Susan Collins hands Trump the 50th vote against free and fair elections
Maine Sen. Susan Collins made information by including her identify as the 50th Senate supporter of the SAVE America Act — a large voter suppression invoice being pushed by Donald Trump.
MAGA conservatives cheered her addition for 2 causes. First, it signifies that if the invoice involves the Senate flooring, Vice President JD Vance is positioned to forged the tie-breaking vote in favor of passage. Equally vital, they hoped her help signaled that the invoice was average or affordable.
I’ve by no means understood how Collins has managed to domesticate a repute as a average. Whenever I hear her described as such, I consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s well-known letter from a Birmingham Jail, by which he admitted to having been “gravely disappointed with the white moderate.” As he defined, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
According to a current scorecard, Collins has voted with Trump 96% of the time — the identical fee as Mitch McConnell and two factors above conservative Rand Paul. This is hardly the profile of somebody trying to chart their very own path.
In reality, in relation to free and fair elections, Collins is as conservative and anti-voting rights as they arrive. Not solely is she supporting the SAVE Act, however throughout the Biden administration she opposed the For the People Act and the Joe Manchin compromise invoice — the Freedom to Vote Act.
Perhaps extra shocking to some, she additionally voted against the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. When requested why she opposed a invoice to reauthorize and strengthen the Voting Rights Act, Collins claimed, amongst different issues, that the invoice was too lengthy. That’s proper — a senator with a employees of dozens objected to a regulation that will restore minority voting rights as a result of, at 700 pages, it was just too lengthy.
Yet in 2014, when a previous model of the identical invoice was fewer than 30 pages, she additionally voted against it. Perhaps the web page depend isn’t actually what’s driving her choices.
When explaining her opposition to pro-voting laws in 2021, Collins relied closely on states’ rights, arguing that laws sponsored by Democrats “would force numerous changes to laws in states that have been successfully conducting elections for a very long time.”
When it involves free and fair elections, Collins is as conservative and anti-voting rights as they arrive.
Yet that’s precisely what the Save America Act does. It would require each state to vary some side of its present voting legal guidelines, although these states have been “successfully conducting elections for a very long time.”
In 2021, Collins was significantly upset that new pro-voting legal guidelines would influence Maine, “a state that consistently ranks at or near the top of the nation in voter participation.” Yet the Republican Party’s newest anti-voting invoice would trample Maine’s present election legal guidelines.
For instance, beneath Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who’s now working against Collins, Maine expanded the proper to vote, permitting college students to make use of their school ID when registering to vote. In distinction, the Save America Act would categorically ban all school and college IDs from getting used to vote, no matter state regulation.
Ironically — or maybe cynically — Collins earnestly assured her constituents in 2021 that “there are improvements that can be made in our election laws. For example, I support efforts to disclose ‘dark money’ in campaigns.” Yet in 2010, when Democrats wanted a single Republican vote in the Senate to go the DISCLOSE Act, Collins was a tough no.
If you might be sensing a sample, you might be proper. Collins all the time has an excuse to vote against free and fair elections. It is the one challenge on which she reliably proves she is in lockstep with the remainder of her occasion.
Collins is comfortable to all her help for the reauthorization of the VRA in 2006 — however she fails to say that her vote was not wanted. She was not bucking her occasion; she was becoming a member of it. The 2006 regulation handed 98-0.
Yes, in 2022 she supported the bipartisan reform of the Electoral Count Act. But once more, this was a extensively widespread invoice that handed with 68 Senate votes — a digital landslide by at present’s requirements.
When it involves voting rights, Collins solely goes out on a limb to help Republican efforts to limit them. Only when Trump is threatening free and fair elections is she ready to forged a troublesome vote — and she casts it in her favor.
Make no mistake: Collins didn’t should be the 50th supporter of this voter suppression invoice. Former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has nonetheless not stated how he’ll vote. The incontrovertible fact that Collins felt compelled to show she was more durable on voters than McConnell speaks volumes about the place she really stands on this challenge.
Susan Collins is aware of precisely what she is doing. She is exactly the type of so-called average that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about.
Just two weeks earlier than her determination to help the SAVE America Act, Collins stood silently in the Oval Office clutching a crimson MAGA hat as Trump advised lies about our elections and repeated his name for the federal authorities to take over vote counting in sure components of the nation. We know the place she stands — and it is not with voters.
Having watched their senator flip her again on democracy, Maine voters could have an opportunity this November to return the favor.
