There’s a fascinating history to what Joe Madison calls “James Crow, Esq., voting suppression”—and that history tells us what we can do to solve the problem of Republicans using the Help America Vote Act to block people from voting in largely Democratic areas.
It started with the 2000 election “debacle” in Florida...Thomas Paine famously said, “The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.”
It’s profoundly ironic that the descendants of slaves are the principal victims of this nationwide GOP effort. Legislation is needed immediately to criminalize such behavior on the part of state election officials.
At www.rawstory.com
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