Politics This is What 100 Years' Worth of Voting Restrictions Looks Like
Posted by Steven Hale on Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 4:34 PM
Over at The Nation last week, Ari Berman reported from an event put on by the Democratic National Committee's Voting Right's Institute, at which civil rights icon U.S. Rep. John Lewis addressed voting rights and the GOP's recent nationwide push to restrict them.
The piece is worth reading, if only for the perspective of Lewis, a man who was beaten on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala. But buried toward the bottom of the piece are some astounding statistics that put the voter ID wave into context.
According to Susan Falck, a research associate at California State University Northridge, twenty-nine laws restricting the right to vote were passed in the United States from 1865-1967. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, twenty-five laws restricting the right to vote have been passed from 2011-12. Eight of eleven states in the former confederacy have passed laws aimed at suppressing minority voters since the 2010 election.