As Black History Month winds down and the 47th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” is on the horizon, the assault on the right to vote continues. MSNBC reports:
In an election year dominated by battles over health care mandates, tax rates, and rising gasoline prices, it’s the mechanics of voting – and who’ll get to vote in November – that’s getting full-time attention from state legislators, election lawyers, and judges.In the latest example, the Virginia state Senate is headed for a vote Friday on a new voter identification requirement – one more indication that the voter ID controversy will keep boiling in legislatures and in the courts right up to Election Day.
These new voter ID laws are being proposed almost exclusively by Republican legislators and governors in states throughout the nation, spawning both litigation and angry rhetoric from Democrats.
Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson told MSNBC:
All of a sudden after the 2008 election, these (voter ID laws) miraculously appear. Why? Because we have a black president in the White House and it is to stop all of the people of color from … coming out to vote, because they (the proponents of voter ID laws) know who they are targeting …
Indeed, we do know. The struggle continues.
