Voting on Your Own Recognizance 2
As a follow-up to the item I posted on Thursday, I offer some quotes from a Religion News Service article entitled, “Black pastors move to counter new voter ID laws”:
“We must vote because we must counteract the corrupt and diabolical strategies of those who are trying to take away our vote by passing laws to suppress and diminish our voting rights,” said the Rev. Julius Scruggs, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, at a news conference Wednesday (Sept. 5) during his denomination’s Annual Session in Atlanta.
On Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network scheduled a luncheon during the Democratic National Convention to declare a “state of emergency over voter suppression” and call for black pastors to spend the next 30 days helping people get IDs so turnout by black and Latino voters “is not compromised.”
“There is a suppression law that’s under attack, that’s in the federal courts, but we aren’t waiting on that final decision,” said the Rev. Ralph Canty, interim general secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention and a pastor in South Carolina.
“Many of us are doing all that we can to help people get ID. It’s difficult for older people. It’s requiring a whole lot of extra effort.”
Eric McDaniel, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, said people are more likely to vote if they have a reason, whether it’s excitement about voting for Barack Obama as the first black president in 2008, or fear that voting rights are being restricted.
“If you can say, ‘You may not like Obama but some people are trying to take away your vote,’ that changes things significantly,” said McDaniel, author of a book on black churches and political mobilization. “That provides them with more ammunition to get them out to the polls.”
So here’s the question: why do African-American pastors think black people and senior citizens are so stupid and/or incompetent that they are incapable of doing what millions and millions of others have done in order simply to be able to function in society? Isn’t that, you know, racist and ageist, or something?
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7 comments
Poll after poll shows the only demographics worried about voter ID laws are democratic party functionaries/candidates and the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Every other demographic supports the laws by a wide majority.
[1] Posted by Capt. Father Warren on 9-8-2012 at 11:03 AM · [top]
Note: Official Blackdom, Latinodom, Feminism, Gaydom, Handicappedom, etc. are all pseudopods of the same left-wing amoeba and have nothing to do with what their stated intent is.
[2] Posted by Jeffersonian on 9-8-2012 at 03:30 PM · [top]
Well, I think that the Republicans must be taking a page from Canada, that ultra-right wing, vote suppressing nation to our north. They have pretty strict voter ID laws.
[3] Posted by jamesw on 9-8-2012 at 08:02 PM · [top]
You can’t get into the DNC without a valid picture ID. Or NAACP. Or get your government check, fly on an airplane, drive a car, go to school, or do just about anything without a valid ID.
“Voter supression”? You mean of dead people at the polls?
[4] Posted by B. Hunter on 9-9-2012 at 03:52 PM · [top]
So, uhhhh, like, I had to show my driver’s license to pick up my prescription from the pharmacist yesterday. I think it’s something to do with requirements of state and federal law so prescription drugs won’t end up in the hands of the wrong people. But I guess I could be totally wrong.
[5] Posted by Jim the Puritan on 9-9-2012 at 05:01 PM · [top]
I am sure that for people born in the hinterlands in the 20’s and 30’s might have some trouble supplying documentation regarding their birth date and place, but that would not be true of anyone born in the 40’s and later.
[6] Posted by AnglicanXn on 9-9-2012 at 09:22 PM · [top]
Just thought I would throw this into the discussion. I live in Amish country and they don’t have photo ID’s because they do not allow photos of themselves. I’m sure there is a way around this and someone is working on it, but I found it interesting.
[7] Posted by Ann Castro on 9-10-2012 at 07:42 AM · [top]
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