It was a truly heartbreaking moment. During a trial last month before a federal judge in Alabama, Harold Porter, a Black man in his 70s who suffers from asthma and Parkinson’s Disease, told the court: “[S]o many of my [ancestors] even died to vote. And while I don’t mind dying to vote, I think we’re past that—we’re past that time.”
The Supreme Court, however, disagreed. Late on Wednesday night, without any written explanation, the court’s five conservative justices overturned a ruling by the Alabama court that required the state to allow curbside voting—a safety measure designed to help at-risk voters like Porter cast ballots during the pandemic without risking their health.
Unsurprisingly, Alabama’s Republican secretary of state, John Merrill, led the charge against curbside voting, and his fellow travelers in black robes gladly sided with him and against Harold Porter. On the witness stand, Porter had said, “I don’t want any vote that I cast to be my last vote.” The Supreme Court just told him that it might well be.
The highest court in the land is now affirmatively on the side of suppressing the vote, and especially the vote of Black people. It’s lawless, out of control, and anti-democratic—and it’s about to get worse in the all but certain event that the Senate jams through Donald Trump’s new nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, to fill the seat left vacant by Ruth Bader Ginsburg scarcely a month ago.
But while we may not be able to fix things for Harold Porter today, we can honor his sacrifice and struggle by helping to elect people who will fight to protect his rights and those of everyone like him. A better future is possible if we work to make it happen.
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