In 2014 a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher died of a rattlesnake bite. ABC News reported on the death and interviewed another pastor, who had been present during the fatal bite. He had this to say:
“I am in the United States of America. And I have a constitutional right as a, you know, as my-right-mind adult, that if I believe so firmly that the Spirit of God moves on me to take up serpents, that I should have my constitutional right to do it.”— ABC News (2:11-227).
Constitutional scholars may disagree, not to mention other people of faith. Snake-handling Pentecostal congregations, chiefly in the Southern states, date back more than a century, drawing inspiration from Mark 1: 17-18:
And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.
Preachers, such as Tony Spell, in Louisiana, who continue to have Sunday services where many people sit in close proximity, are—with regard to public health—just as reckless as religious snake-handlers. They are putting themselves and others at risk. If they have a specific Biblical injunction for doing so in the face of the coronavirus, I am unaware of it.
If the church building were on fire, though the fire hadn’t yet reached the sanctuary or the nave, would these preachers expect their congregations to fill the pews? Would they expect their members to attend services, if a godless foreign power had penetrated the United States and had posted snipers in clear view of the church entrances? Would church leaders find a biblical passage revealing that God wanted their congregants to follow a highly risky path?
These decisions may reveal, at least in part, a stunning ignorance of infectious diseases. An “invisible enemy” (as Trump has put it), worldwide data collection, scientific modeling, and exponential functions add complications that we don’t find with poisonous snakes. Perhaps these leaders just don’t grasp the level of risk or the public health imperative of social distancing. But the opposition to public health measures to protect lives is confounding.
Why put people in harm’s way? What’s the point?
Republican leaders in Wisconsin have also chosen to place the public at risk, by refusing to budge on holding an in-person election on April 7 (and declining every avenue to make voting safer by expanding mail-in voting options). These Republicans, however, do have a point: this is a marker signaling their determination to achieve a central, overarching goal: suppressing the vote of their political opponents. This effort in April, while significant, may be regarded as a practice run for the November election. And as such, the state may serve as a role model for other Republican-controlled states. Wisconsin Republican operative Brandon Scholz oberserved, “If the political folks don’t use this as a lesson learned for the fall, they’re making a mistake.”
By blocking all efforts to change the date of the election (to a time when the pandemic may ebb), Republicans are counting on tens or hundreds of thousands of registered voters in Wisconsin making a rational decision to play it safe, and not go to the polls. Or, if they embrace the risk of acquiring COVID-19, they will have many obstacles to overcome (as described in the next paragraph) – and of course, they increase their chances of dying.
These legislators are counting on hundreds of polling places being closed on election day, because workers are afraid to staff them. (Milwaukee has the highest incidence of coronavirus in the state with nearly half the cases and deaths. As the week began, only five polling places were scheduled to open; at the other 175 polling locations, there would be no voting on Tuesday). The lines to vote, if people decide to vote, will be long. Maintaining social distance will not be feasible. And efforts to mitigate the risk, by limiting the number of people inside, will ensure that things will not go smoothly.
Each of these logistical issues could be expected to decrease the total number of votes cast—especially in urban areas where residential density magnifies the risks of contagion (and where Democratic voters predominate). Lower turnout elections almost always advantage Republicans, whether a Republican member of the state supreme court is on the ballot (as in this primary), or a Republican president, whose popularity has never reached 50%, is on the ballot (as in November). Lower turnout increases the prospect of Republican victories. President’s Trump’s reelection may hinge on this highly contested battleground state.
Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos issued this statement:
Neither man addressed questions about how to protect voters, with the closure of hundreds of sites, who would have to crowd into a smaller number of polling places during a deadly pandemic. Nor did they explore their take-out food analogy in a helpful way. Making a run for take-out food is not limited to a single day, or to a certain retail outlet (in contrast to a legally assigned polling place). And with a wide array of restaurant delivery options, one doesn’t even have to get in the car to get take-out food. With a spontaneous phone call, the food will arrive at ones front door.
In addition to proposals to move the election date, Democrats offered a number of ideas for making mail-in voting simpler and more user-friendly. Wisconsin Republicans refused to budge. User-friendly voting, which will increase turnout, is the last thing Republicans want.
Former GOP state party chair, Brian Reisinger, said this: “There’s serious concern on the conservative side that the liberals are changing the rules in the middle of the election and tilting them toward their favor,” though the reference to “the middle of” is a feint: timing is not the reason for Republican opposition to making voting easier. He adds: “There’s a major feeling that absentee and early voting are tools of the left to make up for the fact that they can’t win on election day.”
Voter suppression is hardly confined to Wisconsin. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was narrowly elected in 2018, while serving as Secretary of State. In the latter office, he was credited with the most extensive arsenal of voter suppression techniques in the country: In addition to Georgia’s enactment of voter-ID laws, proof of citizenship requirements, and restricting early voting, Secretary of State Kemp purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, blocked new registrations, and pressed local officials behind the scenes to close, move, and consolidate polling sites. Every action, as designed, disproportionately serves to limit the number of Democratic voters.
Three days before the election, Kemp announced that his office was investigating the Democratic Party for hacking into the state voter database. After the election this accusation was found to be baseless. When the press reported that Georgia’s voter purges may have violated federal law, Kemp offered congratulations to his campaign: “Good work, this story is so complex folks will not make it all the way through it.”
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Georgia Democrats have advocated expanding voting by-mail. Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston has spoken candidly about his opposition: because it increases voter turnout.
“This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia,” Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge, said during an interview with Fetch Your News, a North Georgia news site. “Every registered voter is going to get one of these. … This will certainly drive up turnout.”
These battles play out across the country, especially in states with Republican control of at least one branch of the legislature or the office of secretary of state. This past week, Donald Trump commented on “Fox and Friends” about the “crazy” things the Democrats proposed in the recently enacted economic recovery bill: “They had things – levels of voting – that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have another Republican elected in this country again.”
Republicans are all-in with Trump, and all-in with voter suppression.
Voter-suppression is hardly new. It was championed by the late New Right activist, co-founder of both the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, Paul Weyrich.
I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
As I write this, the five men who make up the Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court have weighed in, blocking Wisconsin’s extension of the deadline for mailed-in ballots. The deadline had been extended because many voters received their ballots late. The stage is set. Tomorrow Wisconsin voters will be given a choice: go to the polls to cast a ballot, or protect yourself and stay at home, forgoing your right to vote.
We can thank Republican legislative leaders in Wisconsin for clarifying their level of commitment to voter suppression. In the face of a deadly pandemic, political advantage trumps public health. We can thank the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court for amplifying the message that voter suppression is a national endeavor.