04-16-2021, 01:55 PM
(04-16-2021, 01:36 PM)Dill Wrote: This is puzzling.
Why wouldn't you think that Republicans are making voter ID's a race issue?
The assumption behind voter ID laws in southern states has not been that Blacks aren't capable of getting IDs, but that many do not have them and would find the process of getting one costly--especially for the elderly who have been voting for decades, but don't have birth certificates and the like required to get voter ids. Why are such ids even necessary?
And voter ids are often combined with other regulations, like shortening early voting and reducing the number of polling places. These tactics combined can then shave a few percentage points off the Black vote (not to mention some poor whites).
E.g., in North Carolina in 2012, the Republican party collected data on NC voters which found that Black voters tended to vote early, register on the same day, and were less likely than whites to have picture ids. So they passed laws targeting these practices "with almost surgical precsion," according to the SCOTUS decision Shelby vs Holder, which found the laws unconstitutional.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/court-north-carolina-voter-id-law-targeted-black-voters/
Southern Democrats controlled black voting for a hundred years by regulating access. After 1964, The Republicans took over. So we find in state after state efforts to craft laws which reduce access to demographic groups assumed to vote Republican. When their laws are found unconstitutional, they keep writing them until the language is in compliance wit the Constitution, but the effect is still there.
But you argue that those who oppose these laws, with limited success, are the real "race baiters"? Nothing systemic about the push to limit minority voting in so many states?
It might be puzzling to you, but its not to me. If you are a white liberal, this topic is beyond your mindset. That is all I will say.
