It was Primary Day in Alabama on Tuesday and the first time since passage of the law that the state’s Republican-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction on voting has been in place. Sure enough, the voter suppression law was successful, as voters were immediately disenfranchised by the new restriction, according to Zach Roth at MSNBC…
Mims, as he explains in the video below, first voted back during WWII. He says he’s voted in almost every election since then. Until now…
Roth notes that it’s unknown how many AL voters now lack the needed ID to cast a ballot, “because the state made no effort to find out before the ID law. But nationwide, most studies put the figure at around 11%, and as high as 25% for African-Americans.”
The state’s Republican legislators had originally passed the restriction on voting back in 2011, but didn’t enforce it at the polls it until this year for the first time. One of the reasons, Roth suggests, is because prior to last year they would have had to submit the law for approval to either the U.S. Dept. of Justice or a D.C. federal court for preclearance under the federal Voting Rights Act. But, knowing that it would likely be struck down as discriminatory, AL held off on submitting it to the feds for approval. Instead, they waited until the U.S. Supreme Court, last summer, gutted the section of the VRA that had required preclearance for new election-related laws in states with a history of racial discrimination at the polling place. One of those states was Alabama, as the case in question was Shelby County, AL v. Holder.
Roth also notes the special loophole in Alabama’s version of the polling place Photo ID restriction. “It allows people to vote without ID if two poll workers can vouch for them. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has called that aspect of the law ‘an illegal relic of the Jim Crow South,’ when similar tests were used to keep black voters from the polls.”
All of that while, at the same time, the state GOP was placing signs in polling places around the state offering a $1,000 reward for evidence of “voter fraud”.
It’s unlikely they discovered the type of fraud they were pretending to look for, given the virtual non-existence of voter impersonation at the polling place (the only type of voter fraud that can be deterred by such laws.)
On the other hand, the odds are very good, as the Mims case highlights and as federal District Court Judge Lynn Adelman recently observed in striking down the Wisconsin GOP’s version of the same law as unconstitutional, such restrictions on voting “will prevent more legitimate votes from being cast than fraudulent votes.”
Obama’s DoJ is suing to block almost identical Republican-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction laws in Texas and in North Carolina under both Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (which is still in effect) as well as several provisions of the U.S. Constitution. If anyone has an explanation as to why the DoJ hasn’t yet filed a similar suit to block Alabama’s discriminatory law, we’d love to hear it.
In any event, mission accomplished for the Alabama GOP.
Here’s the video of Mims explaining what happened today, as shot by the grassroots organization Empower Alabama…
UPDATE 6/4/2014: Willie Mims was not the only one disenfranchised in Alabama yesterday under the new Republican restriction on voting. Not by a long shot. Details on the 92-year old woman denied her right to vote in AL now here…
When it comes to Obama and his Wall Street lapdog AG Holder, neither would ever be selected as a profile of courage. Both closely toe the line drawn for them by the corporate owners of America.
You can tell just by looking at him and listening to him he had a secret plot to vote twice or three times on election day. Sure glad those Alabamans stopped him short. Man, that was a close call – we almost lost our whole election process to voter fraud – thank you Republicans for saving the integrity of our voting system (not!).
I’m sure the Republican hacks on the Supreme Court are high-fiving each other over this today. They have successfully zombified the corpse of Jim Crow.
…Thank you ACORN for ensuring the trust for the common man. Here is the fallout of your efforts.
… Hey Randy, did you know that Martin Luther King voted Republican? Bet you didn’t know JIM CROW was being enforced by the Democrats of the day did yah? No, its just so much easier to throw Republicans under the bus than to read history… Disregarding History; that would be part of the glorious “Public (Indoctrination) Education Program” you Libs are working on. Furthermore, since no child should fail in the new system (because it is so offensive to single out a child) we should focus on easy stuff. Therefore, you guys managed to destroy the Space Program … Yeah Obama! Your infinite ineptitude has succeeded in single handedly destroying one of the pillars of what makes this country great!! Now the only way Americans will ever go to space is with the collaboration with the Russians!! …and you are now trying to pick a fight with Putin…Yeah! No History Or Math needed !! …or perhaps I am just racist, and its all in my head; right?
Libertarian Please —
Yes, I guess I see what you now call yourself a Libertarian. You are so unbelievably easily conned.
(But, of course, I’ll apologize if you can show even a single instance of any actual “voter fraud” by ACORN that resulted in even a single fraudulent vote, much less the type that might be stopped by GOP polling place Photo ID restrictions. Good luck with that, sucker!)
The rest of your screed is similarly disinformed, but I’ve gotta go do a radio show to inform people of actual information. Don’t have time to help you learn what a stooge you clearly are (and want to be?)
@Libertarian Please
I guess you didn’t know that Martin Luther King, Jr. never voted for a Republican candidate in his life and actively campaigned against GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964?
And you complain about the public education system, a system that was started by many people who were also abolitionists? It was abolitionists who spread the public education system to the South (which had the lowest literacy rate in the country pre-Civil war).
And how does a libertarian square that circle of supporting NASA (a government agency the last I checked) while complaining about a public education system? It’s also funnier than hell that you’re complaining about President Obama, when he wants future space exploration and travel to be gone by the private sector (not to mention, it was W. Bush who canceled the space shuttle program).
Man, there needs to be some federal money spent on treating the insanity and cognitive dissonance of the right-wing.