US Snapshot: History is Forgotten as Voting Rights are Challenged in Florida

In May, just after the 150^th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, marked by firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, I sat at a The Fleet restaurant overlooking the fort.

What was remarkable, as I toured Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia before and after anniversary was the lack of public acknowledgment of America’s bloodiest conflict.

I suppose it’s not that surprising that the South made little spectacle of this anniversary. After all, the Confederacy lost four years later, even if its soldiers were treated with dignity and consideration by General Grant at Appomattox Court House.

I have been wondering whether, later this decade, the US will celebrate the sixtieth anniversaries of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Given the track record relating to the Civil War, I’m not optimistic, yet if you are a voter in the South, or to be blunt a Southern black voter, the anniversaries will mark two of the most significant American events of the 20th century.

I know the history leading to the passing of these statutes, I have read about the hardship suffered by prospective black voters in the South before and immediately following the passing of the civil rights laws. I thought I could say that, in America, voting rights are a given these days and not an exception, regardless of race or colour.

Not quite. Last month, Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, signed into law a controversial overhaul of state election laws which the GOP says is needed to prevent voter fraud but which Democrats characterise as a cynical act of partisanship to improve Republican prospects. After all, Florida was the swing state in the 2000 Presidential election, when the Supreme Court took the decision away from the Florida Supreme Court --- and arguably the voters --- and proclaimed a win for Bush Republicans.

The new Florida election laws reduce early voting from fifteen to eight days, with no additional voting sites. This change will particularly affect college students, who are more likely to vote Democrat. Voters who have moved since the last election can only update their new status at the polls if they have moved within the same county, altering a policy established for more than forty years.

There are rigid restrictions on third party groups who register new voters, submitting the requisite forms within 48 hours of registration or face stiff fines. As a result, the League of Women Voters has already announced it will suspend voter-registration activity in Florida. The penalties are too great a risk.

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning, hardly an impartial witness, assured, “I know bad election law when I see it. I don’t think this Bill is bad for Florida. It doesn’t negatively impact Florida voters.” However, there have been telegrams, e-mails and phone calls in their tens of thousands to Tallahassee, objecting to the changes.

Democratic US Senator Bill Nelson, whose is seeking re-election in 2012, called the new laws “a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act.” He is not the only legislator who opposes the changes. State Senator, Mike Fasano, a Republican, agrees. “Florida has always been a state having open access to voting for legal residents. We brag about it. The new laws reduce that access.”

Nobody has suggested the new laws are a return to Jim Crow but Florida, the second highest populated state of the union, has highly mobile metropolitan areas in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, to mention only three of its burgeoning cities. There is a history of thousands of voters seeking to vote after moving. Thus, the 2012 election could see more chaos in a swing state, one which Barack Obama won in the last Presidential contest.

If the changes to Florida election law are, in fact, a smash-and-grab for power by the Republicans, the fear must be that such changes will be replicated in other states. If so, it can be argued that the bold experiment of 1789 to the 1960s Voting Rights Act will look tarnished again.

Then again, maybe not: nowhere in the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights is there mention of “one person, one vote.” I wonder if anyone recalls that in his/her version of US history?