Betty Winston Bayé: Efforts To Discourage Voting Should Not Be Heeded.
Efforts to discourage voting should not be heeded
By Betty Winston Bayé
Before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, minority voter suppression schemes were quite common, especially in the segregated South. Potential voters were threatened with bodily harm and sometimes death. There were threats of being fired or evicted. When those tactics didn't work, “uppity” minorities were required to take literacy tests, which besides being unconstitutional were laughable since the exams were sometimes administered by people who couldn't have read the answers with guns to their heads.
Over time, overt voter intimidation gave away to subtle efforts; for example, politically motivated registrars purging the voting rolls, with special emphasis on eliminating minorities, and on Election Days, minority voters often showing up only to be told that their polling places had been moved, or that — oops! — there weren't enough ballots to accommodate the crowds.
In 2003, here in Jefferson County, there was a strong odor of a minority voter suppression effort when the local Republican Party announced plans to station 59 vote challengers at the polls in predominantly black neighborhoods on Election Day to cut down on fraud. Actually, it was a national Republican campaign strategy that year. NAACP president Raoul Cunningham remembers and said that next Tuesday, “We will have ‘election protection teams' assembled to make sure every vote cast is counted and everyone registered and eligible is allowed to vote. Several local attorneys are part of the Louisville team and will be prepared to appear before the Board of Elections and courts.”
Another minority voter suppression tactic was evident more recently in Nevada, where Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid is in a nip-and-tuck race with challenger Sharron Angle, a tea party darling. There a group named “Latinos for Reform,” a Republican 527 organization, paid $80,000 for an ad, since pulled, that urged Latinos, “Don't vote this November. This is the only way to send them a clear message you can no longer be taken for granted. Don't vote.” Them refers to such purported enemies of Latino interests as President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Their faces are flashed throughout the ad. No mention in the ad of Sharron Angle, who has said or implied a lot of very interesting things about Latinos on the campaign trail.
(2 of 2)
Latinos for Reform have also been active in Colorado, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, promoting the idea to potential Latino voters that “Obama puts African Americans before Latinos and Africa before Latin America.”
Pitting minorities against one another almost never is to the benefit of minority political interests.
Meanwhile, if you're a potential voter, minority or not, who is discouraged and disgusted by all the nasty political attacks ads in this election season, I must reiterate that this is one of the legacies of George W. Bush, who before exiting the White House in early 2009, was able to fashion a U.S. Supreme Court, led by his handpicked Chief Justice John Roberts, that is activist to its core. Last January, the Court opened yet wider the spigot for big, anonymous political donations. It's pure coincidence (sure it is) that the major beneficiaries of the Roberts Court, at least in this cycle, are Republican and tea party candidates. It's also pure coincidence that Bush's own henchman Karl Rove has emerged as the king of anonymous political donations. He help to create and advises American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, two groups that are leading the pack in soliciting anonymous donations that are then repackaged to finance fierce political attack ads.
Rob Collins, president of American Action Network, which The New York Times noted shares strategies and “a nondescript office suite just blocks from the White House” with the Rove-advised groups, put it starkly. He said, “We carpet-bombed for two months in 82 races; now it's sniper time.”
In other words, this is war, which means that, disgusted or not by all the negativity, none of us can afford to sit out this midterm election. Get out to the polls on Tuesday even if it pours down rain, because elections really do have consequences.
Betty Winston Bayé is a Courier-Journal columnist and editorial writer whose column appears on Thursdays. Read her online atcourier-journal.com/opinion.
By Betty Winston Bayé
Before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, minority voter suppression schemes were quite common, especially in the segregated South. Potential voters were threatened with bodily harm and sometimes death. There were threats of being fired or evicted. When those tactics didn't work, “uppity” minorities were required to take literacy tests, which besides being unconstitutional were laughable since the exams were sometimes administered by people who couldn't have read the answers with guns to their heads.
Over time, overt voter intimidation gave away to subtle efforts; for example, politically motivated registrars purging the voting rolls, with special emphasis on eliminating minorities, and on Election Days, minority voters often showing up only to be told that their polling places had been moved, or that — oops! — there weren't enough ballots to accommodate the crowds.
In 2003, here in Jefferson County, there was a strong odor of a minority voter suppression effort when the local Republican Party announced plans to station 59 vote challengers at the polls in predominantly black neighborhoods on Election Day to cut down on fraud. Actually, it was a national Republican campaign strategy that year. NAACP president Raoul Cunningham remembers and said that next Tuesday, “We will have ‘election protection teams' assembled to make sure every vote cast is counted and everyone registered and eligible is allowed to vote. Several local attorneys are part of the Louisville team and will be prepared to appear before the Board of Elections and courts.”
Another minority voter suppression tactic was evident more recently in Nevada, where Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid is in a nip-and-tuck race with challenger Sharron Angle, a tea party darling. There a group named “Latinos for Reform,” a Republican 527 organization, paid $80,000 for an ad, since pulled, that urged Latinos, “Don't vote this November. This is the only way to send them a clear message you can no longer be taken for granted. Don't vote.” Them refers to such purported enemies of Latino interests as President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Their faces are flashed throughout the ad. No mention in the ad of Sharron Angle, who has said or implied a lot of very interesting things about Latinos on the campaign trail.
(2 of 2)
Latinos for Reform have also been active in Colorado, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, promoting the idea to potential Latino voters that “Obama puts African Americans before Latinos and Africa before Latin America.”
Pitting minorities against one another almost never is to the benefit of minority political interests.
Meanwhile, if you're a potential voter, minority or not, who is discouraged and disgusted by all the nasty political attacks ads in this election season, I must reiterate that this is one of the legacies of George W. Bush, who before exiting the White House in early 2009, was able to fashion a U.S. Supreme Court, led by his handpicked Chief Justice John Roberts, that is activist to its core. Last January, the Court opened yet wider the spigot for big, anonymous political donations. It's pure coincidence (sure it is) that the major beneficiaries of the Roberts Court, at least in this cycle, are Republican and tea party candidates. It's also pure coincidence that Bush's own henchman Karl Rove has emerged as the king of anonymous political donations. He help to create and advises American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, two groups that are leading the pack in soliciting anonymous donations that are then repackaged to finance fierce political attack ads.
Rob Collins, president of American Action Network, which The New York Times noted shares strategies and “a nondescript office suite just blocks from the White House” with the Rove-advised groups, put it starkly. He said, “We carpet-bombed for two months in 82 races; now it's sniper time.”
In other words, this is war, which means that, disgusted or not by all the negativity, none of us can afford to sit out this midterm election. Get out to the polls on Tuesday even if it pours down rain, because elections really do have consequences.
Betty Winston Bayé is a Courier-Journal columnist and editorial writer whose column appears on Thursdays. Read her online atcourier-journal.com/opinion.
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