Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has some illuminating ideas about voting—as in, they illuminate what kind of scumbag he is. The man thinks that making it easier to vote would “cheapen” the legacy of civil rights leaders who fought for voting rights:
"These people fought—some of them were beaten, some of them were killed—because of their desire to ensure that everybody that wanted to had the right to register to vote and participate in the process. I’m not going to cheapen the work that they did. I’m not going to embarrass them by allowing somebody that’s too sorry to get up off of their rear end to go register to vote," he said.
Hell, why don’t we just go all the way and make everyone—well, everyone who’s in the tradition of John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, if you know what I mean—risk being beaten if they want to vote here in 2016? Lewis, of course, very much wants automatic voter registration.
Merrill had a lot more to say about those “sorry” people, his basic conclusion being that “if you’re too sorry or lazy to get up off of your rear and to go register to vote, or to register electronically, and then to go vote, then you don’t deserve that privilege." This from the top elections official of a state that enacted a strict voter ID law and then announced it was closing dozens of locations where people could get those voter IDs, with heavily black areas hardest hit. Alabama subsequently relaxed that policy just a bit, but Merrill’s statement still translates as “if you’re too sorry or lazy to get up off of your rear and travel to where you can get voter ID, which may be in the next county or in your county but only open one day a month, then go register to vote, or to register electronically, and then to go past Trump-inspired ‘poll watchers’ and wait in whatever lines I’ve arranged before you can vote, then you don’t deserve that privilege.”
As defenses of making it hard for black people to vote go, this is … maybe not as subtle as Merrill thought it was? Because seriously, the logic that black people are no longer risking death to vote, so making it any easier would be disrespectful to the people who fought to get to this point and really the most respectful thing is to make black people work extra hard to vote is the logic of racism—and make no mistake, that’s what Merrill’s position boils down to.
Comments are closed on this story.