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Last week, a series of court decisions were handed down regarding new voting laws in several states. The Supreme Court tossed out new Voter ID requirements in Wisconsin, but upheld other restrictions on voting in North Carolina. A lower court threw out parts of Texas’ voting restriction laws, and that state’s Attorney General threatened to appeal. Earlier, new voting restrictions in Ohio were upheld.
Beyond the particulars of each state’s new voting rules, the courts – and public opinion – should not be parsing this requirement or that but, instead, send a clear signal that laws which have the primary purpose of restricting the franchise should be deemed unconstitutional on their face. States and local governments that conduct elections should be doing everything in their power to encourage voter participation, not discouraging it.
The principle at stake could not be more clear: Participatory democracy is only as robust as the degree of participation it entails. Most countries hold elections on Sunday or make election day a holiday. That would be the best and easiest route. Failing that, states should have early voting, on weekends and as well as weekdays so that those of us who rely on public transportation and have to work for a living do not have to choose between going to the polls and going to work. Throw in the need to bring the kids to school or daycare, and a typical working class parent will not easily make it to the polls. Perhaps the most egregious new limitation in North Carolina prevents local polling stations from staying open for an extra hour if there are long lines. This provision, combined with the state’s efforts to decrease the number of polling places, promises to prove a nightmare on election day.
There is a history as well as a principle at stake. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were lynched in Philadelphia, Mississippi as a result of their efforts to register black Americans to vote. Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama in 1965 was occasioned by a protest march to urge passage of the Voting Rights Act: Dozens of peaceful marchers were clubbed and beaten by police. During an earlier voting rights march in Marion, Alabama, Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered. This is not ancient history. Those beatings and lynchings happened in my lifetime. The idea that our nation would turn its back on those sacrifices, and on the achievement of the Voting Rights Act those sacrifices led to, would be baffling if it were not first so evil.
The new efforts to make voting more difficult are successful only in those states where Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. The partisan objective is clear: To make it harder for poor folk, and especially poor, minority folk, to get to the polls. Pols play hardball and many a politician, on either side of the aisle, would indulge in unseemly activities in order to win office. Still, no matter how ugly a campaign gets, the idea that people would try and keep people from voting should spark outrage from thoughtful people no matter their partisan affiliation.
Where are the conservative intellectuals who know better? Surely those conservatives who repeatedly call for “a return to the Constitution” understand that the Constitution makes no sense without a firm commitment to participatory democracy. Surely, conservatives, who believe there are more important things than government recognize that the ability to participate in society is one of those things. Surely, conservative intellectuals know that disenfranchisement has led to social unrest in the past and will do so again. Their silence is deafening.
Where are the Catholic conservative intellectuals? They are quick to try and baptize America’s free market. They have no hesitation in baptizing America’s wars. They are only too eager to baptize “the American dream” and extol a version of American exceptionalism that is uncomplicated and a bit tendentious. But, on this issue, our friends at the Ethics and Public Policy Center have nothing to say: I went to their website and searched for “voting rights” and there was not a single article on point. Mr. George Weigel has a weekly column syndicated through the Denver Catholic Register, many of which he has dedicated to the moral significance of how you cast your ballot. Fifty-two columns per year and not one of them dedicated to this issue of whether you get a ballot in the first place? The conservative Catholic press has had plenty to say about court decisions relating to same sex marriage: Why the silence on the issue of voting rights?
When the Supreme Court struck down Section V of the Voting Rights Act last year, Bishop Stephen Blaire, chair of the Domestic Policy Committee, and Bishop Daniel Flores, Chair of the Cultural Diversity Committee, issued a statement urging Congress to enact new laws to replace what had been stricken, and I was glad they did. But, during that whole, dreary Fortnight for Freedom, did anyone mention the freedom to vote? The USCCB can split hairs on the moral difference between filling out a form that registers a Catholic employer’s objection to the HHS mandate and that same employer sending a letter to the government instead, but have they no time to denounce these efforts to make it harder to vote?
The Holy Father has spoken of a culture of exclusion. He has spoken thus in relation to the economy, but the same frame could be applied to politics. Indeed, many of these efforts to disenfranchise poor people are funded by very wealthy, conservative donors such as the Koch Brothers who put up big bucks to elect state legislators who will follow the dictates of well funded groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council. Alas, to paraphrase the Master, the rich we will always have with us. But, shame on all of us, and especially my quiet conservative friends, who do not raise their voices against these bald efforts at voter suppression. No one should condone a culture of exclusion that is the antithesis of America’s founding creed and of the Christian gospels.
