Clarifying the historical record on voting rights and modern politics

James Finck’s article has some valid and helpful insights, but he is wrong on his overall argument regarding Voting Rights.  In sum, we need to be reminded that we are not living in 1789 or 1963.  Society and technology have made some advances since then.

Mr. Finck observes that Democrats for many years in the “Solid South” kept blacks from voting.  Let’s be clear.  Senator Richard Russell told President Lyndon Johnson that when the Voting Rights Act of 1965, forwarded after “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, was enacted, the Democrats would lose the South forever.  Russell was right. Even currently, 56 years later with the exceptions of Virginia and Georgia, all the Senate seats in the states of the old Confederacy are now Republican held.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prevented changes in voting laws from being imposed with pre-clearance by the Justice Department.  The Act had its intended effect.  Blacks voted and many black citizens were elected to public office throughout the South.

Voting Rights became the Democratic Party’s issue while voter suppression has of late emerged as a Republican strategy.  As late as the administration of George W. Bush, Congress passed extensions of the Voting Rights Act. Ronald Reagan approved an extension. Rep. Bob Goodlatte was a moderate on voting rights in the Congress but toward the end of his career, as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he would not even hold a hearing on the subject.

Did Bob Goodlatte change?  Perhaps, but what clearly changed was the Republican Party.  When the Supreme Court approved the Shelby decision striking down the pre-clearance provisions of the 1965 law, states primarily, but not exclusively, in the South rushed to impose voter suppression laws.

Donald Trump had it right when he said if everyone voted, Republicans would have a hard time winning elections.  Trump didn’t want people to vote in Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia because they had a high number of black voters.  Black voters heavily favor the Democratic Party.  How to beat them?  Prevent them from voting.

Some states have long used mail-in voting.  Military personnel deployed in foreign lands use mail-in voting.  Tom Paine never imagined that the U.S. military would be based in Iraq or anywhere else.  Yes, the Founders wanted it to be hard to vote.  Voting rights for women or blacks, unthinkable.  Mail-in ballots were never an issue until Donald Trump and the Trump Party made it an issue.  Voter fraud was rare, but it became the thin reed on which to base voter suppression.

Has Jim Crow left the building?  Most certainly not and that is why we need a new voting rights law that makes it easier, not harder to vote.  It is alarming that so many of our fellow citizens do not bother to vote.  Voting is the foundation of our democracy.  Those who undermine voting rights undermine democracy itself.

Tom Howarth
Warren County, Virginia

(Note: Tom Howarth holds a Masters’ Degree in Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin; he taught constitutional government at Northern Virginia Community College; and is a former aide to the late Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, D-NJ.)