(NNPA) After ceremonies wrap up Sunday in Alabama commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a group of die-hard demonstrators will re-enact the full march.
In Shelby V. Holder, by a margin of 5 to 4 in June 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to gut Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required jurisdictions with a proven history of racial discrimination to pre-clear any election law change with the U.S. Attorney General or the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The case grew out of a decision by Calera, a small city in Shelby County, Ala., to implement a redistricting plan that led to the defeat of the city’s lone African American City Council member. Under the plan, a district that was 71 percent Black was redrawn so that its Black population was reduced to 23 percent. The plan was never submitted for pre-approval.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, more than 40 bills have been introduced in 17 states that would restrict access to registration or voting.
In view of these politically motivated efforts to suppress the Black vote in particular, I am hereby proposing a Shelby County, Ala. to Washington, D.C. March, with the goal of getting Congress to protect the integrity of voting in the U.S. Just as the Selma-to-Montgomery March led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a Shelby County to D.C. March could pressure Congress to act again to protect the sacred right to vote.
The march would kick-off in Calera, about 30 minutes south of Birmingham, and address the relevant voting issues along the march route.
After Calera, Ala., the next stop would be in Georgia, where marchers could express support for proposed legislation that would expand opportunities for eligible citizens to vote, and provide for or expand the electronic transfer of voters’ information between state agencies.
In South Carolina, demonstrators could support a bill that would relax voter ID or citizenship laws and legislation that would make it easier for people with disabilities to cast a ballot.
Crossing into North Carolina, demonstrators can join an effort to overturn the Voter Information Verification Act, a voter suppression bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. The controversial measure requires government-issued voter ID, ends same day voter registration, bans Sunday voting and discontinues pre-voter registration for 16- and 17-year-olds. Several organizations, including the NAACP State Conference of Branches, have sued to overturn the law.
Marchers might want to spend some extra time in Virginia before moving on to D.C. to oppose a bill that would restrict access to registration and voting and support a competing one that would increase access to voting, oppose a bill that would require proof of citizenship (such as a birth certificate) to register or to vote, support proposed legislation that would expand early in-person voting, back a proposed legislation to reduce waiting times for voting, endorse a bill to expand opportunities to vote by absentee ballot, support a bill to protect voters from having their name wrongfully removed from voting lists, and back a proposed bill to increase the likelihood of contested provisional ballots being counted.
In Washington, demonstrators should underscore the embarrassing reality that D.C. is the only capital of a democratic country in the world that does not enjoy voting representation in its national legislative body or true home rule.
We must block those measures.