Compelling case for sustaining voting rights protections

By Robert Rubin

As Ari Berman tells it in "Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights
in America" (Macmillan 2015), a prominent Republican operative once boasted, "I don't
want everybody to vote ... our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as
the voting populace goes down." Republican-controlled states now restrict minority
voting access through identification laws, prohibiting early voting, and generally
opposing good government measures that would expand the voting populace. In 2011 and
2012, 180 new voting restrictions were introduced in 41 states, nearly all Republican
controlled.

Berman could have rested his case for sustaining voting rights protections on such
spiteful actions. Instead, he weaves in personal narratives of victims of restrictionist
policies, complementing his political analysis with factual backbone and moral structure.
The result: a well-researched, compelling historical narrative that puts the lie to
the notion that Barack Obama's election ushered in a post-racial society. "Give Us
the Ballot" details the sophisticated, and largely successful, right-wing strategy
to delay and deny the enforcement of voting rights for African-Americans and others.

A recent GOP-inspired tool for suppressing the vote is photo ID laws. Lauded as necessary
to combat fraud, these laws "uniquely targeted Black voters by hyping the threat of
voter fraud." Berman's charge appears well-founded considering that virtually no evidence
of fraud has been produced while blacks are disproportionately more likely to lack
the required ID forms.

One victim of these vote-chilling ID requirements was Floyd Carrier, an 83-year-old
Korean War veteran who had always presented his driver's license as ID at the polls
where he voted for 60 years. He was turned away in November 2013 by poll workers who
immediately recognized Carrier but were forced to comply with new "anti-voting fraud"
measures. These measures, not Mr. Carrier, are the real threat to the integrity of
our voting system.

How did we arrive at this place? Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign fueled
the "counterrevolution's" response to the civil rights advances of the 1960s. Reagan
shrewdly launched his campaign at the Neshoba County Fair just a few miles from where
the bodies of three civil rights workers were found 16 years earlier. His theme that
day was "states' rights," a long-time rallying cry of southern segregationists. Reagan
masterfully invoked these code words with a "Whites only" crowd that sensed in Reagan,
who had opposed every civil rights law of the 1960s, someone who understood them.

Indeed, once elected, President Reagan cleansed the Civil Rights Division of career
lawyers who were not counter-revolutionaries and packed the judiciary with conservative
ideologues. These judges would advance and protect the Reagan agenda long after his
term ended. Reagan ultimately appointed half of the federal judiciary - 94 percent
of his appointees were White, 95 percent were male, and 95 percent were Republican.

  <p/> 
  For the past 35 years, these judges were largely responsible for the rollback in school
  desegregation and affirmative action. As for the post-Voting Rights Act counter-revolution,
  Berman details the significant shift in tactics from the more dramatic "vote denial"
  measures (e.g., literacy tests) to "vote dilution" schemes (e.g., at-large winner-take-all
  systems and gerrymandered districts) whose pernicious effect remains visible today.

  <p/> 
  The attacks on voting rights culminated in the 2013 Shelby County decision eviscerating
  the most powerful tool that civil rights lawyers have possessed. Shifting the burden
  to the state of showing that it's voting change was not discriminatory, the "preclearance"
  provisions were responsible for stopping Southern governors from imposing last-minute
  voter suppression devices. But the Supreme Court, finding that racism in America had
  sufficiently diminished such that these protections were no longer needed, shut down
  "preclearance." Within days, seven states had implemented laws that likely would have
  been blocked under preclearance.   
  <p/> 
  Fraud is a cover. The attacks on voting rights are about race and political power.
  Ask the Pennsylvania House majority leader who conceded in 2012 that the state's ID
  law would "allow Governor Romney to win the state." 
  <p/> 
  So yes, institutionalized racism remains. Some claim that Obama's election triggered
  the reaction that there was no longer need nor justification for race conscious policies
  to combat discrimination. Berman makes a compelling case that the need remains great
  and the justification most worthy. 
  <p/> 

  <p/> 
  <b>Robert Rubin </b><i>is a civil rights attorney in San Francisco. You can reach him at <a style="color:#123f72;"href="mailto:Robertrubinsf@gmail.com">Robertrubinsf@gmail.com</a>.</i> 
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