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WORD COUNT
606
MAY 7, 2008
THE SUPREME COURT
UPHOLDS JIM CROW – by Marc H. Morial
With the presidential
race in full swing, the U.S. Supreme Court has just decided a case that
could have a huge impact on the nation's electoral system.
It revolved around an
Indiana statue that requires voters to show current state-issued photo
identification when they cast their ballots.
Last Election Day,
61-year-old Valerie Williams attempted to vote in the lobby of her
retirement home as she had the past two elections. This time around,
poll workers turned her away because she lacked a current Indiana-issued
photo identification card. Her telephone bill, social security letter
and an expired Indiana driver's license weren't enough to prove I.D.
though they had been in previous elections.
So, Williams, who
requires a cane to get around, was permitted to cast a provisional
ballot, which was ultimately discarded when she couldn't secure a ride
to the local voting office to verify her identity within 10 days as
required by state law. She and 31 others affiliated with the case
recounted similar experiences. Most failed to comply with the law
because they lacked the transportation to get to the local voting office
to convert their provisional ballots into actual votes or couldn't
afford state-issued identification.
They represent as
much as 12 percent of all voters, a disproportionate number of them
elderly, poor, minorities or disable, who do not have government-issued
photo identification. The Court’s decision upholding the law greatly
reduces their chances of ever voting again.
In 2006, the U.S.
House of Representatives, under different leadership than in 2007,
passed legislation imposing the photo I.D. requirement along with proof
of citizenship upon all Americans, just weeks after reauthorizing the
landmark Voting Rights Act. Fortunately, that bill ultimately failed
and it hasn't garnered as much support in the current Congress - yet at
least.
Proponents of
photo-ID requirements continue to labor under the misconception that
they're needed to deter individual voter fraud, hardly the most pressing
problem facing our nation. As the Boston Globe editorial page sagely
noted recently, "The American voting system has had all manner of
problems lately, but an epidemic of voter fraud is not one of them."
And in a 2007
Washington Post editorial, the New York University Law School's Brennan
Center for Justice's Michael Waldman and Justin Levitt concluded "the
notion of widespread voter fraud ... is itself a fraud."
Falsely claiming
citizenship and voting fraudulently have long been federal offenses.
From 2002 to 2006, only 86 U.S. residents were convicted of federal
election fraud, according to the Department of Justice. All this fuss
over less than 100 convictions among millions of votes cast?
Still, that hasn't
stopped legislators in 27 states from introducing legislation just like
Indiana's, even though in some states like Georgia similar efforts have
been struck down by state and federal course. That is what makes the
Supreme Court's decision all the more important. The precedent our
nation's most prominent jurists set will dictate the course of our
elections system for years to come.
More than 40 years
after the first wave of the civil rights movement, we must continue to
fight for and encourage the full participation of our citizenry in the
electoral process, not move to disenfranchise thousands of registered
voters.
In 2005, a federal
judge in Georgia concluded that a photo-ID requirement passed by that
state's legislature constituted a poll tax.
Just what we need, a
21st Century poll tax.
Now that the Supreme
Court has upheld the Indiana law, it threatens to take the United States
back to the days of literacy tests and all kinds of Jim Crow-era tactics
that kept African Americans from voting for decades in the 20th Century.
--
Marc H. Morial is
president and CEO of The National Urban League. Mr. Morial succeeds
Hugh B. Price as the League’s eighth Chief Executive. Mr. Morial served
two distinguished four-year terms as Mayor of New Orleans from
1994-2002. During that time, he also served as President of the United
States Conference of Mayors in 2001 and 2002. A photo of Marc Morial is
available CLICK HERE
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