I cast my first vote as an American citizen in 1972 in Chicago, Illinois when the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States was US Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. When I voted I did not need to show any form of ID. My signature next to my name on the voting roll was all that was required. There were no long lines where people stood for hours waiting to vote. Nobody needed to bring a chair to sit in or a bottle of water to fend off thirst while waiting for their turn to vote. There were so many convenient polling places across the city that most people were in and out in less than thirty minutes.
Things have changed dramatically over this fifty year span of time since my first vote. First, the politics in the country have shifted so radically that it would be impossible for a Democrat to win any statewide office in South Dakota. "Trumpism" has taken over that state and the current governor and both US Seantors are doing their best imitation of Trump's cruel and callous political values. A progressive Democrat holding public office in South Dakota is as rare as a snowstorm in Cleveland on the Fourth of July.
Second, the very process of voting in this country has become increasingly difficult. In 1972, the Voting Rights Act had been in place for seven years. That 1965 law made voting possible for millions of African Americans scattered in the states of the former confederacy. They had been denied the right to vote by various schemes such as literacy tests, the grandfather clause, the poll tax, and most ridiculous of all, by having to guess how many bubbles (exactly) were in a bar of soap or how many jellybeans (exactly) were contained in a glass jar.
These were early forms of voter suppression designed to limit if not completely eliminate voting rights for African Americans. However, the Voting Rights Act eliminated all those voter suppression tactics and made it a requirement that any changes in voting regulations in those states first had to be approved by the Justice Department or by a federal district court judge.
Voter suppression laws are under consideration in 47 states. Ohio is not exempt. We must speak out.
All that changed in 2013 when the US Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder overturned the enforcement portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Ever since that ruling, one state after another — not just in the South but across the entire country — has been proposing harsh new voting restriction laws designed with surgical precision to limit the access of millions of people from the ballot box.
Those efforts took on new urgency after the 2020 election cycle. Not only did Joe Biden win the presidential election, thus preventing the reelection of Donald Trump, but Georgia also elected two Democrats to the U. S. Senate, thereby giving Democrats the majority in that body of Congress. The $1.9 trillion COVID Recovery Act that was passed in March and the $2 trillion infrastructure bill recently introduced by Biden are possible only because of what happened in the recent elections in Georgia.
It now seems clear that Republican-controlled state legislatures across this country have discovered that they cannot win elections when all eligible voters are allowed access to the ballot box. Since their candidates cannot win in a fair and free election, they have introduced hundreds of bills designed to suppress the votes of black and brown voters along with college students and many senior citizens as well. Rather than celebrate the record voter turnout in 2020, these Republican legislators are imagining ever more restrictive voting rules.
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In Georgia they have already adopted voting restrictions that are throwbacks to the Jim Crow era before the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They limit early voting, reduce the number of ballot drop boxes, unfairly purge voter rolls, close or suddenly relocate polling places in urban areas, require multiple IDs when voting on Election Day, reserve the right to challenge the right to vote of any voter that appears at the polls, reserve the right to challenge the right to vote of any voter who appears at the polls, reserve the right to challenge any election results with which they disagree, and even make it a felony to give a bottle of water to anyone waiting in line to vote.
Such laws are being considered in 47 states. The future of our democracy is at stake. We need to understand the dangers we face regarding free and fair elections. Had these new laws been in place last year, Donald Trump would have been re-elected. If these laws are allowed to remain in force, there will be minority rule in this country where Republicans will win elections only by denying the right to vote to those who might not vote for them. Ohio is not exempt from voter suppression laws, and all of us who long for full citizenship rights must be on our guard and speak out against these new voter suppression laws.
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The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, retired in 2019 as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, where he had served since 2011.