trump loyalist and McConnell protégé, pushed hard for SB 2. “I ask the legislators of both parties who believe in election integrity and passed this law to override this regrettable veto, and I hope the Governor will eventually join me in governing from the center,” he tweeted.
Center compared to what? The Georgia legislature under Lester Maddox? The old southern, white supremacist Democrats sometimes said that denying African Americans to vote was about “election integrity,” or words to that effect.
Clardy’s not having it from Adams. “As the chief election officer of this commonwealth, his first concern should be enabling voters to go to the polls and vote unimpaired, and have their votes counted and let the chips fall where they may.
“This law signals that voter suppression is for real and that the deck has been stacked for generations.”
Governor Beshear vetoed the voter ID bill and helped to unstack that deck a bit. By standing up to this latest attempt at voter suppression, he proved once again that he is what Kentucky has needed.
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