CALIFORNIA: The constitutional right to vote

The constitutional right to vote

http://www.sfbayview.com/120804/constitutionalright120804.shtml

by Ron Walters

NNPA Columnist

The election of 2004 tells us at least one thing: our right to vote is
not secure and so we need a federal right to vote with standards and
the enforcement of those standards by the attorney general of the
United States, rather than the patchwork, chaotic and unequal
administration by states that we now have.

The lack of the integrity of the American system of elections is as
suspect as the recent Ukranian election that brought out hundreds of
thousands of people into the streets there. It also prompted President
Bush to issue a statement characterizing the election as corrupt and
poorly administered. He could have said the same thing about each of
his own elections.

I applaud Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. for the vision to demand that there
be an amendment to the Constitution that wipes away all ambiguity
about the right to vote, even though there are legal scholars who
assert that it exists, buried in the bowels of one arcane court
decision or another. However, I also know that as of the last
election, 31 of the governors in the 50 states are Republican,
representing a party that has shown a peculiar fondness for states’
rights in this era of history. So a Constitutional amendment that
takes away the right of the political officials in their states to
“administer” the elections would no doubt be opposed.

A case in point is the secretary of state in Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell,
a Black Republican. Blackwell who, it has been reported, desires to
run for governor, did everything that he could in that state to
influence the election for George Bush. Initially, he proclaimed that
voter registration forms would not be considered legal unless then
were on 80-pound paper stock, a position that was reversed in the face
of a public outcry.

(snip)

Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, director of the
African American Leadership Institute in the Academy of Leadership and
professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland-
College Park. His latest book is “White Nationalism, Black Interests”
(Wayne State University Press).

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