Last week, the Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously overturned a lower court ruling. That ruling would have prevented four laws from the 2021 General Session from being enforced: Acts 736, 973, 728, and 249. We don’t really need to hash out the details of these acts; suffice it to say they make voting in Arkansas exponentially more onerous when we’re already in the bottom 10 states for voter turnout.
Predictably, Rep. David Ray decided to prove, once again, he’s a partisan hack after folks decried the Supreme Court’s ruling. He claimed the laws weren’t “controversial,” that they passed both legislative chambers “overwhelmingly,” and the Court upheld the laws “unanimously.”
But Arkansas, this is exactly why a supermajority made up of these extremists cannot possibly be focused on voter justice. Of the 100 House members, 22 were Democrats and 78 were Republicans. In the Senate, there were 7 Democrats and 28 Republicans. That is, by all accounts, a comfortable supermajority.
Starting in the Senate, two of the four laws gathered only 25 Yea votes; the other two managed 27. There were various combinations of Nays, “Present”, and non-votes, but suffice it to say there was always at least one Republican abstaining or voting no; even Breanne Davis, who’s no friend to voters, cast a ballot against Act 249, a law that onerously increased voter ID requirements far beyond what’s necessary to protect election integrity.
In the House, things look much, much worse for Ray’s claim. Act 973, making it more difficult to receive and count absentee ballots while we were in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns, lost thirteen Republican votes. The other three lost a couple each.
Ray’s reliance on the unanimity of the Supreme Court decision is also laughable, given that they’re all Republican judges. Non-partisanship is a shield for them to hide behind, most proven by the appointment of Cody Hiland, the former chair of the State GOP Party. To claim that a unanimous decision means… well, anything, really, in this context shows a willful misunderstanding of the political dynamics of the state.
A supermajority is bad for everyone, not just the minority party. It drives politics far to one side because legislators are scared of facing primaries by even more extreme candidates, and the most passionate or extreme members of the electorate are the folks who tend to vote in primaries.
Make no mistake, Arkansas – this will hurt every voter, not just the ones Rep. Ray doesn’t want voting.