For Black People Who Think Voting Is Pointless, Part 1: Voter Suppression

Because there has been so much going on in the past week socially, politically and personally, I didn't realize National Voter Registration Day was today until I watched this morning's broadcast of TV One's NewsOne Now.  (BTW, thank God for Roland Martin because I wouldn't know a significant amount of the information I do without his platform.)  Having this information on the heels of last night's first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton heightened the urgency of this particular post.  I have read and seen the grumblings from many folks within the Black community who are so disappointed in and suspicious of American politics and government that they are threatening to remove themselves from one of the most important aspects of the political process: voting.  Now while the Electoral College has been constitutionally selecting the "leader of the Free World" since President George Washington, Kathleen McCleary gave this breakdown in an April 21 article for Parade: "When you cast your vote for president this November, you're not voting for the candidate on the ballot, you're voting for which group of electors from your state--Republican, Democrat or some third party--get to vote for president."  While I know that does nothing for the skeptics, perhaps this two-part series outlining the six reasons why the Black vote absolutely matters in the most critical election in our country's history will be more convincing.  Specifically, the first three reasons in Part 1 all deal with America's shameful legacy of voter suppression and disenfranchisement...

OUR ANCESTORS WOULDN'T HAVE NEEDED TO GO THROUGH HELL AND HIGH WATER.  Disenfranchisement of the Black vote is as old as the Jim Crow era with many of the Confederate states defying the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the suffrage of former slaves.  As a means to oppress the working class and the poor, especially in the Black community, poll taxes ranging between $1 an $2 (which was excessive in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) became a prerequisite in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.  To bolster this discriminatory imposition, many states grandfathered in adult males whose fathers or grandfathers had voted in specific years prior to the abolition of slavery and exempted them from the tax.  Add more insult to injury, educational requirements and literacy tests were implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia to strengthen the efforts of the poll taxes and grandfather clauses as a means to largely ward off poor Blacks who were not afforded adequate access to education.  Clearly, the power of the Black vote intimidated Southern Democrats to the point where including these tactics in their state constitutions were necessary, despite many of them being later ruled as unconstitutional.

If lawful suppression wasn't enough discouragement, then violence wasn't out of the question.  On top of physical threats at polling places and destroying property of potential voters, martyrs like Rev. George Lee, Lamar Smith, Herbert Lee, Jonathan Myrick Daniels and Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer (who notably offered to pay the poll taxes for those who couldn't afford the fee via a radio broadcast) were murdered for trying to get Black people registered to vote, primarily in Mississippi and Alabama during the 1950s and 1960s.  The most infamous example prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project when the FBI recovered the bodies of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney--three volunteers assisting in the registration of Black voters--buried in an earthen dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi.  Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price and 16 Ku Klux Klan members were indicted in the murders, seven of whom were convicted.  I don't know about anybody else, but knowing that several people gave their lives for my right to vote is not only enough of a reason to cast my ballot in every election, but it's a clear sign my vote is important enough to threaten, harm or kill me, someone who looks like me or anyone who defends my liberty to do so.  Ultimately, any one of us who refuses to even register to vote is saying to our ancestors, "Thanks, but your death was in vain."

VOTER SUPPRESSION WOULDN'T STILL BE A THING IN 2016.  In 2013, Supreme Court Chief Judge John Roberts, Jr., Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Jr., and the late Antonin Scalia invalidated a key component of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Roberts insisted "our country has changed" by using Philadelphia, Mississippi and Selma, Alabama as historical examples since both towns have gone from employing aggressive disenfranchisement methods in the 1960s to having Black mayors while also urging Congress to "remedy that problem [racial discrimination]" with legislation which "speaks to current conditions".  However, he and the other four justices failed to realize how many states have been waiting to implement voter suppression tactics reminiscent of the aforementioned Jim Crow era, especially in Republican-dominated states.  Among the slickest of offenders, Wisconsin, Texas, North Dakota and Kansas not only tried to implement strict voting restrictions, calculated redistricting measures and voter ID requirements after the Supreme Court's detrimental decision, but they are also all run by Republican governors.  Specifically, many of the disparities in voter ID laws favor forms of identification possessed more by Whites (i.e., driver's licenses, U.S. passports, veteran/military IDs and even concealed weapon licenses) while disqualifying those held more by Blacks, Hispanics and poor people (i.e., student, government employee and public assistance IDs).

The most heinous violator of all has been North Carolina, which also has a Republican governor in Pat McCrory and been under fire for several mishaps affecting Black people and other minority groups.  According to an August 3rd Washington Post article, J. Gerald Hebert and Danielle Lang discussed how the Republican-led General Assembly went through the following lengths to suppress the Black vote:

In North Carolina, the legislature requested racial data on the use of electoral mechanisms, then restricted all those disproportionately used by blacks, such as early voting, same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting. Absentee ballots, disproportionately used by white voters, were exempted from the voter ID requirement. The legislative record actually justified the elimination of one of the two days of Sunday voting because "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic".

The problem with these methods is it has less to do with Black people traditionally voting Democratic (because it's not like the Dems have done a phenomenal job either or else young Black voters would be more confident in voting for Clinton) and more to do with the GOP's failure to attract Black voters on the local, state and federal levels.  Therefore, instead of making more of a concerted effort, Republicans engage in these backdoor antics which support the age-old assumption they don't care about Black people or their issues.  Bottom line, you don't go through these extremes to prevent a group of people from casting ballots if said ballots hold no weight or mean nothing.  With that said, here's the most conspicuous correlation...

SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!!  VOTER SUPPRESSION IS HAPPENING IN SWING STATES.  Out of the 14 states which have implemented new voter suppression laws excluding North Carolina and North Dakota, Hillary Clinton is currently leading Donald Trump in only three according to United Press International (UPI)/CVoter's state tracking poll: Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Wisconsin--the latter two being swing states.  Conversely, Trump is leading Clinton in three swing states involved in or trying to implement voter suppression: North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.  Furthermore, most of the states where he leads are in the South and all of the states are run by Republican governors except Virginia.  In the September 26th UPI article containing the aforementioned tracking poll graphic, Allen Cone made this observation: "Just one swing state--Florida with 29 votes--could shift to give Clinton easily enough Electoral College votes to win, 275-263. Or switching Pennsylvania with 20 votes and Virginia with 13 would have her prevailing even more, 279-259."   However, the issue is Trump is leading in all three of those swing states, despite not leading by wide margins.

Along with Iowa and Kentucky--the former being a swing state, both where Trump has an edge over Clinton and the latter where Trump has a 23-point lead--Florida has the most severe felony disenfranchisement laws which require felons to complete their sentences, parole and/or probation and apply for restoration of voting privileges seven years later.  In April, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) attempted to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 people with previous felony convictions, but reduced that number significantly last month to 13,000 and made it a case-by-case basis after the state's Supreme Court (the nation's 18th most conservative court) invalidated his decision.  Furthermore, according to a Washington Post poll, six in ten Republicans were against McAuliffe's decision.  Considering how 40 percent of the U.S. prison population is Black, none of this is coincidental: these are systematic attempts to thwart the casting of critical ballots by Black people as well as Hispanics, Latinos and poor people of all racial backgrounds.  If our vote didn't matter or if it was pointless to vote, then the different faces and forms of strategic voter suppression between the Jim Crow era and today in what's supposed to be "post-racial America" wouldn't be necessary.  The underhanded schemes of each of these states should be a wake-up call to Black folk to rock the vote in droves to place people in office who have our best interests at heart and, if nothing else, to "stick it to the man" on GP alone.  

Please return next week as I reveal the last three reasons why the Black vote holds weight in Part 2 of "For Black People Who Think Voting Is Pointless".  In the meantime, PLEASE make sure you're registered to vote if you haven't already.  Please visit rockthevote.com for a list of voter registration deadlines in all 50 states as well the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.