Sunday, August 29, 2021
“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. The proposal therefore to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property.”
These words were written by Thomas Paine, whose pen famously paved the way for American independence.
Washington, D.C., was the epicenter of a national show of force on Saturday, Aug. 28, as activists demonstrated around the country in support of voting rights. On this date 58 years ago, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial which preceded by two years the passage of the the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark law forbidding racial discrimination in voting.
In 2013, voting rights took a major step backword as the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County vs. Holder, in a 5-4 decision, struck down a formula at the heart of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states and localities with a history of discrimination against minority voters to have any changes relating to voting cleared by the federal government before going into effect.
Chief Justice John Roberts. in his opinion to Shelby, wrote: “The conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.” But his words were instantly contradicted by a wave of restrictions on voting that have only picked up pace since the 2120 election cycle. Recent legislation has taken an uglier turn from the realm of voter suppression to voter nullifation, by granting partisan state legislators the right to overturn election results.
Congress has the power to alter this course. The For the People Act would mitigate the effect of many state-level restrictions; and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would protect voters by preventing new discriminatory laws from being implemented. Both have passed the House, but Republicans show every intention of killing them in the Senate unless there is a change to filibuster rules which require a supermajority of 60 votes for passage.
American democracy may indeed be at a crossroads, and the stakes could not be higher.
View Jeff Malet’s photographs from the “March On for Voting Rights” in Washington, D.C., by clicking on the photo icons below.
