Yesterday, the state House and Senate eased the rules on voter IDs, allowing voters without a photo ID to cast provisional ballots. Their votes would be validated if they could prove a hardship in obtaining or using an ID based on at least one of eight reasons laid out by the legislature. It’s a good move.
However, the laws were put into place because Republicans say they want to restore integrity to the election process. That’s not really true. Nobody questioned the integrity of elections until we elected an African-American president.
Ever since Obama was elected, right-wingers have tried to deny the legitimacy of his presidency. They claimed he wasn’t born in the country. They claimed voter fraud because, you know, that many white people wouldn’t really vote for the black guy. Voter ID was a way for Republicans to give them a wink and nod to validate their views without publicly agreeing with them.
But Voter IDs laws are, at their core, part of a strategy to shape the electorate in a way favorable to Republican candidates. Their goal is to limit access to the ballot box for people who disagree with them–specifically poor and elderly people for whom attaining an ID would be most difficult. That’s why partisan warriors like Civitas President Francis De Luca criticized the GOP legislators for changing the law. And that’s why the rest of us should applaud the move. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right.
These strategies and tactics aren’t new and they weren’t started by Republicans. They’re a subtle take on the system started by Democrats at the turn of the 20th century to keep progressives and Blacks out of office and ensure a one party state. They’ve been adopted and modified by modern-day Republicans.
It’s time to stop using emotions generated by racism for political gain. Instead of suppressing the African-American vote, Republicans should look for ways to co-opt it. An inclusive strategy is better for our country and better for GOP long-term prospects. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
This was more of a legal maneuver to Camouflage voter suppression in laws that are currently facing quite a few legal challenges in the Supreme courts.They are trying to prevent the entire law from being overturned as it show well be which would be seen as a major defeat for the Confederacy.
Increasingly, black vs. white describes many things much less accurately than traditionally thought. Revelations abound in my field, which is access to healthcare and health outcomes, that socio-economic status (SES; not the same as Labor/”not working class,” but strongly overlapping) is a more important driver than race of virtually ever population outcome measure we use. The growing Hispanic population in NC creates an ethnicity angle that does not break the SES dominance in health outcomes at all.
Whenever Black and White are used as reasons for political expectations and machinations I take a moment to point out that the real conflict is between what is right for Labor, which is the majority of the citizenry.
The restrictions on voter eligibility “Correcting the calendar.” – McCrory, hurts the voting turnout for Labor, who have less control of their time than those who are not working class. I myself was surprised to discover I was not at all middle class and would have no hope of becoming so.
One could at one time pick to be working class, and middle-class.
The census forms ought simply drop “Race” from the questions and substitute “Rich”, “Labor” and “Rural”.