Passage of Voting Rights Act was to fix an ‘American problem’

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer

Fifty years after the 1965 signing of the Voting Rights Act, local civil rights groups marked the event with a presentation May 19 at the headquarters of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans. President Lyndon Johnson called racial strife over voting not a “Negro problem,” a “southern problem,” or “northern problem,” but an “American problem” as he delivered a speech the year he enacted the new law.

The bill transformed voting in America in states where Black residents, in particular, were discouraged or outright barred from voting through arbitrary literacy tests, poll taxes or even voter intimidation. The bill passed over the objections of southern Democrats with large support from GOP lawmakers.

“In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that the state’s poll tax of $1.50 was unconstitutional,” said Dale Ho, director of the voting rights project for the American Civil Liberties Union. The case ended monetary barriers to voting in the five states with poll taxes still on the books. But Ho said modern efforts to beef up voting requirements are back door poll taxes.

“The right to vote is the most fundamental right in our democracy,” said Ho, who spoke at the Urban League event. “We have seen laws passed around the country that limit voting rights,” he said, referring to the spate of voter identification laws cropping up across the country in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which shelved the Justice Department’s ability to sign off on any changes to voter laws in parts of the country with a history of voter discrimination.

Ellen Buchman, vice president of field operations for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the new laws are creating “the most unfair, confusing and discriminatory election landscape in 50 years.” Buchman, who also spoke at last week’s voting rights event, added that the new laws are “a disgrace…to our citizens, to our nation, and to our standing in the world as a beacon of democracy.”

Proponents of the laws, however, cite the need to prevent voter fraud, with white Americans supporting voter restrictions by wide margins and a slight majority of Black voters supporting the laws as well. Residents agree that efforts to prevent unregistered voters from casting ballots are worth setting greater barriers. A majority of voters surveyed also believe the laws do not discriminate based on race or age.

“We don’t object to securing the integrity of our election process,” said Ho, “but these laws don’t do that.” Ho said it’s actually quite difficult to misrepresent yourself at the polls. “You’d have to obtain someone’s ID; look like them; and then be able to match their signature. Much of the way voter fraud can occur is through machine tampering or other methods and these laws don’t address any of that.”

Traveling to locations to obtain state identification is also cited by opponents as a burden on would-be voters. “In Texas, for example, you’d have to travel as far as 200 miles to get to a location to obtain ID, everything’s bigger in Texas. That’s a problem if you’re elderly, don’t have a car or can’t afford one,” said Ho. “You also need to bring a birth certificate to obtain ID and that can cost anywhere from 20 to 40 dollars. Now, for many of us that might not seem like a lot, but for some folks that is a lot of money.”

Ho said the ACLU will continue to do away with voter restrictions as the 2016 presidential election nears. “We’ll continue to work with state legislatures to curb voter ID laws and to bring back early voting and same-day registration,” he said. “But in those cases where we can’t, then we intend to litigate.”

This article originally published in the May 25, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.