{"id":236114,"date":"2016-04-05T18:15:35","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T18:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=236114"},"modified":"2016-04-05T18:15:35","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T18:15:35","slug":"stop-voter-suppression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/stop-voter-suppression\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Voter Suppression"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A crowning achievement of the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his \u201cI have a dream\u201d speech, was pushing through the landmark\u00a0Voting\u00a0Rights Act of 1965. Recognizing the history of racist attempts to prevent Black people from\u00a0voting, that federal law forced a number of southern states and districts to adhere to federal guidelines allowing citizens access to the polls.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>But in 2013 the Supreme Court effectively gutted many of these protections. As a result, states are finding new ways to stop more and more people\u2014especially African-Americans and other likely Democratic\u00a0voters\u2014from reaching the polls.<\/p>\n<p>Several states are requiring government-issued photo\u00a0IDs\u2014like drivers licenses\u2014to vote even though there\u2019s no evidence of\u00a0the\u00a0voter\u00a0fraud\u00a0this is supposed to prevent.\u00a0But there\u2019s plenty of evidence that these ID measures depress\u00a0voting, especially among communities of color, young\u00a0voters, and lower-income Americans.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S3r4mnnlYQQ\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Alabama, after requiring photo IDs, has practically closed driver\u2019s license offices in counties with large\u00a0percentages of black\u00a0voters.\u00a0Wisconsin requires a government-issued photo ID but hasn\u2019t provided any\u00a0funding to explain to prospective voters how to secure those IDs.<\/p>\n<p>Other states are reducing opportunities for early\u00a0voting.<\/p>\n<p>And several state legislatures\u2014not just in the South\u2014are gerrymandering districts to\u00a0reduce the political power of people of color and Democrats, and thereby guarantee Republican control in Congress.<\/p>\n<p>We need to move to the next stage of\u00a0voting\u00a0rights\u2014a new\u00a0Voting\u00a0Rights Act\u2014that renews the law that was effectively repealed by the conservative activists on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>That new Voting Rights Act should also set minimum national standards\u2014providing automatic\u00a0voter\u00a0registration when people get driver\u2019s licenses, allowing at least 2 weeks of early\u00a0voting, and taking districting away from the politicians and putting it under independent commissions.<\/p>\n<p>Voting\u00a0isn\u2019t a privilege. It\u2019s a right. And that right is\u00a0too important to be left to partisan politics.\u00a0 We must not allow anyone\u2019s votes to be taken away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/robertreich.org\/\">Robert Reich<\/a>, one of the nation\u2019s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor\u2019s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America\u2019s Future;\u00a0The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen\u2019s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertreich.org\/\">www.robertreich.org<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A crowning achievement of the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his \u201cI have a dream\u201d speech, was pushing through the landmark\u00a0Voting\u00a0Rights Act of 1965. Recognizing the history of racist attempts to prevent Black people from\u00a0voting, that federal law forced a number of southern states and districts to adhere to federal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-236114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}