Why The Historic Bipartisan Consensus On Voting Rights Has Disappeared

[David_42]

Don't see how this could happen..
Why The Historic Bipartisan Consensus On Voting Rights Has Disappeared

Ari Berman's Give Us the Ballot documents the decades-long struggle to secure voting rights for minority voters. Berman, who is a correspondent for The Nation, uses the 1965 passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act as an entry point into the story of the advocates who pushed for the legislation and the lawmakers who have fought ever since to weaken its impact.

Voting rights supporters celebrated the legislation's 50th anniversary on Aug. 6. But because the Supreme Court invalidated one of its key provisions in 2013, the law's power to prevent discriminatory election practices is in doubt. Berman's book provides a strikingly methodical and provocative look at how and why historically bipartisan support for the act has disappeared.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Berman discussed how the Republican Party has evolved on voting rights, why legislators want to make it harder for some people to vote, and how the fight for the VRA is still not over.

ARI BERMAN
HuffPost: Your book is the first to look at this history in a comprehensive way. Why do you think it took a long time for this issue to attract a higher level of scrutiny or attention?

AB: For many years we took the VRA for granted. It was only when there were new efforts to undermine voting rights, and the VRA itself was gutted, that people really understood the importance of the VRA and of this history.

People hoped that Obama’s election had settled this debate over voting rights, and civil rights more broadly. But far from settling this debate, it’s led to a whole new debate and an intensification of efforts to roll back civil rights. I started covering voting rights because of that, because I saw new efforts after the 2010 election to make it harder to vote. That’s when I got interested in the VRA’s history, and I wanted to tell that story about what happened after 1965, both because it was the 50th anniversary of the VRA but also because I knew there was a whole new debate about voting rights. It’s critically important to tie the past to the present because there are so many parallels between the kind of things that were happening in 1965 and the kind of things that are happening today. We’ve made a ton of progress since 1965, but the efforts to make it harder to vote echo a much darker period in our country’s history.

 

[Obiwan]

Actually, Republicans were the driving force behind making sure blacks could vote...

The only groups they're trying to keep from voting are illegals and dead folks.

But, yeah, be a good Democrat and keep up the fight.

 

[David_42]

Actually, Republicans were the driving force behind making sure blacks could vote...

The only groups they're trying to keep from voting are illegals and dead folks.

But, yeah, be a good Democrat and keep up the fight.

Yeah, ignore the fact that the parties are completely different now, keep playing up that meme.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Actually, Republicans were the driving force behind making sure blacks could vote...

The only groups they're trying to keep from voting are illegals and dead folks.

But, yeah, be a good Democrat and keep up the fight.

So, you are ignorant of history and don't know that the Republicans of the 1860s and 1870s were LIBERALS and not Conservatives, that the two parties essentially traded places in the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, comparing Republicans of 1866 to Republicans of 1866 is a complete and idiotic non-sequitor. So, essentially, you are ignorant. At least I hope you are, because ignorance can be cured by education. Stupidity, however, is a life-sentence.

Good luck to you.

 

[9thIDdoc]

I don't know of anyone who is wishes to make it harder for living citizens to vote. People aren't anti-VRA; they are anti-corruption. The premise is a strawman.