Could Bill Clinton have it right — that we’re seeing the most “determined effort” in half a century to limit Americans’ right to vote? That the new wave of restrictions are the worst, as the former president puts it, “since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting”?
Alarmingly, the evidence supports Clinton’s position. Bills to require government-issued photo identification at the polls have passed this year in several states where Republicans control both the governorships and legislatures — Texas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas and Tennessee. And they’re being advanced in several more GOP- held states.
The alleged reason: serious voter fraud. But the facts beg to differ. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that actual prosecutions, arrests or findings of voter malfeasance are exceedingly rare. Realistically, there’s no significant problem.
But there are serious politics. It’s true — carrying a photo ID does seem to be part of life for most of us today, necessary from driving to purchasing alcohol to boarding a plane. But repeated surveys by reputable polling firms show up to 11 percent of Americans lack either driver’s licenses or the equivalent government-issued identification.
And who are these folks? Disproportionately, the studies show, they are blacks, Hispanics, Asians, low-income elderly, students and young adults. And what a strange coincidence — the very voting groups most likely to vote Democratic.
Check which states have passed the new laws: With the exception of Rhode Island, all have Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures looking to entrench their power.
The new Texas law, advanced and signed by Gov. Rick Perry, provides a clear giveaway on intent. A voter doesn’t even have to show his driver’s license or passport — he can qualify just by producing his license to carry a concealed handgun. Yet note what’s not eligible now in Texas: any form of student identification.
It’s true: Stacking the deck of the eligible electorate to match political and racial stereotypes is as old as the American republic. But there’s a companion truth: the two-century-old story of growing, vibrant American democracy told precisely through our constant expansions of the right to vote.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 struggled with the issue. Some delegates wanted to restrict voting to “freeholders” lest the propertyless sway outcomes. In the end, they left voting qualifications to the states, which had all manner of requirements, usually that voters (all men, or course) would have to hold property. Roughly half of adult males were actually voteless until the dramatic rise of Jacksonian democracy successfully expanded the franchise to all white men in the 1820s — a development fought, of course, by the autocrats of the time.
What of America’s vast numbers of African-heritage slaves? The Constitution counted each as three-fifths of a person for apportionment (a rawly depersonalizing formula that’s still a dark mark on our history).
Full voting rights for black Americans were not assured until passage of the civil rights laws of the 1960s, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Women, too, had to wait long to vote — until ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. As for youth 18 to 21 — they couldn’t participate at the polls until the “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” case won passage of the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age to 18, in 1971.
Even today, states law forbidding ex-felons the right to vote echo exclusionary practices of past times. And now come the new state laws that backers know will reduce the votes of Hispanics, blacks, Asians, the elderly and the poor. Let’s call them what they are: a conscious dimming of the American Dream of expanding rights and responsibilities for all.
Benjamin Franklin had it right at the Constitutional Convention: “It is of great consequence that we should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people.”
