Obama urges Congress to restore Voting Rights Act
President Obama marks the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act last week in Washington. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
President Obama is continuing to urge Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act, the historic 1965 law removing legal barriers that prevented African-Americans from exercising their right to vote.
“Our state leaders and legislatures must make it easier — not harder — for more Americans to have their voices heard,” Obama wrote in a letter to the New York Times Magazine published online Wednesday. The president said he was “inspired” by Jim Rutenberg’s Aug. 2 cover story, “A Dream Undone: Inside the 50-year campaign to roll back the Voting Rights Act.”
“The Voting Rights Act put an end to literacy tests and other forms of discrimination, helping to close the gap between our promise that all of us are created equal and our long history of denying some of us the right to vote,” Obama wrote. “The impact was immediate, and profound — the percentage of African-Americans registered to vote skyrocketed in the years after the Voting Rights Act was passed. But as Rutenberg chronicles, from the moment the ink was dry on the Voting Rights Act, there has been a concentrated effort to undermine this historic law and turn back the clock on its progress.”
“These efforts are not a sign that we have moved past the shameful history that led to the Voting Rights Act,” the president continued. “Too often, they are rooted in that history. They remind us that progress does not come easy, but that it must be vigorously defended and built upon for ourselves and future generations.”
In his story, Rutenberg profiled Rosanell Eaton, a plaintiff in a North Carolina case arguing to repeal voting restrictions that were enacted in 2013. Obama called the 94-year-old an “unsung American hero.”
“She has not given up,” he wrote. “She’s still marching. She’s still fighting to make real the promise of America. She still believes that We the People have the awesome power to make our union more perfect. And if we join her, we, too, can reaffirm the fundamental truth of the words Rosanell recited.”
When Obama was elected in 2008, Rutenberg notes, black voter turnout was nearly equal to white voter turnout for the first time.
“I am where I am today only because men and women like Rosanell Eaton refused to accept anything less than a full measure of equality,” the president wrote.
Last week, Obama marked the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act at the White House, where he criticized states that have instituted laws that effectively discourage some people from voting.
“Sadly, too many states are making it harder for folks to vote — instituting photo ID laws that on the surface sound good,” Obama said. “But in practice, it turns out that for seniors and for poorer folks, that’s not always easy to do.”
Such laws, the president said, don’t “address a real problem because there are almost no instances of people going to vote in somebody else’s name.”
“Folks might think about shoplifting,” Obama said, “but I am certain, because we’ve actually looked at the data on this, that almost nobody wakes up saying, I’m going to go vote in somebody else’s name. Doesn’t happen. So the only reason to pass this law, despite the reasonableness of how it sounds, is to make it harder for folks to vote.”
But the president also called out those who “disenfranchise themselves”:
The fact of the matter is that far more people disenfranchise themselves than any law does by not participating, by not getting involved. So, yes, we have to be vigilant in pushing back against laws that seek to disenfranchise people. Yes, we should be fighting back against laws, for example, that say ex-felons, no matter how long they’ve been living a correct life, no matter how well they’ve paid their dues, that they can never vote again in that state. There are all kinds of battles we have to fight. But we miss the forest for the trees if we don’t also recognize that huge chunks of us, citizens, just give away our power. We’d rather complain than do something about it. We won’t vote, and then we’ll talk about the terrible political process that isn’t doing anything.
“Seize the power that you have,” he added. “Make this democracy work. Do not succumb to cynicism.”
