“In order to form a more perfect union…” The union formed by the Constitution was better than the loose confederation of states under the Articles of Confederation, but it was still a union brought about by many painful compromises, some of which perpetuated egregious injustices. The original intent of the framers of our constitution is still argued and is still considered by our courts, but it is not and should not be the deciding factor. If it were the deciding factor we would still have slavery, women would still be deprived of the rights granted to male citizens, some states would still have state sanctioned churches, and many states would still restrict the right to vote to citizens who own a substantial amount of property. Our founding fathers were well aware of the fact that the union they created was imperfect and that they could not predict what future circumstances might require in regard to making the union better. They tried to remedy some of the flaws by passing the first ten amendments, but those amendments only protected citizens from the federal government. What it took to prevent the states from violating the rights guaranteed by the first ten amendments was the Civil War. When President Lincoln used the phrase “a new birth of freedom” in his Gettysburg address he was referring to the abolition of slavery, but the diminution of what many people considered state’s rights brought about a new birth of freedom that went beyond freeing the slaves. The intent of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to our constitution was to forbid the individual states from depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States.
It is little wonder then that they who would deprive their fellow citizens of their civil rights frequently talk about states rights as though the individual states are still sovereign entities who have merely entered into an agreement of mutual cooperation under limited circumstances. This archaic view of the union has not been true since the Civil War. Yet there are still gray areas of jurisdiction that the unscrupulous are now using to deprive people of one of the most fundamental rights of any democracy. What I am talking about here is the right to vote. Each state can set, within limits, the requirements that must be met in order to register to vote. Since the Republicans have angered senior citizens by attacking Medicare with the Ryan plan and by favoring the privatization of Social Security the Republicans want to discourage senior citizens from voting. Since the Republicans have angered the less fortunate by attacking safety nets such as unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and food stamps they also want to discourage the less fortunate from voting. Finally, because of their attacks on public education the Republicans want to discourage college students from voting. The Republicans would like to keep ethnic and racial minorities from voting as well but the amendments passed during the reconstruction era will not let them do that directly. In the states where the Republicans control the government, however, have found a way to prevent a large number of people from all of those groups from voting.
The means the Republicans are using to deprive lawful citizens of the right to vote is the new requirement to show state sanctioned, picture identification in order to register to vote. In many states the only state sanctioned identification is a driver’s license. “What do you mean you’re too old to drive? Blind, you say? So sorry, but because of budget constraints the Department of Motor Vehicles is only open on certain days and only for limited hours. Many states are also requiring a birth certificate and proof of residence over a specific time period in order to meet the residency requirements to register to vote. Forty years ago I saw documents saying the federal government would accept a notation of your birth in the family bible or church records noting your birth in lieu of a birth certificate, because it was that common for people not to have a birth certificate. A person may not have a birth certificate because birth certificates were not issued for home births, or because the place in which a person was born did not issue them for certain races, or because the place in which the certificate was stored burned down. The older and/or poorer you are the less likely it is that you will have a birth certificate or a driver’s license. What is obviously happening is that the Republicans are using state jurisdiction to suppress the vote in a manner we have not seen since the days when Jim Crow laws were in effect.
Most of the amendments and case law regarding voter suppression deal with racial or gender discrimination. Such discrimination is unconscionable but so is discrimination based on the partisan interests of a political party. If any state government is going to pass voter registration requirements that make it unduly burdensome for some of its citizens to vote that state should present irrefutable evidence that the voter fraud taking place there is so rampant it requires extreme measures to combat the fraud. No state has presented such evidence because the evidence does not exist. In fact, the history of voter suppression in this country indicates that it is a far greater problem than voter fraud. The Justice Department is now trying to combat this outrageous effort by the Republicans to suppress the voting rights of lawful citizens. Unfortunately, the Republicans have also given us the worst and most partisan Supreme Court in modern history. It is unlikely that the five injustices the Republicans appointed to the court will render the correct decision. Instead of supporting this fundamental right of all citizens those injustices will strictly interpret the case law to insist that voiding such unconscionable registration requirements requires proof of an intent to suppress the votes of Afro-Americans.
What this means is that we have to raise hell. We have to let those injustices know that such a narrow decision will mean the ruin of the Republican Party because we will vote the Republicans out of office on both the state and federal level! We must make it very clear that we will not allow the Republicans to steal elections by means of voter suppression. This attempt at voter suppression is a very real threat to our democracy. Senior citizens who have been voting for most of their adult lives had no reason to believe they would be deprived of this right, nor did the poor, nor did the college students who came from out of state but have been residing for two or three years in the state where the college they attend is located. If you doubt for one moment that voter suppression is a threat to everyone, you are fooling yourself!
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