The Trump Era is a real-time tutorial in how our democracy actually works. One of the most striking things to me was realizing that the Voting Rights Act of 1965–the core of the Civil Rights movement–not only isn’t permanent (it has to be reauthorized periodically) but it was substantially weakened in 2013 by a Supreme Court decision that said states no longer had to get federal approval for changes in voter laws.
The disenfranchisement of black voters, especially in the south, started immediately.
“Republican lawmakers around the country aggressively pushed through laws to make voting harder for certain groups, particularly minorities. Poll taxes and literacy tests have given way to voter-ID laws, cutbacks to early voting and same-day registration, polling place closings, voter-roll purges, racially discriminatory redistricting and felon disenfranchisement laws…”
“In striking down a remarkably harsh North Carolina law in 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found that lawmakers had targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.””
This is being fought in the lower courts constantly, but justice delayed is justice denied. Meanwhile, elections keep happening with voter suppression tactics in place. THIS is why getting out the vote is even more critical now than in the past–we’re fighting a headwind of laws intended to keep people (particularly Black voters) home.
This series of articles about voting in America is well worth the read–we have to understand how democracy actually functions (not the gauzy fairy tales we tell ourselves) in order to keep it.