ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE. IS IT THAT COMPLICATED?
Iadmit that voting is and has always been a celebratory ritual for me, even if the candidate is running unopposed, the ofice is state agriculture commissioner or my district’s makeup means my one vote won’t make much of a difference.
I watched three older siblings march for civil rights, and I am well aware that many brave folks died protecting my right to cast that ballot. While a little rain or a busy schedule might provide an excuse to “sit this one out,” it’s never enough to outweigh the legacy left by a Medgar Evers, who served his country in World War II and was murdered in front of his Mississippi home for, among other civil rights activity, leading voter registration drives in the country he protected.
Mine is not a controversial stand – in fact, it’s patriotic. You would think our country’s leaders, without regard for party or politics, would be on my side. You would be wrong.
When Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in 2013 wrote the majority opinion gutting key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – those that compelled certain states to “preclear” any changes in their voting rules – he insisted that so much had changed in the country that those rules were no longer needed. “The Act imposes current burdens and must be justiied by current needs.”
Racism is dead, or on its last legs, he seemed to declare.
I would not call Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent cynical. It was realistic. As she wrote: “As the record for the 2006 reauthorisation makes abundantly clear, secondgeneration barriers to minority voting rights have emerged in the covered jurisdictions as attempted substitutes for the irst-generation barriers that originally triggered preclearance in those jurisdictions.”
In a perfect country, politicians would rejoice at the chance to win the hearts and minds of constituents with strong policies, to show how inclusive their party’s big tent could be.
But we are not living in Oz, no matter how much the judges who joined Roberts in the majority decision might have wished.
As Ginsburg predicted, the poll taxes, literary tests and lynchings may have disappeared. But the intent remained in full force. The 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling was a green light for the shenanigans the federal government once prevented states from pulling.
Moving of polling places. Strict ID restrictions targeting minorities, the poor, the elderly and the young. Same-day registrations that made voting easier for those working two and three job. Purges of voting lists. The list was limited only by the imaginations of those making it. And boy, did the folks who wanted to choose their voters, instead of letting their voters choose them, have great imaginations.
These new tactics are in bold view in the midterm elections of 2018, with states still mired in lawsuits over restrictions legislators have justiied as a ight against that boogeyman, voter fraud, which every study has proved insigniicant.
In North Dakota, the votes of the original Americans, Native Americans, have been disproportionately jeopardised by a ruling that says a street address rather than a post office box on registrations is required in that sparsely populated state.
In North Carolina, a voter ID bill that has been thrown out by the courts for targeting minority voters with “almost surgical precision” may yet rise from the dead if an amendment to the state’s constitution passes.
Georgia is in a category all by itself. Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, has refused to recuse himself from his day job of secretary of state, which puts him in charge of overseeing elections, including his own. Cosy, wouldn’t you say? Even GOP secretary of state and Kansas gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach, the king of efforts to suppress the vote to ight hordes of supposed illegal voters, has passed his election duties over to a deputy.
Kemp is running against Democrat Stacey Abrams, who could become the irst African-american woman elected governor in this country. What some see as evidence of how far America has come, others see as reason for a second civil war, this time on voting rights.