GreenWatch
Injustice in America, States Rights and the return to a poll tax.
By Jay Burney
If you thought that the modern Republican Party is just about being anti-women with anti-contraception and invasive vaginal probe legislation tied to women’s medical decisions, you are wrong. Think again. They are anti-education, anti-environmental, anti labor, and anti-democracy. They are also against the historic civil rights that transformed America in the 1960’s. Modern republicans are ushering us back to a time of Jim Crow.
Between 1876 and when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 were implemented by the Federal government, the United States, especially many of the southern states, made racial segregation the law of the land. The civil rights and liberties of African Americans were targeted by what are known as Jim Crow laws that codified racial segregation of public schools, public places, transportation, restrooms, drinking fountains, bank lending, job discrimination, and military segregation. Among the Jim Crow laws were “poll taxes” collected by several southern states from residents that wished to vote. These highly discriminatory “taxes” heavily and disproportionately impacted minorities especially African Americans, Native Americans, and the poor. If you couldn’t pay the taxes you couldn’t vote. You were disenfranchised. The Civil rights and Voting Rights Acts helped to put an end to that injustice.
If you do not know about this stuff, you really don’t know much about American history including the legacy of Martin Luther King. He died fighting the institutional racism that characterized ( and often still characterizes) America.
You may have heard of the “southern strategy”. This is an American political term that has long characterized how national leadership has dealt with discrimination and segregation issues. During the Civil Rights movement, democrats were able to both embrace the civil rights movement and to empower a newly emerging class of voters in the south. The strategy resulted in national and local election victories that were embodied in a 90% democratic enrollment by southern black voters.
This strategy helped lead a transformation of America into a place of more hope, more justice, and more equality. The world seemed a better place and America was taking the lead.
Today, the Republican Party is turning back the clock. Among other things they are returning to a “southern strategy” that is predicated on the exploitation of anti-African American racism, misogyny, fear, and the characterization of “States rights” as a panacea for the perceived evils that infest the Federal government. This is a thinly disguised but effective attack on women, minorities, the poor, the elderly, labor, education, students, economic and environmental regulations, and the fundamental freedoms, rights, and liberties that so many have fought and died for. It is a disingenuous and cynical strategy at best. The fundamentalist republican’s use the argument of “potential voter fraud” as the foundation for requiring voter ID. This despite the fact that studies done in the past decade by the Federal Government find that less than .003% of voter fraud has been found nationwide. Despite that 38 states have advanced bills requiring voter ID.
In recent months, several states including Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee, Kansas, South Carolina, and Wisconsin have passed discriminatory voting practices, including voter ID laws. All of these come with real cash costs to the voters whom have to purchase the ID’s, purchase paperwork supporting the ID’s, and often travel great distances to access places where the ID’s are sold.
The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that if fully enacted, these laws could prohibit as many as 5 million otherwise eligible voters from participating in the next Presidential election. A preponderance of those affected will be people of color.
Because of this countries historic racial discrimination including voter rights atrocities traced back to Jim Crow and the prohibitive poll tax requirements, states that are trying to reintroduce new discriminatory voting regulations have to be approved by either the Justice Department or a Federal Judge. Despite fundamentalist attempts to disembowel the federal government it still plays a role protecting our rights and liberties.
The states rights lie embodied in voter ID legislation is an attempt at a political power grab backed by an oligarchic empire that has outsourced, downsized, and disenfranchised the American dream. And they still like to refer to this dung heap of an idea “a shining city on a hill”. American Exceptionalism indeed.
Here are profiles of some of the states that have enacted voter ID legislation.
Mississippi
Mississippi’s population is 59 % white and 37% black, and 2.7% Hispanic. In November Mississippi voters approved a state constitutional amendment requiring all voters to have an approved photo ID such as a drivers license before they could vote. The “make voting harder” amendment to the Mississippi State Constitution passed with a 62% plurality. Opponents of the amendment say that the ID requirement will make it harder for the elderly, the disabled and poor and African American residents to vote. Among other issues is the actual cost of a driver’s license or photo ID and access to agencies that can provide these items to a fundamentally rural poor population, which is disproportionally African American.
Election results show that the amendment was very popular amongst white voters, and not so popular amongst African Americans.
Many thousands of people, including ¼ of all Mississippi African Americans in Mississippi do not have photo ID’s or easy access to them.
The law had not been enacted by the March 13 Republican Presidential primary election where 97% of the voters were white. The Republican controlled Mississippi legislature decided not to pass the rules that will govern the voter ID process until after the Republican primary. Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a white republican and the states chief election officer said that it is the goal of legislatures to make sure that the rule is in effect for the Presidential elections, when African Americans are sure to try to vote. Hoseman was asked by a reporter on Republican primary day what he would say to opponents of the law and he said with a laugh “get over it”. The Justice Department or a Federal Judge will have to approve the new rules before they go into effect.
Texas
The federal government is also scrutinizing a new texas law that requires photo id in order to vote.
According to the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice, the new Texas law will prohibit up to 800,000 otherwise legally entitled voters from participating in the Presidential election. Other critics put that number well over 1 million. According to Texas own data, a Hispanic voter in Texas is almost 50% more unlikely to meet the requirements to obtain the id, which include a minimum of $22 to purchase the documentation to get the Voter ID. The DOJ asked the State to offer some proof of voter fraud in Texas, and the state could nor provide any evidence On March 12 the Justice Department decided that the Poll tax made the Texas law illegal. Texas Governor Rick Perry is now suing the Federal government and seeks immediate implementation of the new law.
South Carolina
Just before Christmas the Justice Department rejected a South Carolina Law making it difficult for minorities to vote. The state is now challenging the Federal ruling and attorneys handling the case for the state have declared that it will cost South Carolina taxpayers more than $1million to prosecute the case, especially if it has to go to the Supreme Court. The return to Jim Crow is costly, but apparently the good white folks in South Carolina are glad to anti up to pay the piper.
Wisconsin
Almost 150 years after the United States fought the Civil War, and this is not just an issue of the south.
According to state democratic leaders, more than 250,000 Wisconsin voters are disenfranchised by the voter ID law.
Republican Gov Scott Walker’s administration who initiated anti-union legislation that turned the state inside out also initiated voter ID requirements. Recently a State Judge placed a permanent injunction on the law. The Judge said that over a quarter of a million Wisconsin voters who would other wise be eligible to vote, many of whom are democrats, would be prohibited from voting under the new rules, which would cost the individual voters money. Besides the photo id costs, the costs of transportation and lost wages for a day spent chasing down paperwork could cost individuals more than $100 each.
Selma to Montgomery
You may have heard that Al Sharpton recently led a march with his National Action Network recreating the historic civil rights Marches between Selma and Montgomery Alabama to protest the new making it harder to vote laws. Sharpton calls the new laws Jim Crow on steroids, saying that they are more polished and sophisticated and pretend to fix a problem that does not exist. Sharpton says that the underlying rhetoric promoting these laws focus on voter fraud, are themselves fraudulent arguments designed to disenfranchise voters and not to strengthen the democratic process.
It seems that fundamentalist Republicans have no qualms about exploiting racial fears with a new radicalism that will bring our country to its knees. The game plan here is becoming more obvious with each passing day.
If you are wondering what this all has to do with you, and you live in Buffalo, there is a good chance that you are not a person of color. According to 2011 US Census data, the Buffalo Metro area is the 6th most racially segregated area in the United States. Our African American population is concentrated in the urban core of Buffalo while almost all of the suburban and rural areas are white. This puts us on the cutting edge of the future of civil rights in America. You may not know that the Jim Crow laws that have been inspired by the republican fundamentalists are making their way into your life today, but if they get a hold in the southern strategy states it wont be long before you will be asked to take a position. Much of Buffalo’s urban population has experienced a lifetime of racism. As America rapidly descends into its Jim Crow past, what will you do?
ALEC The American Legislative
Exchange Council
ALEC is a powerful corporate funded action organization that is
behind all of the voting laws discussed in this article. ALEC authors and promotes legislation in
local and federal legislatures that further a corporate agenda reflecting smaller
government, tax breaks for the rich, and legislation that is anti –environmental
, anti-labor, anti-education, and a wide plethora of issues that benefit the conservative agenda.
ALEC is organized across the America, has introduced bills
in every State legislature, and is funded secretly by private corporate interests
organized by the Koch Brothers. According to the organization Media and
Democracy which revealed over 800 ALEC sponsored bills in July of 2011, ALEC is
reshaping our democracy by financially supporting legislators that take the
model bills created by ALEC and introducing them and or voting for them in the
political bodies that they represent.
For more on ALEC and voting Rights:
ALEC Exposed, Rigging
Elections, The Nation, July 2011
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