Illegals Flooding Border Under Biden Is ‘Obama 2.0’

[Pete F.]

I could, like some, use the method of repeating 150 year old racist tropes in new language and gaslighting that now they are justified and some people should not be able to vote.

In practice, efforts to manipulate electoral participation - and specifically to suppress Black voters - have been and continue to be a prominent theme in the history of American elections.

Enslaved people could not vote. After the 1860s Civil War, newly freed African Americans seized the right to vote, sending several men to represent Southern states in Congress.

But as early as the 1870s, white Americans systematically disenfranchised Black voters (and also many poor whites) through a variety of regulations — including property and education clauses. The notorious “grandfather clause” decreed men could vote only if their grandfather was also eligible to vote in the years before 1867. Violence at the ballot box kept African American men, and African American women after 1920, away for decades.

When Trump incited his followers to sign up as “election poll watchers”, he evokes this very history, which dominated Southern politics until the civil rights movement.

Since the movement, African American voters have selected the Democratic presidential candidate in huge majorities. As a result, new forms of suppression have emerged to stop them.

Since 2010, 25 states have introduced measures to make it harder to vote. For example, they require voters to register prior to the election and/or provide photo ID at the point of voting.

In 11 states, people convicted of felonies are banned from voting long after custodial sentences end or fines have been paid – and sometimes for life. These laws have seen 6 million adults lose the right to vote.

These methods all affect poorer and less well-educated Americans more than affluent Americans. Non-white Americans, especially African American, Native American and to a lesser extent Latino voters, have been most affected.

In Florida, where this disenfranchisement affected more than 20% of African Americans, voters overturned the ban. Republican state legislators soon found a way to ensure 775,000 people still cannot vote by deeming ineligible anyone with outstanding court fees.

In neighbouring Georgia, Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp narrowly edged out popular Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams – who is African American – in the 2018 election for governor. His success came by ruthlessly disqualifying 53,000 voters – 70% of them African American and only 20% white – with dubious “signature matching” requirements.