Supressing the Black vote

One of the most despicable aspects of this year's presidential campaign was the deliberate, determined effort by the Republican party to keep people from voting.  I don't just mean the notorious efforts in Florida by First Brother Jeb Bush to purge the voter rolls of thousands of eligible African Americans, but of tactics all across the country to suppress the votes of people who tend to vote Democratic.  For example, before the election, U.S. Senator Kit Bond tried to sneak a provision into national law that would ban voter registration drives in public housing projects. Another sneak attack came on election day itself, when GOP election officials in key states like Ohio simply shorted many Democratic precincts on the number of voting machines made available. The result was that voters faced interminable waits to get to cast their ballots--lines snaked around city blocks, forcing people to wait seven, nine, or more hours in line. Uncounted thousands of people--who, after all, have jobs and families to deal with --were driven away from the polls by this artificial logjam. Especially ugly was the kind of racist intimidation experienced in Milwaukee. Just before the election, a flyer was distributed throughout two African-American voting wards, handed out on street corners and in barbershops by a fake group calling itself the "Black Voters League." [more]