Voter Suppression, Democrat-Style

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At last week’s meeting of the Arlington (VA) County Democratic Committee, at the very end of the meeting, the committee’s parliamentarian, Jessie Ojeda, took the microphone and stood in front of the elementary school’s cafeteria to casually deliver an ast

onishing initiative to the party members in attendance.

“I promise to keep this very brief because I know that bylaws are not the most intriguing subject…” she started.

Perhaps so, unless of course, those bylaws are about to take the very un-democratic step of stripping most of the county from being able to vote for party officers, including the chair. 

It’s no secret that Arlington, Virginia, leans left.  Approximately 80% of the registered voters in the county are Democrats and ACDC holds much power.  Every elected position, from county board to treasurer to sheriff, and all the other elected positions, are held by a Democrat.   

The party funnels money and resources, officially and unofficially, and lots of it, to their anointed candidate(s), making breaking through that power next to impossible.  More problematic is that ACDC members, though not necessarily the average voter, skews far-left and the party, therefore, elevates candidates who aligned with their more extreme political leanings. 

The county board, the governing body of Arlington (there is no mayor), is dominated, and has been for years, by very progressive voices that are as shortsighted as they are loud.  They peddle ideas that sound good in the moment, but do nothing to help the community in the long term.  They like giving voters the feels while ignoring the facts.  Trump does this, too, with much success. 

But the chasm between the party elite and the everyday voter is growing deeper and wider.  And ACDC knows it. 

In many ways, that gap is being driven by the very issues we are seeing with the Democratic Party at the national level.  Those driving the messaging and initiatives of the party are misaligned with the reality of the voter.  The Democrats became the party that bowed to money and big corporations and the demands of the fringes, and they forgot who they were supposed to be fighting for.  Don’t ask me, just look at who Trump appealed to—working class white men, Latinos, Black men, voters without a college education.  These were the Dems’ peeps.  No more.  There has been a deep political shift, and that shift has more to do with the Democrats’ shortcomings than the Republicans’ appeal. 

When the right went extreme, the way to counter that was to get more moderate, appeal to more people, and not create a space for the extreme to thrive.  The Democrats should have postured themselves as the alternative to crazy, they should have been the adults in the room.  But that wasn’t what the Democrats did.  They did just the opposite—they countered the extreme with extreme and the party moved farther left.  Digging into a position, demonizing the other side, trying to shove beliefs down the throats of voters rather than looking for ways to compromise, that wasn’t the way to advance as a community or country.  When the parties behave like that, elections become a ‘pick your poison’ proposition for voters.  It isn’t about the best candidate anymore; it is who the voter disliked least.  That is a hard truth and one that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to fully acknowledge. 

Which brings us back to the changes ACDC is proposing to their bylaws.  The change is only seven words, only two more words than the current language, but those seven words are monumental in eroding democracy in the county. 

On the topic of electing party leadership, the current bylaws (in Article VI, Part A) read “Any eligible Arlington County voter” is allowed to vote for party chair and other leadership positions.  The proposed revised language would say, “Any voting member of the County Committee.”  A voting member of the County Committee is only:

• Precinct captains (126)

• Officers of ACDC (13)

• Area chairs (13)

• Members of the Democratic State Central Committee who reside in Arlington (~4)

• The immediate past chair of ACDC (1)

• Leadership of the Arlington Young Democrats (4)

• Democratic elected officials in the county (20)

• Representatives of the outreach caucuses (I had chaired the Women’s Caucus) (10)

If you do the math, you’re looking at less than 200 people who are eligible to vote for party leadership under this proposed change to the bylaws.  There are 164,107 registered voters in Arlington, of which 80.6% are Democrats (so about 132,270 voters).  This means that proposed bylaws change will remove the right to vote for over 130,000 voters in the county. 

ACDC wants to take away the voting rights of 132,079 people. 

That’s what this change comes down to and it isn’t a good look for Democrats.

The goal of the amendment, Ms. Ojeda said in that cafeteria on June 4th, is to “limit voting eligibility to our most active members.”  That reasoning doesn’t hold water.  The people who vote for party chair usually are already the most active members.  When only 12% of Democratic voters come out for a primary election, you aren’t going to get a huge turnout for an ACDC officer election held in the dead of winter (elections are in December or January).  But that’s the voter’s choice to make, not ACDC’s.

When Steve Baker, the outgoing chair of ACDC, first ran to lead the committee in Arlington, his first priority was, “to keep Arlington Democrats a big tent party.”  His words at the beginning of his term as head of ACDC stand in stark contrast to his actions at the end of his term.  ACDC is advocating for a very small tent indeed.

ARLNow, the local news outlet, offered another possible reason for the bylaws change.  They report, “Privately, one party leader told ARLnow that a change could provide a guardrail against a ‘hostile takeover’ by voters.”  They’re probably not wrong.  The party is run, and has been run for many years, for the benefit of a small number of insiders, but it is the whole county that must live with the decisions this Democratic oligarchy makes for all of us.  The party elite are right to fear a rebellion is coming. 

But here’s the thing, oppression does more to fuel revolt than it does to suppress one. 

By instituting a system of oppression on those who do not subscribe to a very narrow political viewpoint, by suppressing voters’ voices, ACDC is all but guaranteeing they will be challenged, and they will be challenged again and again until those in power are toppled. 

ACDC could take another approach: they could try to be more inclusive.  Some might even call it a “big tent.”  Rather than working to formally establish a Democratic totalitarian system, they could work to appeal to a broader audience.  ACDC could do more to find common ground and bring more diverse perspectives and ideas to the table instead of isolating themselves amongst the party extremes. 

The irony of having to call out my fellow Democrats to be more accepting of differences says all you need to know about the state of the Democratic Party today.

It might feel good now to be a Democrat in Arlington, but it won’t feel good forever so long as the party caters to the ideological fringes.  The pendulum will swing.  It has happened nationally, and I believe it will happen in Arlington, too.  ACDC, should this change to their bylaws be approved, is positioning themselves to accelerate that transformation.