Speaking Friday on GBH’s Boston Public Radio, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat from Newton, framed voting rights as the most important issue facing Americans at the current moment.
“All the good we’re trying to do, whether it’s infrastructure, whether it’s vaccines, whether it’s housing — it’s all secondary to protecting the right to vote,” he said. “What’s happening in states like Texas and North Carolina and Georgia and Arizona, it’s not just suppressing the franchise, which is an old tactic that we’re seeing resurge now. It’s also undermining the independence of election officials, undermining the very process of tabulating election results itself. That to me is almost even scarier.”
Auchincloss’ urgency echoed comments made by President Joe Biden in Philadelphia this week, when he called efforts against GOP voting laws the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”
“My biggest concern for ‘24 or ‘28 is that a purple state goes narrowly towards a Democrat, [and] then the state legislature overturns the result and sends the electors towards the Republican, whether it’s Donald Trump or otherwise,” Auchincloss said. “That would truly slide the United States away from being a functioning democracy.”
Asked what he thinks it’ll take to convince enough Republicans to get behind voting rights legislation like the For The People Act, the first-term congressman said that it’d likely be a combination of what he called “moral-suasion,” paired with economic pressure.
“We’ve gotta make it hit the wallet,” he said. “And that means we have to have a serious conversation at the federal level about whether infrastructure funds need to be tied to voting integrity.”
On the subject of the $1.2 trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill currently making its way through the Senate, Auchincloss likened the process to gymnastics, and said his colleagues just need to “stick the dismount.”
He added, “but we’re going to.”
