By Glen Reaux

Now that the 2018 midterm elections are over, it’s time to assess the winners and losers.  On the surface, the winners and losers appear to be obvious.  The democrats gained 37 seats and won the house with a total of more than 235 seats and the republicans lost over 30 seats and control.  The republicans maintained control of the senate by gaining 2 seats for a total of 51 and the democrats lost seats in Florida and North Dakota leaving the democrats controlling 46 seats in the Senate.

Women had their largest victory in history.  By the end of the night 112 women had won seats in the congress, 92 in the House of Representatives and 20 in the Senate with most of the women being democrats.  The Democrats also gained 7 governorships for a total of 23 while the republicans lost 7 and now retain 26 governorships.  Democrats certainly have something to build upon and they will now be able to perform the constitutionally mandated legislative oversight of the executive branch, something for which the Republican Party proudly won the Dereliction of Duty Award.  Based upon these results, it appears that the democrats were the big winners and the Republicans huge losers.  These results are very deceiving.  Both parties won but America lost.  Yes America, the American people lost the 2018 midterms.

Evidence of this loss is proven by the number of citizens who were prevented from receiving their duly electable representation due to voter suppression and gerrymandering.   These crimes that are in clear violation of the constitution are committed by duly elected officials that have sworn to uphold the laws of this great nation.  These crimes have now become the new normal for American politics.  Voter suppression crimes have become so widespread because the criminals are almost never prosecuted.  The lack of prosecution is rooted in the fact that politicians that commit these crimes will never be prosecuted by the politicians that they help to elect.  In the few cases that are prosecuted, the penalties and punishments are so negligible that they fail to act as a deterrent.  And in many cases, the courts ignore the crimes as if the judges had conspired with the criminals. In every instance, the victims of these atrocities are nonwhite American citizens.

This election system is a corrupt and racist institution.   Proof of this racist corruption was overtly exhibited in the states of North Dakota, Kansas and Georgia.  In North Dakota, the state legislature passed laws which in effect prohibited Native Americans from voting in the election.  In North Dakota, Native Americans traditionally vote democratic and the Native American vote was instrumental in giving the senate seat to democrat Heid Heitkamp in 2012.  The North Dakota voter ID law required voters to have an ID with a street address on it.  This has never been a requirement in the history of the state.  Since a large percentage of North Dakota’s Native American population live on reservations which do not have street addresses, this targeted law intentionally suppresses the Native American vote.  This is a crime meant to strip an ethnic minority population of its rights to vote which in doing so guaranteed the republicans a victory.   In Brakebill v Jaeger North Dakota Secretary of State, the republican controlled Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Native Americans claiming that to return to the original system of voting would cause too much confusion.

In Dodge City Kansas where the minority population is 63.4%, with Hispanics making up 59.1% of that, the county clerk, under the influence of the Secretary of State, moved the city’s one voting location several miles outside of the city.  The usual voting location was at a civic center located in the heart of the city.  According to the county clerk, the move was made due to construction at the civic center.  There was no construction at the center and events scheduled for the center were on going.  Since Hispanics were more dependent upon public transportation, this made it harder for them to be able to cast their votes.  In Waller County, Texas, students at Prairie View A&M University, a Historically Black University, followed specific voter registration instructions provided in writing by the county clerk.  After  completing their registration, many of them were told that their registrations were invalid for their appointed precinct.  They would not be able to vote on campus and they would have to travel many miles to vote at an off campus site.  Only after national news coverage was given to the story did the Secretary of State correct the problem.

One of the more offensive cases of voter suppression occurred in this year’s Georgia Governor’s race where an African American woman, Stacey Abrams has challenged the Secretary of State, Brian Kemp for the governorship.  Candidate Kemp, serving as Secretary of State used the power of his office to withhold the registration applications of more than 53,000 Georgians.   Nearly 70% of them were African-Americans.  From 2013-2017 under Kemp’s administration,  more than 1.3 million or 18% of the states eligible voters, most of them being minorities were purged from the rolls.  Kemp has also refused to count absentee ballots based solely upon his discretion.  There should be national laws preventing a sitting officer from officiating over an election in which he is a candidate.   The conflict of interest and the possibility for corruption are glaring.  Kemp appears to have won the election by less than 1.3 %, an amount that is way less than the number of minorities who have been prevented from voting.   Ms. Abrams has refused to concede the election and has demanded that all absentee ballots be counted.  A recount is sure to follow.  It remains to be seen if such a demand will be granted.

These acts of voter suppression have become rampant since the 2012 Shelby County Alabama v Eric Holder Attorney General United States Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 .  This law guarded against these types of actions in states that had developed reputations for voter suppression improprieties and crimes.  The law required that before states could enact changes that could impact voting, permission would have to be granted by the federal government.  The Supreme Court decision, removed this critical element which helped to curtail voter suppression.  In its ruling, the court felt that protections against voter suppression was no longer needed.

As outrageous as these crimes of voter suppression against nonwhite American citizens are, the atrocities caused by gerrymandering have had perhaps a more devastating impact on our society.  In gerrymandering, politicians pick their voters instead of the voters picking their politicians.  This happens when state legislatures draw congressional district lines which are not representative of the population.  These congressional districts are drawn to favor a particular political party or candidate not the citizens of a particular geographic area.  After the 2010 census, most of the state legislatures redrew congressional district lines to favor their party.  Their party was the Republican Party.  The affects of gerrymandering has been made obvious in every election, state and national since 2012.  In the 2018 midterm elections the democrats regained control of the House of Representative due to their ability to win more than 25 seats.  If not for gerrymandering, they actually would have won more than double that.  In senate races, democrats cast 12 millions more votes than republicans, but they still lost 2 seats. This kind of loss is only made possible by gerrymandering.  Gerrymandering makes people slaves to their elected officials.

Voter suppression, gerrymandering and judicial malfeasance are all cancerous crimes that infected our 2018 midterm elections on national, local and statewide levels.  These crimes not only deny you your constitutional rights to free and fair elections, they enslave you and the rest of the American People.   And, they will continue to do so.  Regardless of party affiliation, enslaved people will always be the losers of elections.

Even in Trump’s Republican America, America loses the 2018 midterms.