Truly Ashamed

Leo Sell, Legislative Committee Chair

Last night I watched the movie “Mississippi Burning”. It is a disturbing depiction of what was going on during the early days of the civil rights movement (1964) particularly in this southern state. The church and home burnings, lynchings, intimidation tactics, active support by the local authorities, politicians, and businessmen for the KKK. All very striking.

But what really caught my ear was a line from a particularly murderous white man in the local “social club” (the county being dry). He said to FBI Agent Anderson, (paraphrasing from memory), “There are five thousand n********* in Jessup County that ain’t registered to vote and we are going to by God keep it that way!!”.

So there it was in all its starkness. Beyond the legacy of southern racism and the long history of the abuse of a peoples, this was all about voter suppression. That was striking, but what brought me to shame was to realize that similar voter suppression of minority and poor has continued to this very day.

Ever since the Republican party adopted their “Southern Strategy” to elect Nixon, that party has engaged in continual efforts to leverage racism and prejudices for electoral advantage. And they’ve taken it further all the time, with feigned “voter fraud concerns” being addressed by pictured identification requirements and the like.

This shameful effort has now come fully to Michigan. Just in the last few days, the Senate’s super-majority of Republicans passed new requirements of citizens who want to register to vote, or apply for an absentee ballot. These are requirements that are well-known by fair election organizations that are designed to reduce participation of minority and poor voters. And perhaps even worse, the bills also would require volunteers to complete training before working on voter registration drives and require voter applicants to affirm they are U.S. citizens.

Let me be clear about this – as similar efforts have been proposed and passed across the country, there have NEVER been any actual, credible reports of the types of supposed election fraud occurring that are the public justification for such bills. These are designed almost entirely to reduce the level of participation by constituencies what often, when engaged through registration drives and get out the vote efforts, will usually vote for Democrats. It’s as crass and calculated as that.

And it’s shameful.

This is merely the latest immorality committed by this legislature and Governor. It has only been a very few weeks since Governor Snyder signed the extremist HB 4770 that bans domestic partner benefits for state employees. Frankly, since Snyder was elected as a center-right moderate, I’d been giving him the “benefit of the doubt” hoping that when and if some extreme measure like HB 4770 came to him, he would have the political courage to do the right thing and veto it. But that didn’t happen. With that stroke of his pen, as far as I am concerned, he stepped resolutely toward the right wing of his party.

Signing that bill was absolutely shameful.

I do not believe for one moment that the people of Michigan elected this current legislature with ANY expectation that the lawmakers would place so much focus on social/moral issues. The attacks on public employees, on the poor, on minorities, on reproductive rights, and on and on. Was the average voter in 2010 expecting this? I don’t think so.

One can only hope for some corrective results in the Fall of 2012.