Colin Powell For Fixing Voter ID Laws

Collin Powell's advice for fixing restrictive voter ID laws is to organize and make the effort to get voters to the polls under the new laws and the lawmakers out of office. That sounds well and good, but such advice would not have worked in 1965. It took a federal law to effectively enfranchise citizens who were systematically blocked from voting.  Then, the voting restrictions were peculiar to a set of states. Today, we have a situation in which a portion of those with national power find it within their interest to block voters who have historically supported their opposition.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has not been reauthorized. Reauthorization would limit the ability of the power bloc to restrict opposing voters but other ways have been invented which exploit both inadequacies in the law and loopholes that have been torn in the law by complicit court decisions.

It's time to take a broader look at voting rights beyond our history that hinges primarily on race. The Voter ID people have undertaking their work under the gauzy banner of an unproven voter fraud problem while publicly admitting that what really matters is restricting the ability of certain groups of opposition voters to vote. That canard could be completely neutralized by a movement for laws that ensure that no identifiable class of citizens have their right to vote encumbered or abetted more than any other identifiable class of citizens. Things like age, affluence, disability, access to transportation, access to polling places, etc., should not be a factor in one's capability to vote.  If jurisdictions are prevented from enacting such laws, redress should be sought in the courts.  If courts fail to support these constitutional rights, then it would become necessary to organize non-violent social actions to galvanize popular support for whatever is needed to protect the will of the people, be it constitutional amendments, vociferous public debate, public demonstrations, targeted economic disruption, or what-have-you.

This is the one fundamental right that is the foundation of our democratic republic and those who wish to restrict it must be held to account.