Anna I. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Ohio–

On August 20, the homes of several Democrats in Texas were raided by armed police in an attempt to prevent “voter fraud” in the words of the state’s Attorney General, Ken Paxton. These Democrats were also part of the Latino civil rights organization, The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which helps its members register to vote as one of its functions. LULAC has responded by formally requesting the justice department investigate Paxton for voter suppression. Ken Paxton, an unrepentant election denier and fervent MAGA supporter, who was previously impeached from his office, was a key player in Trump’s attempt to challenge the 2020 election results. In that election, his team spent 22,000 hours uncovering a grand total of 16 instances of fraudulent ballots among the total of 17 million ballots. Yet, none of this matters to the Attorney General because he is merely a foot soldier in an army of sycophants whose jobs are to fulfill one central task: to make sure Donald Trump wins in November so that profits stay as high as possible.

Voter suppression is consistently shown to favor reactionary parties over progressive ones, and there is hardly a place where it is more important for MAGA to disenfranchise as many people as possible than Texas. It’s long been predicted that Texas, with demographic patterns taken into account, will soon become competitive between the two capitalist parties. Without Texas, the electoral math for the Republican party to win the presidency would become nearly impossible. Along with the raids on Aug. 20, Governor Greg Abbot has already purged one million people from voter rolls. It remains to be seen what else will be deployed in the state to this unscrupulous end.

Though mostly concentrated in strategic states like Texas, the effort to suppress the right to vote extends across the entire country. In Ohio, HB458 was passed, issuing new restrictions on acceptable identification at the polls. Ohio also had a voter purge as well, to the tune of 155,000 people. In Georgia, the election board has made it easier to delay certification of election results. A slew of lawsuits have been submitted to federal courts seeking to restrict voting rights across the country. These are only the challenges that have happened this year. There are already dozens of laws and court jurisprudence on the books from previous decades.

While Kamala Harris of course will do no better than any other bourgeois politician, a return of Trump would be preferable to some in the American capitalist class. While Biden has given empty promises such as student debt relief or a ceasefire in Gaza, Trump does not and never will give any such pretense. Trump wants Palestinians bombed and sufferers of student debt firmly under the jackboot. The proposal of student debt relief sends shivers down the spine of the American finance capitalist, even if everyone, including Biden himself, knew it was destined to die in court. The thought of American bombs not selling to one of its biggest importers, Israel, is a nightmare to the American capitalist invested in the defense industry. They need to know for sure that the blood will absolutely not stop flowing until they’ve made as much money as possible. 

Participation in the bourgeois elections will not bring about Socialism, but it is the duty of any communist to fight for the working class. Fascism is on the ascent in the USA. The only cure for it, as it always has been through history, is Socialism. We must spread the idea of Socialist democracy to the disillusioned workers who are sick of the sham that is the current system. To paraphrase Lenin, we must utilize these elections to our own ends — not as our only strategy, but as a single tactic in class struggle. Now is the perfect time to spread these ideas, as Americans are freshly reminded of how broken the bourgeois elections are. They deserve to ponder real solutions, so let’s give them some.

Categories: Elections, Government, U.S. News