During dinner in San Antonio a few years ago, a colleague asked me, shock in her voice, "You're not a Republican?" I proceeded to explain that her party left me in 1980, when candidate Reagan, during a speech in Neshoba County, Mississippi, stated that it was the responsibility of state governments, not the Federal, to enforce the law. In today's parlance, that's called a Dog Whistle, or a veiled message to one's less-than-honorable supporters that you're secretly with them, but cannot state so overtly.
The county seat of Neshoba is Philadelphia. I'm old enough to remember that was the scene of the killing of three young men who were guilty of nothing more than attempting to get this state's citizens registered to vote. These three terrorist murders were committed by the local sheriff and members of the KKK. At the time of Reagan's speech, 16 years later, all the perpetrators still had not been found guilty of their crimes.
One of the outcomes of this horror was passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which brought to bear the power of the Federal Government to ensure that ALL citizens had the right to vote and that local governments could not discriminate against the free expression of this right. This Act was renewed several times by a bipartisan Congress, most recently in 2006, when the Senate approved renewal by a vote of 98-0.
Upon the original passage of the Act, President Johnson was quoted as saying that the Democrats would lose the South for a generation. Who knew he was such an optimist? Subsequent administrations, notably under Reagan Bush II, attempted to subvert various provisions of this law in order to ensure the election of their own candidates to office.
The provision that Republicans were most intent upon overturning was the one that mandated any state with a history of discrimination against the right to vote must have any changes to their voting processes pre-approved by the Department of Justice. Finally, in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that, as discrimination against voters no longer existed, this law was no longer necessary.
Within months, EVERY former Confederate state had implemented new voting procedures, ranging from requiring voter ID, restricting the hours and number of places where early voting could take place, closing DMV offices which made it more difficult for citizens to obtain these necessary IDs. These restrictions had the desired effect: it made it more difficult for minorities to exercise their right to vote.
Those legislators who championed these restrictive efforts claimed that these new regulations would reduce the incidence of in-person voter fraud. Here are the facts: in all Federal elections (for members of Congress and President) between 2002 and 2016, over 1 billion votes were cast. The amount of in-person voter fraud? Less than 60. If you're doing the math, this fraud occurred 0.000000006 % of the time.
Yet, every Southern state, in addition to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin, has enacted these restrictive laws. Looking at this list, the one thing Donald Trump was honest about in 2016 was when he stated that the election was rigged; given all these restrictions, it certainly allowed him a path to an electoral college victory. In Georgia alone, some 600,000 names were purged from the rolls of registered voters. One county, with a majority African-American population, recently attempted to close 7 of its 9 voting precincts in the interest of saving costs. The new regulations in North Carolina were considered so restrictive, a Federal judge, in overturning it, ruled that African-American voters were eliminated with surgical-like precision.
I frequently write my Senators and Congressman, asking what they will do to ensure the expansion of the voting franchise. In two years of writing, I have yet to get an answer to this simple question. My guess is that they prefer the system that tilts the rules so they can remain in office. Perhaps the GOP should now be called the Anti-Democratic Party, since they have little interest in allowing all citizens to vote.
What to do with these scoundrels? At the minimum, they should be required to attend some class in basic Constitutional law, perhaps taught by John Lewis, who certainly knows the subject. I would like to see each representative who votes to restrict voting rights lose their own rights to vote for at least two election cycles, but, we know that will never happen. So, I urge you to take matters into your own hands and vote! There are multiple organizations who can assist voters with information about polling places, registration dates and absentee voting processes. They need your help, in order to get still more of our citizens registered and voting. My favorite is Let America Vote.
At a minimum, check to see if you are, in fact, registered, or to ensure that your state has not, for reasons unknown, purged your name. You can do so at VoteSaveAmerica.com.
Note: The Justice Department attorney who worked to overturn the Voting Rights Act in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration? His name was John Roberts.
