WORDS SUCH as "disenfranchisement" and "fraud" have become synonymous with elections. Unfortunately, there's a double standard in the actions of civil rights leaders -- it all depends on which group is allegedly being disenfranchised. Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton marched in New Orleans on April 1 to protest the upcoming mayoral election on April 22, contending that African-Americans will be disenfranchised because those displaced by Hurricane Katrina are being denied the opportunity to vote. This is not the case at all, and while Jackson and Sharpton play the race card yet again, laws that amount to a systematic disenfranchisement passed by Democrats in Maryland last week have escaped criticism. The difference? Maryland Democrats decreed that early voting polling stations be placed mainly in urban areas with heavy minority populations, with fewer stations located in suburban and rural parts of the state. The hypocrisy is deplorable, but certainly not surprising.
At the march, Sharpton even went so far as to say of the situation in New Orleans: "This is a violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and a violation of the principles of democracy." The Justice Department and an African-American federal judge from New Orleans didn't share this sentiment; the election was not delayed any further in the courts. In reality, African-Americans are not being turned away from the ballot box, forced to pay a poll tax, pass a literacy test or face any of the discriminatory, racist practices employed in the past. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state of Louisiana has done pretty much everything humanly possible within the constraints of the law and in light of the state's limited resources to give residents the chance to vote.
According to Fox News, efforts to conduct and publicize the mayoral election will cost almost $4 million, which is 10 times as much as usual. Fox News and the Associated Press report that the money is being spent to train 2,000 new poll commissioners, buy TV airtime across the nation to publicize critical election information, maintain a hotline and a Web site for voter questions and run 10 satellite polling stations outside of New Orleans in areas of the state closer to other state borders. At the beginning of April, 14,000 absentee ballots had already been sent out, breaking the record for New Orleans. Some voting rules were also relaxed.
The demands of Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition are unreasonable and ambiguous. A March 22 Associated Press article notes that Jackson wants the election to be postponed again (it was originally scheduled for Feb. 4), but he doesn't suggest an alternate date. He also insists the state set up polling stations outside of the state -- something that Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater's spokesperson said is against state laws. In addition, Jackson has commanded FEMA to release an updated registry of displaced residents, which it has refused on privacy regulation grounds.
Jackson and Sharpton should instead be focusing their efforts on actually helping the displaced residents cast their ballots. Groups such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now facilitated bus and caravan transportation starting this past Monday from other states as part of a massive voter outreach campaign with volunteers going door-to-door in various states. The NAACP, which also petitioned Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco to postpone the election, set up 15 voter assistance centers in nine states and established a voter hotline to provide information, absentee ballots and registration forms. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition's Web site, at the time of publication, has no press releases announcing any productive initiatives to help voters actually vote.
With all of this hullabaloo over alleged disenfranchisement, Jackson and Sharpton have overlooked an authentic case of deliberate voter disenfranchisement. In Maryland, Democrats in the Senate and the House pushed through new election laws this past Monday and Sunday, respectively, overturning Gov. Robert Ehrlich's veto. According to the Washington Post, right before the original vote, six Democrats went into a conference committee with no Republicans present and rewrote the election reform bill, spelling out the exact polling locations where early voting would be allowed, which a Washington Post editorial (not exactly a right-wing media organ) characterized as a measure "designed to mine Democratic votes."
Democrats also took out portions of the bill which called for geographically central polling stations and gave more power to the state elections commissioner, a Democratic appointee, over any Republican-appointed local election officials. The Democratic majority denied Republicans a chance to read over the new version of the bill for even one hour before the vote was held. The Post editorial declared that this move by Democrats "taints the election even before it occurs." I could only imagine Jackson and Sharpton's reaction if a Republican majority in a state behaved in the same atrocious manner and unilaterally placed early voting polling stations outside of urban areas with a substantial minority population and then rammed it through the legislative process using manipulative procedural tactics.
It's high time our supposedly renowned civil rights leaders devoted their energies to sincerely assisting voters displaced by Katrina and championing the civil rights of all, regardless of skin color or party affiliation, instead of just griping about non-existent civil rights violations.
Whitney Blake's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at wblake@cavalierdaily.com.
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