Is The Republican Party Really Waging Interconnected Wars Against American Women And U.S. Democracy?

Yes, But In Some States— Like Florida & Texas— More Than Others

In 2008, Obama took winning Florida’s 27 electoral votes very seriously. He spent an enormous amount of money on voter registration there and his campaign and the Florida Democratic Party registered around 750,000 people. Obama beat McCain by 236,450 votes. This year, the grifters who run the Florida Democratic Party are lying when they say the state is in play; it isn’t. You don’t win because of vibes; you win because of voters. Instead of registering new voters, the Florida Democratic Party has watched as the Republicans unregistered Democrats, hundreds of thousands of them, nearly a million. Vibes won’t matter in Florida’s statewide races. In 2008 there were 4,800,890 registered Democrats and 4,106,743 registered Republicans. This year there are 4,359,354 registered Democrats and 5,385,554 registered Republicans.

Yesterday, Maya Hoff reported that “Voter registration is breaking records as Election Day approaches, particularly among young people, including many first-time voters. On Tuesday's National Voter Registration Day more than 150,000 people registered through Vote.org, the most the organization has ever seen on that day.” No doubt Taylor Swift’s high-profile urgings are inspiring people to register to vote— even in Florida. But in Florida, the deadline to register for an upcoming election is 29 days before that election. So Floridians have about 2 weeks to get registered— and reregistered. The Democratic Party is doing virtually nothing to facilitate that… as they have all year. Although they do want you to send money for their favorite consultants. [Instead send contributions directly to progressive Florida candidates.]

But you can’t just blame the lazy, stupid, incompetent grifters who run the Florida Democratic Party. They have a partner in crime: The Florida Republican Party, which has worked hard and effectively to guarantee that Florida would have “the fifth lowest percentage of registered voters as a share of the eligible population,” after North Carolina, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Yesterday, Bolts reported that “In April 2023, the Florida legislature passed Senate Bill 7050, a law imposing a slew of new regulations on the activities of third-party voter registration organizations. Under the law, these groups must re-register with the state before each election cycle in order to collect voter registration forms, and they have a shorter time frame to return voter registration forms to the county supervisor of elections; just 10 days, down from 14, with a $50 penalty per late day, up to $2,500 per application. SB 7050 also requires that applicants are provided with receipts that contain the name of the volunteer or staff member who registered them. The law also prohibits individuals previously convicted of felonies from ‘handling or collecting’ voter registration applications, and imposes $50,000 fines for each volunteer violating these standards. This effectively requires 3PVROs to conduct background checks. The ceiling for aggregate fines has also increased: groups can now face up to $250,000 in fines each year, quintupling from the previous figure of $50,000.” 

“The effects of SB 7050,” wrote Uma Menon, “have been felt around the state. In a state that already sees lower voter registration rates across the board, particularly for Black, Hispanic, Asian, and other communities of color outside organizations have long stepped in to fill a void left by state actors. But that work is now stalling… ‘7050 was sort of the deathblow to third-party voter registration,’ said Genesis Robinson, interim executive director of Equal Ground Education Fund and Action Fund, a Black-led voter rights organization. ‘It was really a compounding effect with other voter suppression bills that had passed in previous legislative sessions.’… In 2020, the most recent presidential election year, voting organizations in Florida had registered 458,197. In 2024, they have registered only 13,521 Floridians as of August 31.”

Before moving on to the consequences, I just want to mention that the five states with the lowest percentage of registered voters as a share of the eligible population, all have massive Republican control of both houses of their state legislatures. This is what the ugly face of anti-democracy America looks like on a red state level:

North Carolina

• Senate- 60% Republican

• House- 60% Republican

Arkansas

• Senate- 83% Republican 

• House- 82% Republican

West Virginia

• Senate- 91% Republican

• House- 89% Republican

Wyoming

• Senate- 94% Republican 

• House- 92% Republican

Florida

• Senate- 70% Republican 

• House- 69% Republican

As for the consequences, let’s look at Texas. The state has the 10th worst percentage of registered voters as a share of the eligible population— 65.2%. For purpose of comparison, look at pro-democracy states like Washington (75.1%), Vermont (75.4%), Maine (75.6%) and Maryland (75.6%). Republicans completely control Texas’ state government. The governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and Secretary of State are all hyper-partisan Republicans. The state Senate has 19 Republicans (61%) and 12 Democrats (39%) and the state House consists of 86 Republicans (57%) and 64 Democrats (43%). 

Yesterday, NBC News reported on one dramatic consequence: a rise in maternal mortality since the Trump Court banned abortion. “The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care— far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds. From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period… The Texas Legislature banned abortion care as early as five weeks into pregnancy in September 2021, nearly a year before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade— the case that protected a federal right to abortion— in June 2022… Among Hispanic women, the rate of women dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after increased from 14.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 18.9 in 2022. Rates among white women nearly doubled— from 20 per 100,000 to 39.1. And Black women, who historically have higher chances of dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after, saw their rates go from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births.”

The trio of reporters wrote that “Beyond the immediate dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, there is growing evidence that women living in states with strict abortion laws, such as Texas, are far more likely to go without prenatal care and much less likely to find an appointment with an OB-GYN. Doctors say the feeling among would-be moms is fear.”

At the same time, Katie Glueck noted that “On Monday and Wednesday, the deaths of two mothers in Georgia were linked to the state’s far-reaching abortion ban in new reports from ProPublica… ‘This is War on Women on steroids,’ said former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who is voting this year from Harris, the first Democratic presidential candidate to ever earn her vote, she said… [T]his moment is ‘exponentially politically toxic because there’s nothing worse than being a hypocrite, particularly on these things that are so toxic with women. It is Team Misogyny with Trump,’ she added.”