Why Voting Rights Matter

To show why so many of us react with such outrage to current proposals in Harrisburg to require government-issued photo ID for all voters at all elections—which is widely regarded as a nationally-planned political ploy to make it harder for Democratic-leaning constituencies to vote in November, 2012—I wanted to share this excerpt from “Our Favorite Books of 2011,” in the section by Joe Nichols, in The Progressive magazine, 12/11-1/12, p. 79:

…The best book of contemporary investigative journalism and analysis in recent years, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press), just came out in a mass paperback edition that will make this groundbreaking exposé of the racism of America’s burgeoning prison-industrial complex more broadly available.

Alexander’s book stands in the tradition of the great muckraking journalists and thinkers of a century ago. Her perspective is chilling and profoundly important, as evidenced by the opening lines of this book: “Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy.

Cotton’s family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.”