Top GOP lawyer lets it slip. Voter suppression is party’s playbook in NC | Opinion
Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud: if it’s too easy to vote, they won’t win.
The Washington Post reported this week that Cleta Mitchell, a Republican legal strategist, is pitching a plan to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups — and it includes targeting students and other young people in North Carolina and other states.
In a presentation to top GOP donors last weekend, Mitchell expressed a desire to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voting registration and by mail. Mitchell reportedly said in her presentation that our electoral systems must be saved “for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.” Donald Trump reportedly told donors at the same event that he eventually wants to end all mail-in and early voting.
Mitchell is one of several lawyers who aided Trump in his scheme to overturn the 2020 election, peddling lies that included absurd claims of voting by dead people and non-citizens. She now spearheads the so-called Election Integrity Network, an operation that trains a “volunteer army of citizens” to aggressively monitor elections.
Mitchell specifically referenced North Carolina in her presentation, telling donors that she thinks “we can fix a few things” in the state now that Republicans have veto-proof control of the legislature.
Indeed, several bills introduced by Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly appear to be targeted toward such goals. Mitchell’s strategy largely hinges upon growing a large network of poll observers — official volunteers for a political party authorized to monitor polling places for any improper activity. North Carolina Republicans have proposed a bill that would allow poll observers to move more freely inside polling places.
Meanwhile, two separate proposals aim to limit in-person early voting, which tends to favor Democrats. The bills would cut the early voting period in half, from 17 days to only about a week. It’s also the most popular voting method in North Carolina — more than half of voters voted early in the 2022 election.
Another bill, ironically named the “Election Day Integrity Act,” would change the deadline for absentee ballots in North Carolina. Similar legislation was vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2021. Some — but not all — of the bills were introduced by members of the House Freedom Caucus, who in 2021 attempted to forcibly inspect state voting machines to see if they were illegally connected to the internet.
In audio of the presentation obtained and shared on social media, Mitchell balked at the ease of campus voting, calling it “this young people effort that they do.” She lamented that polling places are basically “next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote and go back to bed.”
Because how dare we make voting too accessible?
The people who benefit most from increased access to the polls — young people, low-income people, people of color — disproportionately vote Democratic. And it would make sense that Mitchell would be afraid of young people voting. While young people still vote at a lower rate than other age groups, youth turnout in 2022 was the second-highest it’s been in three decades.
Republicans claim that they simply want to make our elections more secure, that they just want to protect the “integrity” of the electoral process, but what they say behind closed doors exposes their true intentions.
In the eyes of at least some conservatives, the real problem with our elections isn’t that they’re fraudulent — it’s that Republicans aren’t winning them. There is not, nor has there ever been, evidence of widespread voter fraud that would suggest a problem with the way our elections are conducted.
But instead of changing their approach to win over voters, Republicans would rather just change the rules of the game.
