Restoring the right to vote: the time to do so is now
by Nancy K. Kaufman, Guest Columnist
Aug 29, 2013
... Marchers 50 years ago argued for voting rights protections that were realized with the passage, two years later, of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today, instead of making the right to vote a rock solid commitment, we actually find ourselves as a nation debating settled principles and even settled law when it comes to protecting the franchise ...
... we are now confronted, not with efforts to end hours-long lines to vote, or to make it easier to register, or to extend early voting, but by efforts to impose unjustified restrictions on who can cast a ballot and to make casting a ballot ever more difficult.
Before Shelby v Holder, several states and local jurisdictions passed, or attempted to pass, laws eliminating same-day registration, shortening hours for registration, moving polling places in ways that disadvantaged minority communities, and perhaps most egregious, instituting photo ID requirements. The photo ID requirement is supposed to prevent individual voter fraud, although there is virtually no evidence that such fraud exists.
These efforts gained a veneer of legitimacy when the Supreme Court ruled that such requirements were legal in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, an ill-advised decision that said states merely had to have plausible reasons for a photo ID law. Critics have since amassed evidence that significant portions of the electorate will be severely disadvantaged by photo ID requirements that assume a potential voter can prove citizenship or is in possession of a birth certificate. For many, particularly poor, older, and minority voters (a majority of whom are women), acquiring such documentation is onerous and expensive, if it can be done at all ...
http://thejewishchronicle.net/view/full_story/23477523/article-Restoring-the-right-to-vote--the-time-to-do-so-is-now-?instance=secondary_stories_right_column
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