The day voting rights died

By Thomas Sass

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"All politics are local” may well be as true a statement about our political system that has ever been made, and the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the 1965 Voting Rights Act may prove to validate that adage.

I have long been confused why only select states/districts needed to first pre-clear any changes they made locally or statewide to our constitutionally protected voting right, for I still feel, that any attempt by any state or district to implement any change that might make voting problematic for any group should be pre-cleared.

But to just for a moment stick to these voting rights-challenged states (that were the subject of the ruling): Historically, they account for 5/6 of all attempts tocircumvent those rights by making it harder for some to vote, civil rights advocates say.

Why broaden these protections? Forty-one of our 50 states have recently attempted to change constitutionally protected rights. While neither of our two parties is pure when it comes to protecting those rights, virtually all recent attempts to make it harder for some have come from Republicans. I believe because of their policies and lack of tolerance for some, they have become a party whose overreliance on whites is at an all-time high, and with whites soon to become a minority, it may well be in their best interests to suppress other groups, and conservative justices are aiding and abetting this “pogrom.”

As if on cue, conservatives in several states either revived their voter suppression proposals, which they had been forbidden to enact by the Voting Rights law, or others who introduced their own measures to make it more difficult to vote. Using less overt means, such as voter ID, elimination of early registration and not allowing Sunday voting, conservatives will now begin their agenda.

Many conservatives cite Barack Obama's election and the higher voter turnout of blacks than whites, proportionally speaking, as evidence that these remedies are no longer needed and that we live in a post-racial America. “There are none so blind as those who will not see” is one of my favorite Biblical scriptures and it is about the only rationale I can think of when it comes to understanding how could they not recognize that it is due to all provisions of the Voting Rights Act that make the above possible.

While it needs to be said that a previous Congress (2006) and conservative president (George W. Bush) reauthorized 1965 Voting Rights Act (98 to 0 in Senate, and all but 33 members in the House), that was a different Republican Party. Today's Republicans have ventured into areas Republicans of my generation would not have traveled.

Thomas Sass of Iowa City, retired from Pearson, is a history researcher and has authored a book about the treatment of blacks in this country. Comments: toms_3@mail.com