Jacob Prall
[email protected]
“A blast from the Jim Crow past.” This sound bite from Hillary Clinton on Oct. 17 encapsulates the issue behind the closing of 31 offices to acquire and renew driver’s licenses in Alabama.
These are objects necessary to vote. When voting requires such documentation, it is a government’s obligation and responsibility to provide such documentation for its people. The move by Gov. Robert Bentley to cut $11 million in order to close the satellite offices is just another example of voter disenfranchisement cropping up in the Southern states.
Voter disenfranchisement is, to me, one of the worst crimes a government can commit. We have killed hundreds of thousands, spent trillions, and even fought for independence on the ideals of freedom and representative government. To deny people their voting power (even more so than the Electoral College does) is morally reprehensible. I appreciate Clinton’s comment on the matter, imploring Bentley to not just listen to his constituents but his conscience as well.
The systematic deprivation of political power is the first step toward tyranny. It’s a lot more dangerous when a government takes away your voting power than it is when it takes away your firearms. The difference here, of course, is that the ones having their power taken away like, for example, the working poor who can’t afford a long-distance trip to acquire a license, don’t have the same political voice and power than, say, the NRA.
In 2011, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad rescinded an executive order giving voting rights back to non-aggravated, sentence-fulfilled felons. This was a major backpedaling on voters’ rights. With the criminalization of certain activities coming into question at the federal level, and with the number of felons in the United States being so high, major voter and prison reform is going to be necessary if we want to integrate ex-convicts into our society while escaping the vicious cycle of the private-prison machine.
The Alabama governor’s actions aren’t surprising. Those in power will fight to remain in power even if it circumvents morality. Alabama has one of the worst records in racial discrimination when it comes to the ballot booth. From 1965, at least 100 voting changes were blocked or altered by the regulatory process in the Voting Rights Act.
What is surprising is that gerrymandering is apparently not enough to keep the popular vote dissolved. If the Republican Party can’t win through legitimate support from the majority of Americans, it may damn well have to keep winning through the erosion of political status for ethnic minorities, working-class heroes, and the impoverished.
