opinion
Even before the pandemic and the protests for greater social justice, this was going to be a landmark year in the United States.
2020 marks the 100th anniversary of when the U.S. Constitution was changed to allow women throughout the country to vote.
And 55 years ago this month, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. Coming on the heels of the televised police violence against civil and voting rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, this law was designed to address the barriers imposed on African American voters despite a Civil War and amendments to the Constitution that were supposed to guarantee their suffrage.
Until the voting rights law was severely altered by the U.S. Supreme Court seven years ago, when the majority of justices removed the part that ensured federal oversight of geographical areas with a history of discrimination, the law was the needed starch in the national fabric regarding voting rights. The Voting Rights Act had been reauthorized by Congress and a Republican president as recently as 2006, but a handful of years later Chief Justice John Roberts said the federal “pre-clearance” for some new state voting laws was no longer needed. The nation had changed since the law was passed 40 years before, he opined.
It would be interesting to ask him now if he still believes that.
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As was feared when it happened, the federal measure’s undermining has allowed states to pass laws that have made voting harder, especially for African American voters. Poll taxes and literacy tests are long gone, but among new constraints passed, some within hours or days of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling: stricter photo ID laws, the closing and/or changing of polling places, reduction in early voting, the purging of voter rolls ... all means of institutional voter suppression the Voting Rights Act was supposed to protect vulnerable populations against.
Enter 2020.
The huge shifts in our lives since the beginning of the year — a deadly virus killing tens of thousands and rocking the country; the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other African Americans at the hands of police, and the historically unprecedented public outcry despite the pandemic — have led to a confluence of currents further moving people and opinion.
Borrowing from the Simon & Garfunkel song, “Mrs. Robinson,” a nation has turned its lonely eyes to ... voting, a legacy that is living and more important than ever. In the urgent middle of all that is happening, remains the vote, the right to vote, the means to vote, and the constant relevance of the vote, no matter how many Americans continue to disregard it.
We have borne witness to Wisconsin, where legislators would not budge on allowing more options, not even in a time of pandemic, voters staked their lives on this right, standing in line for hours, wearing masks and social distancing. Some stood through rain and hail.
Closer to home, we have done more, embodying the change that Kentucky needs to enact for all future elections.
Kentucky has some of the most absurdly out-of-date voting laws in the country. But this year, state officials worked together despite party differences to expand options, such as no-excuse voting by mail and no-excuse early voting, in the name of voter safety and election security in the June 23 primary. Despite some hiccups, Kentucky was held up as a model for the nation in how to do an election during a pandemic. The Courier Journal reported that record numbers of voters turned out statewide and in Jefferson County. The Courier Journal's analysis also showed increases in voter turnout among Louisville’s predominantly Black voting precincts, despite fears about voter suppression.
Read this: Kentucky secretary of state to nix no-excuse mail-in voting for November election
No wonder voters and officials alike are pushing for permanent change in Kentucky’s antiquated laws on voting. On Aug. 6, the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being made law, state Sen. Morgan McGarvey tweeted:
“We need mail-in voting without excuse, early voting without excuse, more polling places open on Election Day, a safe and fair election for all. Safe and easy voting isn’t ideological, it’s a right. It worked in the primary so let’s do it again in November.”
If one of the points of living in the United States of America is to encourage and partake in robust civic engagement, then the pandemic has been helpful in one regard: A better, more modern, more convenient, more inclusive way for Kentuckians to vote. Let us improve upon what we did in June for how we will vote in November, and in all future elections. Voters should demand and work toward these changes being made permanent.
Perhaps most poignant in the middle of all the protests and renewed discussions about voting, was the towering reminder of Congressman John Lewis.
Though he was known as a leader among civil rights activists, many Americans first learned of him when he spoke at the 1963 March on Washington.
Two years later, in his native Alabama, the young leader led about 600 nonviolent voting rights protesters in their Sunday church clothes across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, before state troopers attacked, assaulting them with whips and clubs. Lewis suffered a fractured skull in the beating.
Five months after that Bloody Sunday attack, and the Selma-to-Montgomery march that seemed to begin to awaken much of the country to the discrimination in the South, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law. Until its gutting in 2013, it was regarded as the most significant civil rights law in the nation’s history.
Lewis’ death from cancer in July provided the nation an opportunity to appreciate the heroic, lifelong dedication of this public servant to do whatever he could to keep making places at the table of civic and political life for even more Americans. His passing also presented the chance to regard Lewis as an American founder of a new iteration of this nation, one more aligned in actual practice to what had been only preached from the beginning, and the Voting Rights Act as important as other founding documents in our nation’s history.
One of the speakers at Lewis’ Atlanta funeral said even when the congressman was ill, he leaned forward and whispered that everyone must vote.
More: McConnell, Yarmuth, Beshear, Cameron and more Kentucky officials honor Rep. John Lewis
It is in another of his utterances that Americans must find resolve in continuing the march for justice, to continue to plow and sow the field for suffrage, to pick up the burden he finally lay down with his last breath.
“We may not have chosen the time,” John Lewis said, “but the time has chosen us.”
It is our time. We cannot turn away.
Neither can Congress:
Last year, the U.S. House passed legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act. So far the Senate has not taken up the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would do the same.
Tina Ward-Pugh is the director of the Louisville Office for Women.
EVENTS HONORING SUFFRAGE
Join in an interview with Tina Cassidy, author of "Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait" at 7 p.m., on Friday, Aug. 21, and Women’s Equality Day 2020: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Right to Vote at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 22, at https://ift.tt/3gW6Lzi events will be hosted by Tina Ward-Pugh.
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In landmark year, the right to vote is 'in the urgent middle of all that is happening' - Courier Journal
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