I saw Selma recently with wifey from the comfort of our home. My wife is younger and from the South so she loves to watch historical movies like this that deal with the civil rights struggle. She says that they make her angry (this one was no exception), but she admits that it's a necessary evil in learning to better understand the history of her country. Anyway, if you know the history of voting rights in the South you will understand what the movie Selma was all about. Now, sadly, history is repeating itself in the "Land Of Dixie".
"Although the 2016 presidential election is still more than a year away, Americans are already inundated with campaign promises and a flurry of candidates. But Alabama residents have more to worry about than simply picking a party.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency announced this week that it is closing 31 satellite DMV offices owing to budget cuts. That will leave 28 counties in the state without a place for residents to get the government-issued photo IDs they need to vote. Although it’s a statewide cut, the effects of the shutdown will be felt disproportionately.
“Depending on which counties you count as being in Alabama’s Black Belt, either 12 or 15 Black Belt counties soon won’t have a place to get a driver’s license,” wrote Alabama columnist Kyle Whitmore. “Counties where some of the state’s poorest live. Counties that are majority African American.”
In 2014, Alabama became one of 17 states that require a government-issued photo ID—driver’s license being the most common—in order to cast a ballot. When the measure was under consideration back in 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union lobbied against it, concerned that requiring photo IDs would disenfranchise black voters. Proponents of the measure said strict ID laws would prevent voter fraud. The ACLU argued that as more black residents took public transportation than white residents (62 percent versus 34 percent), black residents were less likely to already have the driver’s license they would need to vote.
Now, there will be fewer places to obtain the IDs needed to participate in the country’s democracy. The newly shuttered offices accounted for 5 percent of the state’s driver’s license transactions, according to the ALEA. Authorities also proposed sending out mobile I.D. vans and crews to affected counties. But rights activists argue that the vans are poorly publicized, and that any sort of restriction is problematic." [Source]
I suspect that there will be more of these types of cuts to come in states with strict voter ID laws that happen to have a large black population. We could see this okey -doke coming from a mile away: Pass stricter laws requiring voter identification, and close the very places that make these cards available to the public.
Alabama joins states like Texas that are making it hard for people of color because of either racism, politics, or both. I personally suspect the latter.
"Two years ago, Alabama would have needed federal approval to make such a change. A 2013 Supreme Court decision invalidated sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required states well known for discrimination, including Alabama, be overseen by the federal government to implement any laws that could impact voting. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision that “our country has changed,”'
I bet people like John Roberts said the same thing right after Selma.
*Pic from www. aclu.org
