Voter suppression laws are Christian nationalist policy. They are part of a long lineage of movements that see White Protestants as the only legitimate power brokers in the American landscape. The 253 voter suppression bills put forth by the GOP over the last month are the result of the belief that not everyone should be able to vote and thus not everyone should be able to govern.
After this first segment, we turn to Beth Moore's departure from the SBC, and discuss why it is and is not a big deal. From there we talk about conservative secessionist fantasies and finish with a few comments on the racism scandal surrounding the Royal family.
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Axis Mundy Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi, faculty in religion, Skidmore College, and I'm here today with my co-host, I'm Dan Miller, associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you, Brad.
I think it's safe to say we're both continuing to lose our minds, like whatever minds we had.
They're thinner now, so I'll apologize to everybody now in advance of whatever we do for the next hour or so.
I hear you.
I look at March, and I give this talk to my students, that March is a faux amie.
It's a false friend.
You think in the school year, March is like, oh, Springtime!
I hear birds out my window.
It's time to look towards warmer weather and brighter days.
And in fact, there's still eight weeks left of the school year.
There's no light at the end of the tunnel.
And the weather's not as good as you think.
And you're so tired that even when you take a nap, you're like, I'm even more tired now.
So I don't know.
So Brad's reason for hope is going to be that we're almost halfway through March.
We'll just cut to that now.
All right.
So.
Let's talk about voter suppression.
And Dan, let's talk about voter suppression as an expression of Christian nationalism.
Here's what I mean by that.
John Kavanaugh, Arizona State GOP rep, says this this week.
There's a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they're willing to risk fraud.
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.
Let me say that again.
But everybody shouldn't be voting.
This is a sentiment, Dan, that's been expressed throughout American history.
It's not new.
It's not modern.
It is as American as it gets.
Certain people who have power wanting to keep power by limiting the vote.
Perry and Whitehead came out with some great stats this week.
They looked at what happens to trends about voting and making it easy to vote before and after the election.
So they asked about this, they asked people this question, in some ways, I think we make it too easy to vote.
In October 2020, if you look at the chart and I can post this later, right, you have a kind of line that with very liberal people all the way to very conservative people goes from zero to like 23% on that, right?
So very few people think we make it too easy to vote before the election.
After the election, if you look at the line, among conservative and very conservative people, it goes up to over a third among conservatives and almost to 50% among very conservative people.
Meaning Trump lost, the GOP lost power in the House of Congress, And what happens?
People think it's too easy to vote, just like Kavanaugh in Arizona says.
This comes on the heels of 253 new bills across 43 states to suppress the vote.
In Arizona, a state House committee approved a bill that would turn the state's permanent early voting list into one that drops those who skip consecutive election cycles.
On Monday, last week, the state Senate approved a bill that would require voters to submit identification paperwork with their mailed-in ballots.
Instead of the state's current system of matching signatures on ballot envelopes with voter signatures on file.
So, you would have to include affidavits with your date of birth and driver's license, state ID, or tribal ID card and number.
You could also use a utility bill.
There are many concerns here about identity theft.
In Iowa, there's a law that cuts Iowa's early voting period from 29 days to 20.
Polls will now close at 8 p.m.
rather than 9 p.m.
This is in the wake of high voter turnout in Iowa.
No proof of any sort of voter fraud or voter issues in the state, and yet the conservative state legislature and the governor decided this was a good idea.
The law significantly tightens the rules for when absentee ballots must be received by county auditors in order to be counted.
Ballots must now arrive by the time polls close in order to be counted.
Previously, ballots placed in the mail the day before would be counted.
And that's from the Des Moines Register.
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