[ad_1]
GEORGIA's run for governor Brian Kemp against Democrat Stacey Abrams has become a tight race. Although Georgia's race for governance may not seem so important outside Peach State, this year's elections have serious implications for the future of voting rights in the United States.
Kemp, currently Secretary of State of Georgia, is fulfilling his duty to administer elections and register voters in the state. It is therefore a matter of applying a controversial law that has removed a large number of previously registered voters from Georgia's lists and created long delays in processing applications for registration.
According to a report released by the Associated Press earlier this month, more than 53,000 voter registrations are pending. As Georgia uses an "exact match" verification system, a write error as small as a deleted hyphen could put the registration request on hold.
Georgia has also made it difficult for voters to solve problems related to their applications. The state did not inform people that their applications were pending. A person should log in and check the status of his registration.
Learn more by Will Tomer
More than 70% of the records concerned belong to black Georgians. Georgia's population is 32% black, so it is worthwhile to see racial disparity.
Mr. Kemp's office has canceled more than 1.2 million registered voters since 2012 and more than 670,000 registered voters in 2017 alone. Mr. Kemp calls this "the maintenance of voters lists," intended to purge the system of inactive voters. This process has also been called "use it or lose it". It is important to note that the Constitution does not provide for a time limit on the right to vote.
Laws that limit a person's ability to vote have become popular in recent years. It started with the Supreme Court decision in 2013 to hear the Shelby County vs. case. Holder. The court removed some key provisions from the 1965 Voting Rights Act, including allowing the Department of Justice to automatically review changes to voting laws in states with a history of discriminatory behavior. Chief Justice John Roberts, whose judgments suggest a textualist / originalist reading of the Constitution, cited "the fundamental tradition of equal sovereignty" of states as the basis for the decision.
The main problem with Roberts' invocation of the "equal sovereignty" of states, which he did not clearly define in his judgment, is that it is a modern invention that has not was found nowhere in the US Constitution.
At present, the states of the country have passed strict laws on voter identity and registration policies that limit people's access to the ballot box. Conservative lawmakers have argued that these laws are necessary to end electoral fraud and preserve the integrity of our elections. But research indicates that electoral fraud is not a major problem in the United States.
Last year, the Brennan Justice Center investigated allegations of election fraud in the 2016 elections. Researchers spoke with election officials in the most populated districts of non-citizens. What happened?
Of more than 23.5 million votes, there were only "30 incidents of alleged non-citizen voting," according to the report. "In other words, the abusive non-citizen votes represented 0.0001% of the 2016 votes in these jurisdictions."
So, if electoral fraud is not a serious problem, why did some legislators seek to limit people's access to the voting booth? As in Georgia, race has played a troubling role in the dissemination of election laws in recent years.
A 2016 study published by the State Politics and Policy Quarterly found that "Democratic legislators representing large populations of black districts are more opposed to restrictive laws on voter identification, while Republican lawmakers with a large black district population are more supportive.
In 2017, the Journal of Politics at the University of Chicago published similar results. "Strict identification laws have a different negative impact on the participation of racial and ethnic minorities in primary and general elections," write Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi and Lindsay Nielson. "Voter identification laws direct democracy to right-wing ones."
The right to vote is one of the essential rights recognized to US citizens. It's supposed to be a democracy in action, an opportunity for people to make their voices and feelings known. But the credibility of this process has eroded when weak-minded politicians, fearful of being removed from office, embark on the system for their own benefit.
The United States has a long and embarrassing history of preventing minorities from voting because they risk overthrowing existing power structures. For example: once Blacks got the vote in 1870 through the fifteenth amendment, politicians put in place legal procedures designed to prevent blacks from exercising their right to vote. The Constitution does not say that a vote can only be cast if an elector pays a voting tax or passes a literacy test, but at a time when the rights of states were a matter of d & # 39; States were consistently critical of the ability of citizens of color, particularly African-Americans, to vote.
Unfortunately, voter identity laws, strict registration procedures, and voter list purges are the result of these obsolete and oppressive voter suppression techniques. The fact that the United States is still grappling with this issue speaks volumes about current issues of race and social justice.
However, this issue is nowhere more relevant than Georgia. The election could become a litmus test of US tolerance of laws prohibiting uncomfortable people from exercising their fundamental rights. The race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp will have many implications, but few will be as important as how this race influences the definition of the right to vote in the 21st century.
Contact Will Tomer at [email protected], at 412-263-1932 or Twitter @WillTomer.
[ad_2]
Source link
