Darryl PaulsonLast of nine parts.
In the first eight articles in this series I discussed the long and shameful legacy of voter discrimination in Florida.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans should have any pride in how they have treated the black electorate in the past 200 years. Democrats, who politically controlled Florida for about 140 of the 168 years since statehood, sought to preserve white supremacy for most of their rule.
Republicans, who have controlled the state for about 30 years since Florida became a state in 1845, sought to expand and protect the black electorate after the Civil War. However, in their second period of control running from 1996 to the present, the GOP has sought to suppress black voting.
Blacks have made phenomenal economic and political gains over the past half-century. Black voter turnout has jumped from 53 percent in 1996 to 66.2 percent in 2012, a rate 2 percent higher than white voters. The number of blacks in southern state legislatures has increased from five in 1965 to 313 today.
Nevertheless, “Black voters and elected officials have less influence now than at any time since the civil rights era,” according to David Bositis in “Resegregation in Southern Politics?”
In 1994, only one out of 202 black legislators in the South served in the minority party; by 2011, 298 out of 313 black legislators served with the minority. As Republicans have taken control of all southern state legislatures, blacks find themselves closed out from any major influence on policy.
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby v Holder, struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in a 5-4 decision. The VRA has been the primary law for increasing black voter registration in the South.
The law required all of the covered jurisdictions to submit election law changes to the federal courts or Justice Department for “preclearance.”
All of the Deep South states are covered, as well as five counties in Florida (Hillsborough, Monroe, Collier, Hendry and Hardee). These counties were covered because fewer than half of the adults were registered to vote and more than 5 percent of the population was non-English speaking.
Chief Justice John Roberts criticized Congress for failing to adjust the formula for compliance, even though the Court had told them to do so in a prior decision. “Things have changed in the South,” wrote Roberts. “Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare.”
Because Congress failed to up-date the formula, the Court struck down part of the VRA, which means that the jurisdictions no longer are required to get “preclearance” before implementing new election laws.
As soon as the Court decision was handed down, Gov. Rick Scott announced another purge of noncitizens. Secretary of State Ken Detzner is now preparing a new list of potential “suspect” voters.
If Republicans spent as much time trying to appeal to black voters as they have on trying to eliminate them, they would be much better off politically.
Former GOP Chair Jim Greer told The Palm Beach Post the Republican Party “firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates.”
The Republican Party justifies its actions as an attempt to eliminate vote fraud. That sounds eerily similar to what Democrats were saying a half century ago when they were suppressing black voters.
The Republican Party is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has conducted several investigations of alleged fraud. So far, the only conviction involves Strategic Allied Consulting, a firm contracted by the Republican Party to increase registration of Republican voters.
In many respects, the civil rights activists in Florida and the South bear a striking similarity to the American revolutionaries. Both were willing to risk their lives for a noble cause. And many, such as Harry Moore in Florida, made the ultimate sacrifice.
The heroic actions of the civil rights activists should be honored and respected. To attack voting rights under the guise of eliminating vote fraud is an embarrassment to both the American revolutionaries and the civil rights activists.
Shame on Florida.
