Part of the Republican strategy to defeating President Obama in 2012 – is to reduce the number of black and brown voters.
The last time this strategy was successful was in 2004, when black precincts were denied the number of voting machines required to handle the traffic in Ohio. And we won’t get into the voter role purges of 2000 assisting in the illegitimate presidency of George Bush.
NAACP head likens voter ID measures to Jim Crow
The head of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights group on Monday condemned state laws requiring photo identification of voters as an attempt to disenfranchise minorities through some “of the last existing legal pillars of Jim Crow.”
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said a wave of newly enacted photo-ID requirements stemmed from what he saw as “the worst and most racist elements” in conservative Tea Party groups that have immersed themselves in state politics since the 2010 elections.
He compared photo ID laws to poll taxes and other past restrictions — since struck down by the courts — designed to keep blacks from voting in the segregated Deep South. And he said the latest measures were part of a racial backlash against the 2008 election of President Barack Obama.
“Our voting rights are under attack because a few years ago, we had a great breakthrough in this country,” Jealous said in a speech at the 102nd annual NAACP convention, held in Los Angeles. “We broke the color line at the White House.”
He said the NAACP would mount education campaigns aimed at preventing minorities and the poor from being disenfranchised.
Supporters of photo ID laws, backed mainly by Republican legislators and governors, say they are aimed at thwarting election fraud and are no more discriminatory than requiring IDs for cashing a check or making credit-card purchases.
Filed under: Stupid Republican Tricks, Stupid Tea Bagger Tricks, The New Jim Crow Tagged: | democrat, Jim Crow, Literacy Test, New Jim Crow, poll tax, race, Racism, racist, Republican, Voter ID, voter supression
