We're six months out from the next election, and historically, voter turnout in mid-term, non-presidential elections is low. About 60% of American voters go to the polls in presidential elections, but only 40% show up for mid-term, non-presidential elections. President Obama urged the National Action Network Conference attendees to work hard to help voters register and then get to the polls.
He recognizes that voting rights are under attack by Republican legislators in states across the nation. Quipping about "souls to the polls," the practice in many churches of following worship and potlucks with a bus ride to the polls, he noted that it could be done on Tuesday night, if you had to. But to be fair, the President noted that one Republican State Senator, Dale Schultz of Wisconsin, said that limiting early voting was "fiddling with mechanics rather than ideas...Making it more difficult for people to vote is not a good sign for a party that wants to attract more people."
There doesn't appear to be any shortage of imaginative ways to restrict voting. In Miami-Dade county, with a population of 2.6 million people, the elections department may prohibit all voters from using restrooms at polling places, reasoning that "If no voters could go to the bathroom, the county argued, then it could not be accused of discriminating against only the disabled ones."
“This is a very clear way to suppress the vote,” Marc Dubin of the Center for Independent Living of South Florida said. “Telling people, ‘We have 12-hour lines but you can’t go to the bathroom?’ You can be guaranteed that people won’t come out to vote.” Maybe, but it Depends.
President Obama's message is clear: voting is a fundamental constitutional right that must be used, and defended, because "Justice requires the right to vote." He reminded us that James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Henry Schwerner believed so strongly in the power of the vote that they died for it in Mississippi fifty years ago.
According to the ACLU, "During the 2011 legislative sessions, states across the country passed measures to make it harder for Americans – particularly African-Americans, the elderly, students and people with disabilities – to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot. Over thirty states considered laws that would require voters to present government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Studies suggest that up to 11 percent of American citizens lack such ID, and would be required to navigate the administrative burdens to obtain it or forego the right to vote entirely."
Of course, citizens foregoing the right to vote entirely is exactly what the oligarchic Koch Brothers want to happen. Their paper mill, ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, drafts and distributes boilerplate legislative bills throughout the 50 state legislatures. ALEC's "...bills or resolutions would disenfranchise Americans and give corporations even more power to use their vast financial resources to influence elections in our democracy without full disclosure of that spending. These two focal points of recent ALEC proposals pose twin threats to American democracy, by limiting the right of citizens to vote while expanding the power of for-profit corporations and the shadowy front groups funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers to distort elections through pouring money into expensive attack ads cloaked as 'issue' advertising."
We have six months to organize voter registration drives and ready voters to go to the polls in the upcoming mid-term election. Let's give President Obama a House that will work with him to craft legislation to benefit all of us, instead of a House that wastes time and tax payer dollars obstructing him. And of course, we need the Senate, too.
So when President Obama urges us register and vote, he is also telling us to defend our democracy - because there are those nefarious forces that want to restrict our democratic constitutional rights to suit their corporate interests.
Do You Know When/Where To Register To Vote? Check at: My Time To Vote.com
