The Confederates push forward to re-enact as much of Jim Crow as possible
by David Atkins
Ah, the laboratory of the states, Old Confederacy edition:
State officials across the South are aggressively moving ahead with new laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls after the Supreme Court decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.
The Republicans who control state legislatures throughout the region say such laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. But such fraud is extremely rare, and Democrats are concerned that the proposed changes will make it harder for many poor voters and members of minorities — who tend to vote Democratic — to cast their ballots in states that once discriminated against black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests.
The Supreme Court ruling last month freed a number of states with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South, of the requirement to get advance federal permission in order to make changes to their election laws.
Within hours, Texas officials said that they would begin enforcing a strict photo identification requirement for voters, which had been blocked by a federal court on the ground that it would disproportionately affect black and Hispanic voters. In Mississippi and Alabama, which had passed their own voter identification laws but had not received federal approval for them, state officials said that they were moving to begin enforcing the laws.
The next flash point over voting laws will most likely be in North Carolina, where several voting bills had languished there this year as the Republicans who control the Legislature awaited the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had covered many counties in the state. After the ruling, some Republican lawmakers said that they would move as soon as next week to pass a bill requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. And some Republicans there are considering cutting back on the number of early voting days in the state, which were especially popular among Democrats and black voters during the 2012 presidential election.
On and around July 4th, I like to celebrate the destruction of the Old Confederacy as much as the founding of the nation. I take great schadenfreude over the pain of Southern nationalists on Yankee Independence Day. And I’ll continue to do so as long as the scoundrels continue to kick against pricks of justice, attempting to reclaim and preserve the glories of their unearned privilege. The Lost Cause still lives, no doubt. But it will be a glorious day when a hundred million feet of all ages and races finally stomp its last bitter embers into the Southern sands, its vile spirit forever to be extinguished and driven from the land.
Demographic winter is coming for them, and not soon enough.
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