The men who designed the Constitution had specific corrections they wanted to make to the British monarchical system they had grown up with. In addition, they recognized the recent religious and political history of Europe and acknowledged the diverse community the colonies had become.
So they built a structure of checks and balances that required broad consensus to work smoothly, starting with the idea “We the People…”
They designed the U.S. Constitution to encourage all factions to have a say, and to be heard. This concept was enshrined in the First Amendment. America does not need a Tahrir Square nor a Velvet Revolution—its people’s right to protest is already written into the Constitution. All public officials are sworn to protect the Constitution, by an oath the Founding Fathers put in the Constitution.
But how does the average person protect and defend the Constitution? The simple answer is, by voting.
The right to vote is the badge of citizenship. Voting is such an extraordinarily valuable part of the American system that there are those who try to suppress the vote, thus weakening our constitutional protections. We are all too familiar with the long history and many devices, even violence, used in America after the Civil War to deny African American citizens the vote and hence the opportunity to participate in public life.
The violence at Selma, Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday” (March 7, 1965), shocked the wider American conscience and contributed to the swift passage of 1965’s Civil Rights Act, signed into law on Aug. 6.
Seven years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court seriously weakened those 1965 protections. Its Shelby County v. Holder decision meant that states with histories of racial discrimination were no longer required to pre-clear changes in voting with the federal government.
Unsurprisingly, that decision led to the enactment of a host of obvious voter-suppression tactics such as purging voter rolls, use-it-or-lose-it rules, closing polling locations, restricting the hours of voting, instituting onerous voter-ID laws, limiting access to voting by mail, and other measures that disproportionately affect specific parts of the community.
This is not history, this is today.
In recent elections in Georgia and Texas, we have seen poll closures, malfunctioning machines, missing absentee ballots, and long lines. Even the Atlanta mayor had to vote in person because her absentee ballot never arrived.
Ninety percent of the polling places in Kentucky were closed, the highest percent being in Black and Brown neighborhoods. In that commonwealth’s largest city, there was only one polling station open for 616,523 registered voters, forcing long lines and exposure to COVID-19.
In Florida, voters passed a referendum to restore the right to vote for those who had a criminal record. The Republican-dominated legislature immediately turned around and created a poll tax requirement which the courts struck down.
In North Carolina, the courts ruled against a voter-ID requirement that the court said disadvantaged African Americans “with surgical precision.”
Your vote is so important that great measures are taken to deny it to you.
But in Virginia this year, the state legislature removed the photo-ID requirement, returning voter identification for the Nov. 3 election to its original 2014 requirements. The legislature eliminated the list of excuses for obtaining an absentee ballot. Now, you can easily request an absentee ballot at any time of the year. In the era of the coronavirus pandemic, this step is particularly helpful, because you will not be endangering the election officers at the precinct polling station, nor yourself.
The last great voter-suppression move, in fact, may be the administration’s threat to not fund the U.S. Postal Service. No post office, no vote-by-mail ballots.
Yes, voting is your badge of citizenship. Keep it polished.
David Reuther
This article was originally published in the Culpeper Star-Exponent and is republished here with the author’s consent.
