The high art of disenfranchisement

[babylonsister]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/03/2572016/the-high-art-of-disenfranchisement.html

The high art of disenfranchisement
The Miami Herald Editorial The Miami Herald

OUR OPINION: Justice Department should start in Florida on its review of new voting laws, rights restoration
By The Miami Herald Editorial
[e-mail]


Attorney General Eric Holder says the U.S. Justice Department will move aggressively to review the plethora of new voting laws that state legislatures across the nation have passed in recent years to exclude minority voters.

Get to it, Mr. Holder.

There is no better place to start than in Florida where picking and choosing voters has become a high art and low crime. And it is not just minority voters who face these new hurdles but young voters, voters who have moved into new precincts, voters whose interest in politics is newly awakened. In short, voters who aren’t part of a tightly knit group that can be counted on for party-line (dare we say, Republican) ballots in a state where Democrats outnumber GOP registered voters.

Consider the issue of restoring civil rights, including the right to vote, to people who have completed their sentences on felony convictions. Not a popular bunch, not a group easy to defend. Yet, these are people who have paid the debt demanded of them by society, and it’s in society’s best interest to give them a stake in the future of their communities.

snip//

The stringent rule on ex-felons was hardly the first hurdle to voting by the new-style Republicans dominating Florida politics. The Legislature trimmed the number of days for early voting, clamped down on changes of address at the polls and imposed deadlines on paperwork from registration drives. Mind you, there were no voter-fraud scandals, just the election of Barack Obama.

The Justice Department retains supervision of changes in Florida law because of a history of discriminatory practices in five counties. So the promised review should be thorough but also swift. November’s coming, and a true democracy is a contest of ideas that appeal to the majority, not just to an exclusive club.