U.S. Rep. John Lewis recalls the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge.
This week,
several thousand people reenacted the historic march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge.
[T]his year’s event had a more modern purpose—to protest tough new voting laws in Alabama and other states around the nation—that sadly was too similar to the original march’s goal, fighting for the right to vote for people of color. Some, like Amelia Boynton Robinson, 100, who was there in 1965 when demonstrators were attacked by the police with tear gas and billy clubs, were pushed across the bridge in wheelchairs.
“That we find ourselves leading a new march for voting rights in Alabama and across this country as opposed to re-enacting the old march is sad and makes you angry,” said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous. “This march taking place all week from Selma to Montgomery is extremely relevant to both our present and our history. We thought fights like this were a thing of the past, a milestone of the mid-20th century, but will now be remembered as the most defining battle of the early 21st century.”
The weeklong remembrance recalling the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights of 1965 ended Friday in a rally on the capitol steps in Montgomery. The Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, Jr.
spoke to the crowds about the new voting rights and racial equality fights being waged right now in Alabama.
''The only voter fraud that we can find is the statement that there is widespread voter fraud,'' the Rev. Al Sharpton said. ''The fraud is to use non-existent widespread voter fraud to try to suppress and stop people from voting.'' [...]
''The laws in Alabama are not immigration laws. They're Jim Crow laws,'' Sharpton added. [...]
''Democracy is a path to citizenship, not deportation,'' Jackson said. ''Democracy is the path of the DREAM Act, not the nightmare act of race-profiling, violence and family separation.''
For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.
In other news:
- Starting out with the good stuff, on Thursday the Republican National Committee lost its appeal to end a decades-long agreement with the Democratic National Committee governing its use of pollwatching tactics.
The agreement dates to 1982, when the Republican National Committee settled a lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee accusing the GOP of trying to intimidate minority voters. Under the agreement, the Republican National Committee must obtain court approval before implementing certain poll-monitoring activities in minority precincts.
The Republican Party filed suit in November 2008 to void the agreement. But the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected the GOP's request on Thursday, affirming a New Jersey district court's ruling.
"If the RNC does not hope to engage in conduct that would violate the Decree, it is puzzling that the RNC is pursuing vacatur so vigorously," Judge Joseph Greenaway wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. He noted that the party sought to escape the decree at a critical moment, in time for the upcoming election cycle.
Puzzling, indeed.
- This is good, too. Circuit Judge David Flanagan granted a temporary injunction to prevent enforcement of the state photo ID law at polling places during the state's primary election on April 3.
"If no injunction is issued, a clearly improper impairment of a most vital element of our society will occur," Flanagan wrote. "The duty of the court is clear. The case has been made. Irreparable harm is likely to occur in the absence of an injunction."
A trial on a permanent injunction will be held after the election, on April 16.
- An 86-year-old Ohio veteran was turned away from the polls on Tuesday, because his driver's license had expired, and his VA card didn't have his home address.
“My beef is that I had to pay a driver to take me up there because I don’t walk so well and have to use this cane and now I can’t even vote,” said Paul Carroll, 86, who has lived in Aurora nearly 40 years, running his own business, Carroll Tire, until 1975.
“I had to stop driving, but I got the photo ID from the Veterans Affairs instead, just a month or so ago. You would think that would count for something. I went to war for this country, but now I can’t vote in this country.”
Welcome to the GOP's Ohio, Mr. Carroll. At least the elections board has arranged for him to vote absentee in November.
- And in Tennessee, this is just about as bad as what happened to Mr. Carroll.
Former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis said he and his wife Lynda were denied the right to vote Tuesday in his Fentress County hometown.
“We walked in and they told me I was not a registered voter. I had been taken off the list,” said Davis, who served two terms representing the fourth congressional district of Tennessee, leaving office in 2011. [...]
Blake Fontenay, spokesman for the Tennessee Department of State, which oversees the division of elections, said officials were planning to investigate what happened with the Davises.
“They were purged in Fentress and we need to find out why,” he said.
They should also explore why the Davises weren't informed that they had been purged from the voter list in their county. Davis told Keith Olbermann that he will sue to ensure that any Tennesee voter wrongly purged from the voting rolls will be reinstated.
- The Pennsylvania state Senate has passed new voter ID legislation requiring photo identification at the polls, 26-23. The House passed a different version of a photo ID bill last year, and is expected to pass this one as well. Gov. Tom Corbett has expressed support for the legislation, so it's possible it will be in effect as early as the April 24 primary.
- It's Republican county clerks versus Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler in Colorado. Gessler has been claiming, repeatedly, that hundreds of non-citizens were registered to vote in Colorado and were voting. Except for the 150 or so who had contacted him personally to ask him to get them removed from the registration list.
“I really have no idea what he is talking about,” Republican Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Sheila Reiner told the Colorado Independent.
Neither do any of the other county clerks the Colorado Independent contacted. Neither the clerks, nor the Independent, have been able to get any kind of information or documentation from Gessler to back up the claims he continues to make.
- Finally, here'a unique idea, these days. Connecticut lawmakers are proposing making voting easier:
Lawmakers are considering a package of election-related bills that supporters say will empower citizens, modernize the voting process, and assure fairer, more efficient elections.
"It's long past time that we move our elections into the 21st century in Connecticut,'' Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said during a press briefing Friday prior to a legislative hearing on the proposals. "We are not on the cutting edge and our system is old, costly and inconvenient."
Thank you, Connecticut. That very nearly makes up for Joe Lieberman.