Sen. Hiram Rhoads Revels
Today is the 142nd anniversary of the swearing in to the U.S. Senate of Hiram Rhoads Revels, an AME minister and the first black person to serve in the Senate. Carl Chancellor, senior Editor at the Center for American Progress
writes that this anniversary "provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on the obstacles African Americans have encountered—and continue to encounter—in exercising their right to vote and to participate in the political process."
Today, 142 years after the 1870 ratification of the 15th Amendment—which forbade the denial of the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude—African Americans and people of color find themselves facing a growing number of impediments to the ballot box. [...]
As was the case during Reconstruction, the less progressive members of our citizenry are scared of the collective impact of black voters. Adding to their concern going into the 2012 elections is the growing number of young and Hispanic voters who are strongly progressive. In 2008 both groups delivered two-thirds of their votes to President Barack Obama, while 95 percent of African American voters went for the president.
That is why conservatives, backed by corporate donors, are resorting to extreme measures to suppress the votes of the young and minorities. Just as poll taxes and impossibly skewed literacy tests were used to bar blacks from voting during the Jim Crow era, the raft of voter suppression laws now being advanced have a singular and equally despicable aim—the disenfranchisement of targeted groups of voters.
As we reflect on the long struggle for voting rights on this red-letter day in black history, let’s recommit ourselves to protecting the vote in America. To do less is to undermine our democracy.
That's just a snippet, the whole history presented is well worth the read.
For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.
In other news:
That's Wisconsin state Rep. Joel Kleefisch, Republican of course, and supporter of Wisconsin's new voter ID law, casting votes on behalf of absent members, which is, you know, kind of fraudulently voting. IOKIYAAR.
- Voter suppression, not just for the U.S. anymore.
- It's official, in the initial review by the South Carolina State Election Commission finds that there is no evidence of zombie voters in that state. The allegation of dead people voting was one of the justifications for the voter ID law the state passed, but has been blocked by the federal government. The state is suing. The state attorney general's office in South Carolina says that no evidence of dead people voting doesn't mean that dead people haven't voted in South Carolina. They are not dropping their investigation, or their federal case.
- Wisconsin's new district maps will "significantly diminish" the voting rights of Milwaukee’s Latino community. That's the message a panel of three federal judges heard this week. They're deciding whether to throw out the redistricting map drawn by the state's legislature.
- And still in Wisconsin, a veteran who couldn't get a ballot using his Veterans Administration ID, which includes a photo, refused to vote and is raising a well-justified stink about the voter ID law.
“I said, lady, this doesn’t make sense,” said Paar, recounting his conversation with the poll worker — who, he says, had to double-check this very matter before she could give him an answer. “It’s issued by the federal government, it’s the Veterans Administration. And she said, I know but we can’t use it. She said, do you have a driver’s license? I said, yes. She said, can you use it? And I said no — I came with the intention of using my veterans I.D.” [...]
Paar also explained that he sees a serious problem: “There’s a possibility that a veteran could have only this type of I.D., because he’s had a stroke, let’s say, up at the V.A. hospital. And because of that, he had his driver’s license taken away. So case in point, he would have only this Veterans Administration I.D. through the hospital.
- In Wyoming, a three-judge federal panel upheld a 2010 decision in favor of "members of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes who claimed Fremont County’s system of at-large voting for county commissioners violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the Indian vote." The county has been attempting to implement a voting plan that essentially segregated American Indians into one voting district.
- The Colorado senate passed a bill this week that would make spreading false information about an election within 90 days of the event a felony punishable by up to three years in prison. The law would encompass things like robo calls that provide the wrong voting place, flyers that announce the incorrect day to vote and other acts of voter suppression and intimidation.