Do Demicrats Xare Eho You Vote For When They Register People

Voters look in line to cast their ballots in the land'south chief ballot on Tuesday in Atlanta. Ron Harris/AP hide caption

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Ron Harris/AP

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots in the state's primary election on Tuesday in Atlanta.

Ron Harris/AP

Republicans and Democrats seldom hold on much in 21st century politics — only 1 event that divides them more ever may be voting and elections.

The parties didn't only battle about whether or how to enact new legislation following the Russian interference in the 2016 election. They also differ in the bones means they perceive and frame myriad aspects of practicing democracy.

Republicans' and Democrats' vastly dissimilar starting points assist explain why the politics over voting and elections have been and likely will remain and so fraught, through and across Ballot Day this year.

Sometimes it seems as if the politicians involved barely live in the same land. It has go common for one side to discount the legitimacy of a victory by the other.

And the coronavirus pandemic, which has scrambled nearly everything nigh life in the United States, makes agreement it all even more complicated. Here'south what you need to know to decode this year'south voting controversies.

The Rosetta stone

The central that unlocks so much of the partisan debate almost voting is one word: turnout.

An quondam truism holds that, all other things held equal, a smaller pool of voters tends to exist better for Republicans and the larger the pool gets, the better for Democrats.

This isn't mathematically ironclad, every bit politicians learn and relearn regularly. But this assumption is the foundation upon which much else is built.

Traditionally, Republicans have tended to support higher barriers to voting and oft focus on voter identification and security to protect confronting fraud. However, about half of GOP voters back expanding vote by postal service in calorie-free of the pandemic.

Democrats tend to support lowering barriers and focus on making access for voters easier, with a view to encouraging engagement. They support expanding votes via mail service too.

The next fight, in many cases, is nearly who and how many go what admission via mail service.

All this as well creates a dynamic in which many political practitioners can't envision a neutral compromise, because no matter what philosophy a state adopts, it's perceived every bit goose egg-sum.

Or as quondam Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, told NPR, there are no "fair" maps in the discussion nigh how to draw voting districts — considering what Democrats call "off-white" maps are those, he believes, that favor them.

No, say voting rights groups and many Democrats — the simply "off-white" manner to comport an election is to admit every bit many voters as possible. Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who has charged authorities in her home state with suppressing turnout, named her public interest group Fair Fight Activeness.

Admission vs. security

The pandemic has added another layer of complexity with the new emphasis it has put on voting by mail. President Trump says he opposes expanding voting by mail, and his allies, including White House printing secretary Kayleigh McEnany, call the process rife with opportunities for fraud.

Even so, Trump and McEnany both voted by mail this year in Florida, and Republican officials beyond the country have encouraged voting past post.

Democrats, who have made ballot security and voting admission a large office of their political make for several years, argue that the pandemic might discourage people from going to former-fashioned polling sites.

If there's rough agreement nigh that away from the White House, there are many disputes near the specifics — what practices volition be permitted based on what the parties perceive equally beneficial for them.

A report by Stanford Academy found that voting by postal service yielded a small just roughly equal increment in turnout between the parties.

It isn't clear nevertheless how much voting past mail might expand by Election Day, but it'due south the subject of lawsuits across the country; apart from the politics, absentee election-printing is a bazaar business concern and its chapters will exist tested — as may that of the Mail.

How common is voter fraud?

It exists, but it's very rare.

Despite anecdotal cases of people voting fraudulently in person or suspicious ballots appearing in the postal service, almost of the time, in most places, the way elections in the U.S. are processed is legitimate.

Since the pandemic, some Republican officials at the state level accept acknowledged that the party's language around fraud may now be putting voting at risk past amplifying fraud concerns out of proportion.

Read more than from NPR's Miles Parks most the integrity of voting by mail.

Trump sometimes says that large numbers of people vote illegally in the United states of america, but a panel he appointed to investigate that ostensible problem could not substantiate information technology. Listen to an interview with a member of that committee.

Still, anecdotal cases of fraud ingather up across the land.

Voter suppression

Activists ofttimes call out what they term suppression.

In a dispute this jump in Nevada, for example, Democrats sued to stop the country from sending mail service-in ballots only to people who had voted in recent elections rather than to all registered voters.

Democrats said the land's program would disenfranchise some citizens by leaving them out of the chief; Republicans argued that states' voter rolls are often inaccurate and that sending out ballots to everyone could lead to the ballots getting lost or winding upward in the incorrect hands — opening upward the prospect for fraud.

Voter rolls are oftentimes the focus of disputes for these reasons.

People dice, move — and move out of land — and and so government periodically need to delete names. How frequently that happens, and for what reasons, can get controversial and the kernel of legal and political warfare between the parties.

Also with voter identification documents.

In Texas, for case, the Republican-dominated country legislature deemed that handgun licenses were acceptable identification at the polls — but educatee IDs, even those issued by the state'south ain universities, were not.

For all the discussion well-nigh the outcome of voter ID laws, withal, a report last yr establish that whatever impact those laws might have is beginning by increased arrangement and activism past nonwhite voters — leading to no modify in registration or turnout.

Another battlefield is early and absentee voting. Rules vary by country, with some requiring more explanation than others equally to what's permissible.

Bitter lessons

The parties today accept arrived at this moment after years of what they would debate were bad experiences with elections at the easily of their opponents.

Republicans, among other things, sometimes point to what they believe was cheating in the 1960 presidential race. Alleged Democratic chicanery, in this telling, threw the results to John F. Kennedy and toll the race for Richard Nixon.

Fraudulent IDs, undocumented immigrants voting, people being "bused in" on Ballot Day remain consequent themes when Republicans talk about elections.

Democrats await to the decades of Jim Crow discrimination that kept many black voters out of elections.

More recently, they look at the Supreme Court'south 2000 decision that handed the upshot of that election to George W. Bush over Al Gore. The court halted the counting of ballots that Democrats argued could have changed Florida's results, swinging the state to Gore.

Abrams' group perceives what it calls a deliberate campaign past the institution to purge Georgia voter rolls of mainly black or Democratic voters.

Problems with voting in Georgia's primary in June underscored those bug and that history, Abrams and other critics said.

Voters in Georgia are facing outrageous voter suppression resulting from years of election system demolition past Republican lawmakers. If Republicans actually wanted you lot to vote, they would back up #VoteByMail and mitt-marked #PaperBallots. https://t.co/L6WFHKUlne
— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) June 9, 2020

Matters of principle

Many party leaders describe at having arrived at their positions based upon principle. Republicans are more likely to argue that casting a vote is a privilege of citizenship to be earned and safeguarded with restrictions and security.

They also point to what they telephone call the principles of federalism and the demand for people to be engaged at the state and local level with the conduct of elections — not for wide mandates from Washington.

Democrats are more than likely to argue that voting is a right and that the barriers to casting a ballot should be as low every bit practical. President Lyndon Johnson and Democrats in the 1960s used the Voting Rights Deed and federal ability to dismantle racist state laws designed to preclude African Americans from voting, but those actions were later weakened by the Supreme Courtroom.

Some current Democrats, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have called for new action by Congress and the federal government that could involve new funding, legislation and administration from Washington.

Any the outcome of this year's ballot, these disputes over elections themselves likely will go on well into the time to come.