On Tuesday, the nation will be watching the special election in Alabama to see if voters will elect Roy Moore to the Senate—despite the overwhelming evidence that he preyed upon and molested teenage girls almost forty years ago. Moore is also a homophobe, a xenophobe and a racist who thinks American families were better off during the times of slavery.
This is the new era of the Republican Party, where sexual abuse is not only tolerated but supported if it means a conservative win. If Moore wins, it will not just be because Alabama’s Republican voters have no qualms about electing a child molester, though that in itself is vile and repugnant. It will also be because the Republican secretary of state has pledged to make it really hard for people to vote.
“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,”Republican John Merrill said in an interview [last year] with documentary filmmaker Brian Jenkins. Jenkins had asked why he opposed automatically registering Alabamians when they reach voting age, and his response sizzled with anger toward people who “think they deserve the right because they’ve turned 18.” So he made a pledge: “As long as I’m secretary of state of Alabama, you’re going to have to show some initiative to become a registered voter in this state.”
Lazy? Talk about not-so-subtle attacks directed at people of color trying to exercise their right to vote. Also, because Merill seems to be confused, he should probably be reminded that people actually do deserve the right to vote simply because they’ve reached the required age. One of the fundamental promises of America is that its citizens are allowed to participate in the political process regardless of race, ethnicity, background, class and religion. Of course, instead of encouraging people to take a more active role in their democracy, Republicans want certain folks not to vote. And they aren’t shy about doing what they can to suppress their opportunities.
In recent years, Alabama Republicans have taken steps to protect their grip on power by making it harder for African Americans and Latinos to vote. They passed a law requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID, a measure that has been found to disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans and Latinos, who are more likely to lack such an ID and face impediments to getting one. The ID law also applied to absentee voting, which is used by many elderly black voters in rural counties, who now must mail in copies of their photo IDs with their ballots.
In addition to passing voter ID laws, state Republicans have been behind the closure of 31 DMV offices—the very places where black and brown voters would obtain their identification to vote. And just where exactly were these offices that closed? They were in rural majority-black counties. “In every county in which African Americans made up more than 75 percent of registered voters, the local DMV was slated for closure.” After pressure from civil rights advocates and lawsuits, the state settled with the U.S. Department of Transportation and most of those closures were reversed. Still, the Supreme Court’s decision to gut key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has only worked to benefit Republicans’ coordinated campaign to suppress votes. Since the court’s ruling in 2013, around 200 polling locations have closed statewide.
Merrill, who served in the state legislature for four years, was a co-sponsor of the voter ID law. After becoming secretary of state in 2015, he defended the DMV closure plan by promising that it wouldn’t disproportionately hurt African Americans, a claim the federal government later found untrue. Merrill has declined to advocate for early voting in Alabama, which often boosts minority participation. [...]
“Alabama’s definitely in the forefront of voter suppression efforts,” says John Zippert, the head of the New South Coalition, a black political organization that seeks to mobilize African American voters.
So just to be clear, Alabama Republicans are not only perfectly okay with a sexual predator and bigot going to the Senate to represent them, they are also publicly doing everything within their power to marginalize the voters of color in the state. This is reflective of the moral, intellectual and social rot that exists in their party. Even the horrific and grotesque George Wallace had enough sense to publicly repent for his wrongdoing and say that he was wrong on certain issues later in his life (though there is no evidence that he should have been believed). But this bunch, not so much. They’re irredeemable. All we can hope for is that when Moore is elected (and, let’s face it, its likely that he will be), the Senate will have the good sense to vote to expel him immediately.