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PROTEST THE EXTREMIST’S WAR ON VOTING RIGHTS
War Against Our Voting Rights
EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS have launched a nationwide attack on voter’s rights “to protect the nation from voter fraud.” In fact there is no threat of voter fraud.” Between 2000 and 2010 there were 649 million votes cast in general elections and just 13 cases of in-person voter impersonation.
EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS need the “voter fraud” lie to cover their real intent, to disenfranchise African-American and Hispanic-American voters, other minorities and the poor. These are constituencies that traditionally vote Democrat. The nonwhite proportion of the electorate increases 2% a year. By 2020 they will grow from one fourth to one third of the electorate and by 2030 nonwhite voters will overtake white voters for the lead.” Extremists are fighting back by…
Requiring new voter ID cards; Ending early voting; Ending same day registration; Ending ‘Out of Precinct’ voting; Eliminating polling stations; Stripping felons of voting rights; Redistricting precincts to prevent minority communities from electing candidates of their choice.
EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS were enabled in their rush to disenfranchise millions of minority voters when the U.S Supreme Court struck down a significant portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. For almost fifty years the Act had prevented extremists from similar restrictive attacks on voting rights. Here’s the irony. On 15 March, 1965, one day before President Johnson made his historic defense of the pending Voting Rights Act, Dr. King wrote a New York Times editorial describing why segregationists denied African Americans the right to vote for a century after slavery ended: “…to freeze Negro registration at a level which can be successfully negated by segregationist voting strength.”
JIM CROW IS BACK: The ultimate goal for these new restrictions on the minority’s right to vote is the exact same goal, “…to freeze [nonwhite] registration at a level which can be successfully negated by [white] voting strength.” In his editorial Dr. King explained how segregationists had blocked African- American’s voting rights by “The Gestapo-like control of county and local governments; the abuse of local and state laws; and by “complex registration procedures designed to slow up and frustrate.”
EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS are using the segregationist handbook to restrict minority voting rights. Dr. King quotes Burke Marshall, an assistant attorney general: “Where the will to keep Negro registration to a minimum is strong…the delaying practices that can be used are virtually infinite.”
EXTREMIST REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS are playing another game of “Whack a mole.” Every time we stop them from legislating a new way to restrict voting rights, they will pop up with another. Dr. King warned us: “…No nation can long continue to flourish or to find its way to a better society while it allows any one of its citizens, let alone vast numbers…to be denied the right to participate in the most fundamental of all privileges of democracy – the right to vote.”
