US voting restrictions that have disenfranchised Blacks, Native Americans and other minority groups may be used to delegitimize the results of many of the midterm elections especially for members of the Republican Party.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd November, 2018) US voting restrictions that have disenfranchised Blacks, Native Americans and other minority groups may be used to delegitimize the results of many of the midterm elections especially for members of the Republican Party.
On Friday, a US court ordered the state of Georgia's Republican officials to allow more than 3,000 residents tagged as noncitizens to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. The court also expressed concerns about the differential treatment of minorities in the state's election processes.
On November 6, US voters will cast ballots to fill 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and one-third of the 100-member Senate. The outcome of the 2018 midterms will determine if the Republican Party will maintain control of both chambers of Congress. However, recent polling indicates the Democrats may be poised to recapture the House.
Laws and practices that suppress minority voters have been prevalent across the United States in countless Federal and local elections, but in most cases the candidates who benefit the most from these measures just happen to be members of the Republican Party.
People for the American Way Foundation President Ralph Neas warned in a statement at the end of September that Republicans appeared to be moving toward a policy of excluding voters on the basis of race.
"Although voter intimidation has not historically been confined to a single political party, we are increasingly concerned about recent incidents indicating that Republican officials may be planning to challenge voters this year based on race," Neas said.
In Florida, two-term incumbent Republican Governor Rick Scott is running for a Senate seat against current Senator Bill Nelson with polls showing them neck and neck. However, Scott as governor pushed through draconian legislation that barred everyone even with a minor felony conviction from being free to vote.
The legislation bars 1.5 million people who have been convicted in the state, including an estimated half a million African-Americans, most of whom were expected to vote Democrat. Other measures, also detrimental to Democratic Party prospects, have been as blatant in other midterm US House and Senate races.
"The most egregious situation arises out of North Dakota from the maneuvers to prevent Native Americans from voting," University of Houston Professor of African-American History Gerald Horne told Sputnik.
Just weeks before the election the US Supreme Court upheld a state law in North Dakota that excludes citizens without a street address from voting, Horne said. Most Native Americans in the state, Horne observed, do not have their own street addresses and receive their mail at reservation post offices. This could be of great political significance, Horne added, since incumbent Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp won by only 3,000 votes in the previous race and most Native Americans tend to lean towards the Democratic Party.
In Georgia, there have been reports of the closing of more than 200 polling stations with an estimated 100,000 people being removing from voting registers. The reassessment was directed by Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is now running to be governor.
In addition, a US federal judge on October 24 blocked an attempt by Kemp to throw out thousands of voter ballots due to a so-called "signature mismatch." According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the ballots in question were from a county where more than 60 percent of residents are Latino, Black or Asian.
It is also important to note that Kemp's opponent in the gubernatorial race - Democrat Stacey Abrams - could become the state of Georgia's first African-American governor. Abrams has repeatedly accused Kempt of mass purging blacks from voter registration lists.
LaTosha Brown, founder of Black Voters Matter added in a statement on October 15 that an incident in Jefferson County, Georgia preventing elderly black voters from riding on a bus to vote indicated a wider pattern of intimidation.
"This is a continuation of voter suppression and voter intimidation," Brown said. "Even in the absence of law or policy they use voter intimidation as a strategy to use their power and authority to intimidate black folks in rural areas."
LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF DISCRIMINATION
On August 6, 1965, alongside Marlin Luther King and other civil rights leaders, US President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act which was designed to remove legal barriers across every state in the Union that prevented blacks from exercising their constitutional right to vote.
The move came at the height of the US Civil Rights Movement, the culmination of years of enduring brutality and demonstrations against racist policies in the southern states that deprived blacks of the right to vote as stipulated by the 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870.
Horne explained that the wave of new restrictions had been made possible by a 2013 US Supreme Court ruling, Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down parts of the landmark federal voting rights legislation signed by Johnson.
As a consequence of the ruling, state and local authorities across the United States no longer have to get Justice Department approval in advance to implement laws that change or restrict voting rights, Horne said.
"[The ruling] ripped the heart out of the 1965 Voting Act," Horne said. "There are numerous cases of voter suppression and new local laws being passed across the United States as a direct result of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling."
Analyst Kimberly Atkins, speaking at a Brookings Institution symposium on elections on Thursday, agreed with Horne's assessment regarding Shelby County vs. Holder.
"In the five years since that [Shelby] decision there have been suppressive voting laws passed in nearly half of the states," Atkins said.
Howard University Professor of politics Michael Fauntroy during the panel discussion said nearly a thousand polling places have been closed in the southern part of the United States since the Shelby ruling.
"The suppression is real," Fauntroy concluded.
The majority opinion of the Supreme Court in the 2013 Shelby v. Holder case argued that the 1965 Voting Rights Act was based on information that was four decades old and violated the principle of federalism and the equal sovereignty of each US state.
