Reject the big lie

Republicans Jane Timken and Josh Mandel, both of whom want to succeed U.S. Sen. Rob Portman in 2023, are promoting the big lie about the 2020 presidential election. They also are backing GOP lawmakers across the country proposing a variety of laws designed to suppress the vote. Every Republican lawmaker in the U.S. House has decided the fewer people who vote, the better. That is simply wrongheaded, narrow-minded and, frankly, a poor response to challenge. The truth is President Joe Biden won the 2020 election by a landslide, fair and square. Instead of limiting the number of people who vote, what leaders should do, in our view, is work to expand their base. Timken and Mandel don't have enough faith in their own resumes, it seems, so they tightly grip audacious claims of voter fraud that were never credible and never proved. Elections officials and judges in all 50 states and the federal bench, from both political parties, are unanimous in declaring the 2020 election clean of voter fraud of any consequence. The big lie counter-argument Republicans are embracing comes from irresponsible conspiracists still in the cache of the internet who have no grounding and no standard for fact. Timken and Mandel are promoting it to appeal to a base prone to outrage. It's a go-right-in-the-primary and back-to-center campaign strategy we hope they soon both abandon. If they won't do that, then it's a strategy we hope ends in failure for both of them. We would much prefer their campaigns tout their own leadership abilities. To date, however, they continue to cater to a diminishing base, a base easily swayed by misinformation that grows more intolerant, it seems, with each passing day. That, in our view, endangers our country. We hope it emerges to be clear: The same majority that propelled Biden to office will reject the big lie and reject other lies about voter suppression being a good thing. It is not. It is, rather, a thing that traces its ancestry to Jim Crow, to poll taxes and poll tests, and worse. It does not, and is not, a protection against voter fraud. It is a wink and a nod to a disgraceful past, and it is crass and uncaring to suggest it is anything else. The Brennan Center for Justice, named after conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, contends the big lie is already having a corrosive impact on the nation: "In a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election, and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, legislators have introduced well over four times the number of bills to restrict voting access as compared to roughly this time last year." This is an epic battle, however, and might be resulting in the most important civil rights movement of our time. Opponents of voter suppression — the expansionists — are fighting back. The center reports that 37 states have introduced, prefiled or carried over 541 bills to expand voting access. On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved historic voter protection legislation. We urge readers to reject voter suppression arguments and support the tenants of HR 1, which include automatic voter registration and same-day registration; voting by mail, early voting and ballot access to all communities; and strengthening requirements to disclose sources of "dark money" funds. These are worthy goals and we ask all of our leaders to engage in an honest debate about voting.