by Marc H. Morial
(Trice Edney Wire) – “Targeting naturalized citizens is the latest move in the playbook for voter intimidation. The state of Alabama illegally took the right to vote away from eligible citizens and must be stopped. We can’t allow registered voters to bear the brunt of these dangerous lies that threaten our democracy.” – Celina Stewart, CEO, League of Women Voters of the United States
The law is clear.
According to the National Voter Registration Act of 1992, “A State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
In defiance of the law, 84 days before Election Day, Alabama’s Secretary of State ordered county election officials to remove the names of people his office had identified as noncitizens.
The tactic is not only a clear violation of federal law. It’s a racist ploy to disenfranchise naturalized citizens who have the legal right to vote while stoking the flame of anti-immigrant hatred.
It’s also part of Alabama’s long history of blocking non-white citizens from the polls, stretching back nearly a century and a half.
The U.S. Department of Justice last week sued Alabama for violating the NVRA, seeking the restoration of the affected citizens’ voting rights in time for Election Day, along with the prohibition of future violations, mailings to educate eligible voters about the restoration of their rights, and adequate training of local officials and poll workers to address confusion and distrust among eligible voters accused of being noncitizens.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, Campaign Legal Center, and Fair Elections Center last month filed similar lawsuit on behalf of Alabamians who were unfairly targeted, the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, the Alabama NAACP and the League of Women Voters of Alabama.
Alabama’s hostility to voting rights for non-white citizens was largely responsible for passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Alabama’s hostility to voting rights was responsible for gutting the Act’s preclearance provision in 2013. In the five decades in between, the preclearance provision stopped Alabama from imposing racially discriminatory voting restrictions more than 100 times.
Three days after the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision, Alabama announced plans to enforce the restrictive photo I.D. law at the heart of the case. After making driver’s licenses one of the few forms of I.D. required to vote, Alabama announced it would shutter 31 driver’s license offices around the state.
A series of additional laws and policies, including closing polling places in predominately Black counties and purging hundreds of thousands of people from voter rolls, have driven the white-nonwhite voter turnout gap from 6% in 2014 to 13% in 2020. In some counties, the Black-white voter registration gap has grown to double digits.
Election changes in Alabama have prompted at least 17 lawsuits since Shelby.
Alabama is where school children peacefully protesting segregation were pummeled with water hoses and savaged by police dogs. It’s where Gov. George Wallace declared in his inauguration speech, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and stood in a University of Alabama doorway to block Black students from registering. It’s where white supremacists murdered four little girls in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It’s where the late John Lewis and other activists were beaten nearly to death as they marched from Selma to Montgomery.
The savage brutality America witnessed on the Edmund Pettis Bridge galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act in 1965. We can only hope Alabama’s ongoing hostility to voting rights galvanizes support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.
