OK, so the strike down of the Voting Rights act was a travesty for democracy, much akin to the Citizens United debacle. But it seems to me that this speed bump in the road could be a bit easier to deal with than Citizen's United. We simply don't have the resources and financial/political stroke to overcome Citizen's United - not when the other side is funded by the financial kingpins of our society.
But in the case of overcoming the VRA vivisection, perhaps we can circumvent their intentions by a) making it easier to get those undocumented voters the papers they need, and b) helping get them to the polls. It seems that in the past there was always some last minute effort by the Repubs to require onerous registration/proof of identity, and we simply never had time to mount an effective rebuttal. Why this always took our side by surprise is one of life's natural mysteries, but there you have it.
However, NOW we have a reasonable amount of warming, and no reasonable excuses. In states like mine (Texas), voters are simply going to have to show up with a valid ID if you want to vote. I'm actually ambivalent about this, as long as we make it easy for everyone to get the paperwork, but that is a story for another diary.
Let's focus on the challenge at hand - helping voters get that documentation ahead of time. We have advanced warning of what Repubs have planned for future efforts to deny minority/liberal votes, and we have time to circumvent this odious ruling. How? By raising funds. By organizing and coordinating efforts to a) get these voters the proper paperwork and b) helping them get to the polls. By reminding everyone how absolutely awful and anti-democratic these efforts are.
Our efforts can be as simple as providing undocumented citizens with a ride to the governmental office that will issue them the appropriate form of ID. But much more often, this will require that we fund and facilitate efforts to provide the background documentation/affidavits that these folks need to prove that they are in fact eligible to vote. For example, many elderly citizens simply don't have state issued birth certificates since they were born at home. They've voted in Texas for decades, but that won't buy them a cup of warm spit in this state.
So who leads that charge? Is it OFA? Is it organized by state liberal activists? Speaking as a liberal in Texas, I'm not sure we have the political infrastructure in place to fund and man such an effort. But Texas is such a potential political plum that I would imagine that national political orgs should want to step in to help.
The battle lines have now been clearly drawn and we know what needs to be done to win in the long run. Who amongst us will take the lead???
