Passover, Pilgrims, and Voting Rights
“Passover affirms the great truth that liberty is the inalienable right of every human being.”
— Morris Joseph, Rabbi and Jewish Theologian
Passover is known as the festival of freedom and commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. The Exodus story celebrates the perseverance and resilience of a people in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Jews retell the story of the Exodus each year to remind themselves that the gift of freedom comes with the sacred responsibility to take care of others.[1]
Despite being a non-believer, I like this story. While it includes its share of miracles and mysticism, it is fundamentally about how a people and a culture can survive against prejudice, marginalization, persecution, and exile on the strength of love and shared values. Most powerful to me, Jews aren’t content to celebrate their own freedom without working for the freedom of all people. Laura Janner-Klausner, Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism, says: “The Seder is not just a celebration of Jewish emancipation…. As Jews, we accept our responsibility to bring freedom where there is oppression, and our share of culpability when we don’t speak up against it.”[2]
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
— Nelson Mandela
Just two days before Passover, Governor Brian Kemp signed Georgia SB202, the state’s new voting bill, into law — a slew of new standards, requirements, and restrictions on voting in the state. While some aspects have been exaggerated by opponents, and some provisions may actually address legitimate issues surrounding voting, it is plainly clear that the law is part of a broader effort by Republicans to make voting more difficult, based on the false premise that voter fraud is both more pervasive and more pernicious than voter suppression, which is demonstrably more prevalent.
The law’s new standards for early voting will indeed expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally permitting optional Sunday voting. Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at a minimum. For most counties, this will mean an extra weekend day, and weekday early voting hours may likely be longer. The law also requires counties with massive polls and wait times longer than an hour to take action. And the law now permits counties to begin processing, but not tabulating, absentee ballots two weeks before the election and face penalties if ballots aren’t tallied by 5 p.m. the next day.[3]
These changes are, in fact, positive for many voters. But other changes seem directly targeted at voters in large counties where turnout in the last election was particularly robust and decisive — and Democratic. Requesting and returning a ballot now requires new ID rules. State and local governments are no longer allowed to send unsolicited applications; third-party groups that send applications have new rules to follow, too. The period of time to request — and return — an absentee ballot is reduced. Ballot drop box restrictions diminish their number and access to them. Mobile polling stations (Fulton County has two) are now forbidden. The law also created new regulations on voting machines, voter turnout efforts, and poll watchers.[4]
Lastly, in a final partisan power grab to influence contested results, the powers and composition of the state elections board have been modified to transfer to the board — and by extension, the legislature — more power to intervene in county elections.[5]
The reaction from the left was as reflexive as its passage was swift. But one can’t fault Democrats and Black voters for being concerned about a bill that is fundamentally based on a lie and was drafted in a shroud of secrecy — with no public review or comment period — and literally signed behind closed doors by Georgia’s white governor, surrounded by other white, male politicians under a portrait of Calloway Plantation, once home to 319 enslaved Black Georgians. State Representative Park Cannon was handcuffed and arrested after just 50 seconds for knocking on those same doors. The optics, symbolism, and opacity are all painfully bad.
“We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore…. You’re the people that built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down our nation.”[6]
— From Donald Trump’s speech from the Ellipse near the White House, January 6, 2021
Such fear-mongering, based on nativist entitlement, is astounding coming from an American president, representing a nation of immigrants. “When [Trump] said you won’t have a country, he was saying the blacks, the Jews, the minorities, the gays, they’re going to be in charge, and you, the white, straight, Evangelicals here with me today, your country will not be yours,” Congressman Steve Cohen observed during a recent CNN appearance.[7]
This week, Tucker Carlson accused the Democratic Party of “trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the third world.” While arguing his comments were neither racially motivated nor evidence of racism, he claimed “…This is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand-new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American, guaranteed at birth, is one man, one vote. And they are diluting it.”[8]
The irony of this simple declaration of “one man, one vote” seems lost on Carlson. While Republicans have controlled the White House for 12 of the past 20 years, only four of those years have resulted from a Republican having gotten more votes than the Democratic opponent.[9] Carlson’s statement ignores the history of voting rights struggles in this country for women, Blacks, and others — not to mention the Republicans’ current reliance on the undemocratic Electoral College to win presidential elections.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963
I recently learned that, through my birth father, I may be among the estimated 35 million living descendants of those early American immigrants who arrived here on the Mayflower, the Pilgrims, members of the Puritan congregation seeking freedom from religious persecution in England. I had never been much interested in tracing my ancestry, for many reasons, some personal and some political. But to learn that my ancestors possibly made such a treacherous journey and that my family may have survived not just those early years but also hundreds of years after, I have to admit, was more than a little exciting.
That being said, it never made me feel entitled to anything more from this country than those whose ancestors arrived here more recently, even yesterday. Everyone in this country has an origin story. Some are poignant, some are brutal. But we are all part of the rich American tapestry — “a single garment of destiny” — the most diverse country in the world. We all deserve liberty, and we have an abiding responsibility to ensure that those liberties can be exercised equally by all who live here.
[1] https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/passover-liberty-freedom-are-the-inalienable-rights-of-every-human-being/
[2] https://www.thejc.com/news/features/what-passover-has-to-tell-us-about-freedom-1.436049
[3] Fowler, Stephen, “What Does Georgia’s New Voting Law SB 202 Do?” Georgia Public Broadcasting/PBS/NPR, March 27, 2021.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-us-capitol-remarks-221518bc174f9bc3dd6e108e653ed08d
[7] Colton, Emma, “Democratic congressman compares Capitol Hill riot to Pearl Harbor attack: ‘Our democracy was at stake,’” Washington Examiner, April 8, 2021.
[8] Cameron, Chris, “The Anti-Defamation League calls for Tucker Carlson to be fired over ‘replacement theory’ remarks,” The New York Times, April 9, 2021.
[9] Bump, Phillip, “A remarkable GOP admission: Undermining the electoral college threatens our best path to the White House: It’s not necessarily wrong,” The Washington Post, January 4, 2021.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-us-capitol-remarks-221518bc174f9bc3dd6e108e653ed08d
[1] Colton, Emma, “Democratic congressman compares Capitol Hill riot to Pearl Harbor attack: ‘Our democracy was at stake,’” Washington Examiner, April 8, 2021.
[1] Cameron, Chris, “The Anti-Defamation League calls for Tucker Carlson to be fired over ‘replacement theory’ remarks,” The New York Times, April 9, 2021.
[1] Bump, Phillip, “A remarkable GOP admission: Undermining the electoral college threatens our best path to the White House: It’s not necessarily wrong,” The Washington Post, January 4, 2021.
