The Covenant with Black America - Ten Years Later by Tavis Smiley

Author:Tavis Smiley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2015-11-26T05:00:00+00:00

What Every Leader and Elected Official Can Do

Reauthorize and strengthen the Voting Rights Act.

Restore the right to vote for former felons.

Ensure that all residents of the District of Columbia have voting representation in Congress.

Modify voter identification requirements.

Do away with all voter suppression and intimidation.

Reauthorize and Strengthen the Voting Rights Act

The federal government must guarantee all citizens the right to vote. Prior to the 2000 presidential election, most Americans believed that we had a right to vote in our national constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore was a wake-up call that we do not. While the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees nondiscrimination in voting based on race (“the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”), nowhere does the constitution provide a federal right to vote for all its citizens. What does this mean for Black America?

Under our current system, states control voting policies and procedures. As a result, we operate under a variety of voting systems, run by 50 states, 3,067 counties, and over 12,000 voting districts. Historically, when decisions about voter access have been left up to the states, those systems have not worked to the advantage of Black voters. With no federal guarantee of the right to vote, states are free to erect barriers to voting that often disproportionately impact Black voters. While these systems can be challenged under the Voting Rights Act, such litigation is often costly and difficult to win. Thus, millions of U.S. citizens are being denied the right to vote because of voter registration processing errors, lost or miscounted votes, language barriers, felony convictions, and targeted voter disenfranchisement.

Elected officials must demand that American citizens are implicitly guaranteed a right to vote in the federal constitution; it could have a direct impact on the voting rights of former felons, the right of citizens of the District of Columbia to gain voting representation in Congress, and the problems associated with disparate ballot access rules that disproportionately harm African American and other minority voters.

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