In Selma, Ala., on Sunday, I joined thousands of citizens marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, marking the 47th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the 1965 march and police riot that helped spark the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
The march was not a memory to the past, but a protest of the present. In Alabama, conservatives are moving once more to suppress the vote, part of a concerted effort across the country to make it harder for the poor, the elderly and minorities to vote.
Alabama's voter ID law will require citizens to present photo identification at the polls. An Alabama immigration law requires police to determine citizenship status during traffic stops, essentially exposing Latino citizens and non-citizens to constant harassment.
Photo ID laws have been introduced or passed in at least 15 states. They discriminate against those who don't have driver's licenses -- disproportionately poor, elderly and minorities. Nationally they could disenfranchise about 5 million voters. Several states are also pushing legislation to restrict voter registration and to limit early voting.
The current drive is the greatest insult to the Voting Rights Act since it was passed 47 years ago.
Republicans argue that the voting laws are needed to counter fraudulent voting. But they have produced zero evidence of organized efforts to tip elections with fraudulent voters. The laws, as noted by the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the march organizers, are a "solution looking for a problem."
On Bloody Sunday 47 years ago, Americans saw nonviolent African-American protesters brutalized in a police riot. The nation's conscience was touched and Washington responded, as President Johnson pushed through the Voting Rights Act.
Protests against current efforts to suppress the vote have only just begun. But they will build -- and they will once more pose a moral challenge to America.
Will Americans reward a party that is systematically seeking to make it harder to vote? Will they accept routine harassment of minorities because of their fears about immigration? Will the politics of division once more be effective?
In the old South, whites feared that they would suffer with the end of segregation. Their privileges would be reduced; their economy would be upended. In fact, the civil rights movement's victories opened the South to a new prosperity. Investment flowed in. Companies that would have not gone into a segregated South moved to Atlanta and other cities.
It turned out that to hold African-Americans in a ditch, whites had to stay down there with them. The end of segregation, the passage of voting rights, created new opportunity for all.
But the old South did not die. The modern Republican Party was built on its infamous Southern strategy, appealing to whites in reaction to the passage of the civil rights laws. Now that strategy, which alienated African-American voters, seems to be replaying itself in the party's harsh rhetoric and actions about the new wave of immigrants. The result may well alienate Latino and Asian-American voters.
Worse, it means that one of America's two major parties is increasingly devoted to finding ways to limit the vote rather than expand it. In fact, what we ought to have is a competition on how to ensure that every citizen can cast his or her vote easily. Automatic registration on birth, early voting, extended voting days, polls that are open on weekends and before and after work days -- we should be having a competition on how to increase the vote, not on how to suppress it.
Follow Rev. Jesse Jackson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/revjjackson
John W. Boyd Jr.: Voter Suppression: A Real and Enduring American Issue
Jon Blazer: New Anti-Immigrant Law Sinks Alabama Into Deeper Morass
These Republicans haven't even required voter ID at their own primaries, where they make the rules, yet they want to impose them on national and state elections. They are a bunch of lying hypocrites and they all need to be thrown out and publicly shamed.
A driver's license or ID card is not required by law. Under SCOTA's ruling of Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court (2004) 542 U.S. 177, was that a state could make it a crime for a person to refuse to identify himself if lawfully detained for criminal activity.
If we cut a large portion of federal spending, I would advocate a taxpayer funded program at a state level that gives FREE picture ID voter registration cards to those without another form of picture ID (ie license, passport, ID card).
If there is no cost, nobody that wants to vote will have an excuse not to march down to the DMV or Post Office and get one.
On the back end you just implement some facial recognition software and cross reference it against DMV photos, Felons, and passport photos to ensure someone isn't committing fraud. If so, toss them in the clink for 30 days.
Problem solved
Yipes!
Here's a great video of the current situation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=GqMVxeZhflI&feature=player_embedded
Really, If we think we can collect taxes, have drivers, payout SS accurately, can't we figure out a way to be sure only citizens vote...and only once? Is govrenment that broken?
According to an 'immediate release' from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted [R], if it matters, dealing with "Inconsistent Federal Law", 1993 National Voter Registration Act, he CAN NOT MAINTAIN an accurate list of registered voters.
In 1 county there are 184 more registered voters than there are residents 18 & over as per "Resident population 18 years and over (April 1-complete count) 2010". In a second county (Wood) there are 6,237 more registered voters than there are residents 18 & over, which EXCEEDS 6% of of the population 18 & over!!!! "In other Ohio counties, registration rates appear unusally high - most at 85% or higher."
QUESTION: To whom was this letter sent?
ANSWER: The Honorable Eric Holder, United States Attourney General
Do I have your 'permission AND approval' to cast 6,421 straight republican ballots for these voters??
P.S. Have you seen the posted video showing people showing up at the polls & giving their name and birthday to cast their ballot & then telling the election official he/she died on xx/xx/201x?
Speaking of IL Mr Jackson, I can confirm that after years of working precincts in a Chicago collar county, there are numerous dead people; there are families who have moved out of the area; there are kids who grew up in the area but have long since moved away--all of them remaining on the voter rolls for years, even decades. In the age of technology it is shocking that voter rolls can't be scrubbed & kept current. And I could guarantee this is what is found across the nation.
Since citizenship is a requirement for voting in this country, it is only logical that one must prove who they are in order to cast a ballot--a government issued photo I.D. is the best proof--so long as a birth certificate or citizenship papers have been submitted. It's a small price to pay for honest & fair elections. You do want fair elections, don't you, Mr Jackson?
Stop being a hysteric. Voter fraud is a greater danger to our system than having to prove you really are who you claim to be. With the rise in mail-in ballots, the theft of ballots to be illegally used has become a danger. The use of phony addresses to vote multiple times is a PROVEN danger, as we have seen counties receive more votes by hundreds, or even thousand, than they have registered voters.
Then go to the DMV and protest their discriminatory practices. Demand that they make old or young, white or black, rich or poor produce the same documents for an ID. Oh wait, they already do. Nevermind, continue to complain about nothing.