Smoking Gun: Voter Suppression, in Their Own Words

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The Republican Party’s contempt for democracy could not be more obvious. Its leaders have often been frank about their desire to subvert majority rule and tilt the electoral field toward long-term Republican rule.

Here’s a sampling of some of the anti-democratic views that have been simmering within the upper reaches of the Republican Party—even before Donald Trump became President:

“The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for.”

—Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, interview with The New York Times, June 14, 2021.

Paul also tweeted, on December 27, 2021, that Democrats were seeking “to steal an election” by “targeting and convincing potential voters to complete [absentee ballots] in a legally valid way.”

“This law [the North Carolina voter ID requirement since struck down in court] is going to kick the Democrats in the butt . . . . If it hurts a bunch of lazy Blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.”

—Don Yelton, local Republican leader, in an interview aired on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, October 23, 2013. He was forced to resign later that same week.

“Now many of our Christians  . . .  want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of 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.”

—Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, in a 1980 speech.

“I’m concerned about voter registration in Mississippi. The Blacks are having lots [of] events for voter registration. People in Mississippi have to get involved, too.”

—Jones County election commissioner Gail Welch’s Facebook post, reported by the Clarion-Ledger, June 30, 2020. She was apparently unaware that “the Blacks” are people, too.

“Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and

prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.”

—Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, tweet, October 8, 2020.

“The things [provisions in a bill to expand voting

rights] they had in there were crazy. They had things—levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

—President Donald J. Trump, interview with Fox &

Friends, March 30, 2020.

“Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote—but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

—Arizona state legislator John Kavanagh, Republican, reported by The Hill, March 11, 2021.

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help

foster what I think is better for the country.”

—David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina general assembly’s redistricting committee, in 2016, reported in The Pulse.

“If we win this battle [for one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the nation], President Obama’s going to have a much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.”

—Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Republican, in an interview with Fox News, as reported in The Capital Times, March 10, 2011.