Color Us Connected: Don't take this precious right for granted. Vote Nov. 8
This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. Given that this is mostly what the world is focused on right now, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Alabama, and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write that voting is not always guaranteed.
By Guy Trammell Jr.
Voting gives us direct input into our government. My father took his Tuskegee Institute electrical students to register to vote. My brother risked his life educating southern Black people to vote. To vote, Blacks had to recite portions of the Constitution, count jelly beans and answer ridiculous questions.Old voting obstacles are replaced by new roadblocks. The Brennan Center reports: “Overall, lawmakers in 39 states have considered at least 393 restrictive bills for the 2022 legislative session, which can disproportionately affect voters of color.” Alabama is one of the 39 states.The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in voting, with the intent of enforcing the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The act prohibits state and local governments from passing voting laws producing discrimination against a racial group. This is being challenged!On Oct. 4, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Milligan v. Merrill, which charges the State of Alabama with preventing a second majority Black voting district, to possibly elect a second Black representative to Congress with Rep. Terri Sewell. The defense claims the state district maps must be race neutral so districts will show no preference to any racial group.Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan stated: “It’s one of the great achievements of American democracy to achieve equal political opportunities regardless of race, to ensure that African Americans can have as much political power as white Americans.”Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated, “The framers themselves adopted the Equal Protection Clause - the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment - in a race conscious way, that they were, in fact, trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against, the freed men, during the Reconstruction period were actually brought equal to everyone else in the society."
"The entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves. The legislator who introduced that amendment said, 'Unless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination. And crush to death the hated freed men.' That’s not a race neutral or race blind idea,” said Justice Jackson.Another case appealed to the Supreme Court, Moore v. Harper, would give state legislatures absolute power with no ability to challenge them in courts. We as citizens will no longer be allowed to vote people into Congress. Congress will be selected by state legislatures.So, Supreme Court justices are selected by presidents. That selection process is controlled by Congress. Congress is selected by voters, and the voting process is controlled by elected state officials. Our votes in local elections have direct input into how our government will serve us. When we vote, we decide. When we don’t vote, we all lose!
By Amy Miller
Your vote matters. Your participation matters. The fact that you are invited to vote on Nov. 8 matters. The fact that you can vote without risking your safety matters.
We all know that this has not always been true for every American. What we may not all know is that this invitation to vote may not always be available. Even today, some states make it harder to vote than other states. How far apart are the polling places? How late are these polls open? Do they offer rides to the polls? Do they demand forms of ID that not all citizens have? And some states are working to make it harder.
In some countries, voting is not an option. Leaders are chosen by other leaders or by the already rich and powerful. In some places, just going to the polls can be a life-threatening act of courage.
Two years ago, 100 people in my town of South Berwick and 100 people in our sister city of Tuskegee, Ala., were invited to talk about the importance of voting and obstacles they might face in voting.
“Yes, I faced obstacles to voting,” said an older Black man from Tuskegee. “They asked me the name of the presidents of the United States. I had to name them and recite some of the amendments to the Constitution. I also had to recite the preamble to the Constitution. Those are some of the things I went through in order to register to vote.”
“Obstacles to voting for me would be weather and time,” said a white woman from Maine. “Otherwise I would be there.”
A 90-minute video showing some of the interviews is posted on youtube as Together We Vote: A project of the Common Ground Sister City Project. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP7DJms9wQs)
The difference in these experiences is stark.
I just came back from Haiti, a country torn apart for a complexity of reasons that no one seems able to untangle - geography; natural disasters; and a morass of government and electoral upheavals. In 2000, 80 percent of Haiti’s voting age public went to the polls to vote for president. By 2016, the last presidential election, only 20 percent of Haitians trusted the electoral process or the safety of the polls enough to go out and vote.
In the 2020 U.S. presidential election, 67% of voters (76% in Maine and 63% in Alabama) cast ballots. If you need a reason to show up, consider our country where none of our votes counted. Consider a country with no elections at all. If your obstacles are either weather or time, you need to show up for all those who face far greater obstacles.
Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Color Us Connected: Don't take your precious right to vote for granted
