Voting rights and voter suppression

By DEACON WALTER C. AYRES- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

July was a special month in politics as people from numerous faith traditions joined to promote legislation to insure voting rights for all Americans.
For example, on July 20, the Franciscan Action Network, which represents the various branches of the Franciscan family, united with the Sisters of Mercy in an online forum to provide background on voter suppression in the U.S. and highlight current efforts to push back against restrictive voting bills in many states.

Other sponsors of the multi-day forum included the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the National Council of Churches, The Presbyterian Church USA, United Methodist Board of Church and Society, United Church of Christ, and The Episcopal Church USA, among others.

One of the issues that brought these people together was the For the People Act, a bill that has passed the House of Representatives and awaits a vote in the Senate. Participants at the forum were urged to contact their senators and ask them to support this legislation because, they were told, it will expand voter access, increase election security and counter foreign interference in our electoral process.

While much has been said about the importance of Voter ID laws, supporters of this bill note that, all too often, legislation promoted to require Voter ID actually ends up disenfranchising people of color and others.

In her fascinating book, “The Sum of Us,” Heather McGee notes the many ways that legislators target certain voting groups. “Alabama demanded photo IDs from voters, such as a driver’s license, and, within a year, it closed 31 driver’s license offices, including eight of ten of the most populous Black communities.”

In Texas, she wrote, gun permits, 80 percent of which are owned by white people, are acceptable forms of identification while college IDs, more than 50 percent of which are owned by people of color, are excluded.

She also cites a court case in North Carolina, where the law “target(ed) African Americans with almost surgical precision.” As others have reported, the North Carolina law prohibits accepting state employee ID cards, which are overwhelmingly used by Black voters.

Earlier this year, at a forum at Georgetown University, Sister Anita Baird, a member of the board of directors of the National Black Sisters’ Conference, was quoted as saying, “Particularly for us as Catholics, when we talk about pro-life and we frame issues particularly in the Church around the dignity and the respect for life, we have to see this as being a life issue. The right to vote is a right-to-life issue.”

A statement from NETWORK, a lobby group inspired by Catholic sisters, also sums up the issue: “Our Catholic faith teaches that we have a responsibility to participate in politics out of a concern for, and commitment to, the good of the community. This responsibility to participate means each person also has a fundamental right to participate, and must be equipped with the resources to do so with confidence.”

Walter Ayres is the director for Catholic Charities’ Commission on Peace and Justice.