GUNTERSVILLE — Former U.S. Senator and current gubernatorial candidate Doug Jones fears the Voting Rights Act “won’t survive” the U.S. Supreme Court’s next term.
Jones issued the warning Friday at a meeting with Strong Coffee, a self-described group of “Democrats, Independents and recovering Republicans.” Jones said if the Act survives, it will be “gutted,” and he lamented the “rollbacks” he was already seeing in voting rights.
The discussion was prompted by a group member, Will Smith, who said to Jones, “I see a lot of people being disenfranchised right now: women, LGBTQ folks, black folks. I've never been threatened by a drag queen reading to a bunch of kids. I've never been threatened by a black man or a woman. I've never been threatened by anybody who's LGBTQ. I've never been threatened by a woman seeking an abortion. I do see a lot of these threats coming from white men, suited up, ties up to here… who want to disenfranchise these people because they're afraid of losing their power, in Washington and here, and I could name a couple of names, but I'd just like to know what your thoughts are.”
Jones said America’s founders knew making the country into a “more perfect union” would be a “work in progress,” and that he was “disturbed” to see that progress erode.
“One thought with that, so many honor movements, whether it was for disability, whether it was gay rights, you name it, all of a sudden America started moving toward that more perfect union. And now all of a sudden, we're seeing the rollbacks. We're seeing the backlash. And I will say this, I do think some in our party went a little bit too far with a lot of things, playing a lot of identity politics, but I didn't want to see the rollbacks. I didn't want to see the rollback, particularly with voting. To me, that is the cornerstone for America.
Jones argued for mail-in voting and against a single, in-person election day.
“There are so many states in this country, they have been able to mail in votes. They've been able to early vote to get their numbers up of people participating in the Democratic process," he said. "And in Alabama, we run them through a funnel so that they only can vote between hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on one day, regardless of what the weather may be, regardless of how you feel, and the SAVE Act is going to make that just as bad.”
“I am not very hopeful that the Voting Rights Act is going to survive the Supreme Court term. If it does, it's likely to be gutted again. You know, maybe Alabama, it's time we did our own damn voting rights bill and give everybody that right to vote. Have some mail-in vote, it can be done. There is no fraud involved that would ever affect an election. There are not illegal, undocumented people of voting in Alabama election. If they do, there may be one or two that are not going to affect an election, unless you're the mayor of Guntersville.”
He also called for ending straight-ticket voting, saying, “Why make it so easy?” and condemned closed primaries as “just another way to rig elections.”
Jones also stoked fears that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would be stationed near certain polling locations to ensure election integrity by keeping illegal aliens from voting.
“There are going to be places where you're going to see either the National Guard or the military or ICE agents, I believe, and I hope to God, I'm wrong,” he said.
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