Yesterday was an epic day for voting rights.
First, as we all know, yesterday both chambers of Congress debated Ohio voting irregularities as the Electoral College count was objected to for the first time since 1877:
For only the first time since 1877, the House and Senate were forced to separately debate the Electoral College vote count after U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, made a formal objection to the Ohio vote.
The Democrats said they were not disputing the election outcome, in which Ohio's 20 electoral votes went to Bush and tipped the balance of the national election against Democratic Sen. John Kerry.
Rather, they said they wanted to press Congress to fix what they called a flawed election system that led to voter disenfranchisement in Florida in 2000, and in Ohio and perhaps other states last year.
"We, as a Congress, have an obligation to step up to the plate and correct (irregularities)," said Tubbs Jones.
But, under the radar for most, another gripping development occurred for the long struggle of voting rights in this country:
A reputed Ku Klux Klansman was arrested Thursday night on murder charges in the 1964 slaying of three voter-registration volunteers, one of the last unsolved mysteries from the civil rights era, officials said. . . .
Chaney, a 21-year-old black man, was from Meridian, Miss. Goodman, 20, and Schwerner, 24, were from New York. They were among hundreds of Freedom Summer volunteers, most of them white college students, who came to Mississippi in 1964 to educate blacks and help them to vote. The bodies of the three, beaten and shot to death, were found later in an earthen dam.
The struggle of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner continues today, even on the great floor of our Congress. As long as the forces of oppression hold power in this country, this struggle shall stetch beyond our lives as well. Let's remember these brave people on these important days as we fight for voting and electoral reform - their deaths shall not be in vain.