Voter’s Rights: Over fifty years later we are still fighting

Fifty-five years ago this March, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old Detroit civil rights activist and mother of five, heeded a call from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Selma, Ala., and help African Americans fight for the right to vote. She was inspired to make the trip following the nationwide broadcast of the brutal assault upon civil rights protestors as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their trek to the state capitol of Montgomery, Ala., to demand free and unfettered access to the ballot.    Liuzzo participated in the subsequent successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with driving fellow activists to the Montgomery airport. However, during one trip to the airport, a car loaded with Ku Klux Klansman drove her and her passenger off the road and shot her twice in the head, killing her. Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence of Southfield (D-MI) co-sponsored the VRAA or HR 4 as she refers to it, and said if the bill was passed by the Senate it would help mitigate many of these voter suppression schemes. It was crafted to rectify the damage done to minority voting rights in 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s only black member, Clarence Thomas, deliberately emasculated the bill by declaring its most effective tool, the Section 5 Preclearance section, unconstitutional. That led to a massive and largely successful nationwide effort by Republicans and other right-wing politicians in states covered by the VRA to engage in flagrant acts of voter suppression to diminish the electoral impact of African Americans, Latinos, Asians and college students, Lawrence noted.  “Under HR 4 these suppressive laws are not allowed,” she said. “HR 4 will prohibit them. HR 4 will restore protections of the Voting Rights Act by updating the preclearance formula. It allows the Attorney General to request federal observers to be present anywhere in the country where there is a serious threat of suppression.” Lawrence also said it creates an automatic voter registration system when you turn 18 and protects voting by mail and early voting while prohibiting the arbitrary purging of voters like in Ohio and Georgia, along with forbidding partisan gerrymandering.