In the closing days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves held by U.S. citizens.\u00a0 Subsequently, Republicans in Congress sponsored three amendments to the U.S. Constitution:<\/p>\n
Beginning in 1865, immediately after ratification of the 13th<\/sup> Amendment, Democrats across the South took steps to nullify or circumvent the amendment.\u00a0 The principal vehicles for doing so were the so-called Black Codes.\u00a0 The Black Codes established for whom blacks could or could not work and the type of work they could do.\u00a0 The Codes established curfews, restricted travel by blacks, and often required the former slaves to work for their former owners as apprentices.<\/p>\n Later, unable to attack or reverse citizenship rights granted by the 14th<\/sup> Amendment, Democrats sought to attack the 15th<\/sup> Amendment voting rights of African American through violence and intimidation.\u00a0 The principal tools of intimidation were Democratic paramilitary groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia.\u00a0 Records of Klan atrocities carried out between 1865 and 1882 are incomplete.\u00a0 However, records maintained by the Tuskegee Institute tell us that, between 1882 and 1951, some 3,437 blacks and 1,293 whites, nearly all Republicans, were lynched by Democrats dressed up in white robes and pointed white hats.<\/p>\n Needless to say, the threat of lynching was a very effective tool. \u00a0On November 1, 1871, John Childers, a black man of Livingston, Alabama\u2026 one of the first black men to vote a straight Democrat ticket\u2026 was interviewed by members of a U.S. Senate select committee (the complete interview can be found in Senate Report No. 579 of the 48th<\/sup> Congress).\u00a0 Childers was asked, \u201cDid you ever hear any threats made by Democrats against Negroes of what would be done if (they) voted the radical (Republican) ticket?\u201d<\/p>\n Childers replied, \u201cI have heard it often.\u00a0 At the last election it was given to me.\u00a0 There was a man standing here in the courthouse door. \u00a0When he started to the ballot-box he told me he had a coffin already made for me, because he thought I was going to vote the (Republican) ticket.<\/p>\n He was asked, \u201cWere you afraid if you voted the (Republican) ticket you would be harmed?\u201d<\/p>\n Childers replied, \u201cI was sir, because as I just stated to you, there was a man that told me he had a coffin already made for me.\u00a0 Yes, sir, I voted it, and I don\u2019t pretend to deny it before nobody.\u00a0 When I was going to the polls there was a man standing in the door and (he) says, \u2018Here comes you, God damn your soul. \u00a0I have a coffin already made for you.\u2019\u00a0 I had two tickets in my pocket then, a Democratic ticket and a radical (Republican) ticket; I pulled out the Democratic ticket and showed it to him, and he says, \u2018You are all right, go on.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n But intimidation alone was not a long term solution for Democrats.\u00a0 Instead, they had to find non-violent means of attacking the voting rights of blacks.\u00a0 All across the South, Democrats enacted a wide variety of restrictive measures called Jim Crow laws.\u00a0 Among the most popular were statutes providing for literacy tests, poll taxes, and tests questioning voters\u2019 knowledge of complex constitutional principles that few white voters could answer.<\/p>\n Finally, in early 1965, after a period of both peaceful and violent protests, the U.S. Congress passed corrective legislation.\u00a0 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 nullified the Jim Crow laws by establishing federal oversight of elections in nine states, including the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.\u00a0 The Voting Rights Act prohibited those states from implementing any changes in voting practices without first obtaining Department of Justice approval.\u00a0 The Act has been renewed and amended four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension signed into law by George W. Bush<\/a> in 2006.<\/p>\n But times have changed and the \u201cshoe is now on the other foot.\u201d\u00a0 What happened to John Childers in Livingston, Alabama, in 1870, is now happening to Republicans all across the country.\u00a0 Many of those who would have been among the politically oppressed in the 19th<\/sup> century have become the political oppressors of the 20th<\/sup> and 21st<\/sup> centuries.<\/p>\n Since passage of the Voting Rights Act, the South has experienced a political renaissance.\u00a0 The fair-minded Democrats who always believed in equal rights for blacks but were afraid to say so publicly, have gradually emigrated to the Republican Party.\u00a0 They are joined on Election Day by millions of Democrats who fully embrace Republican principles, but who find it necessary to remain in the party because they fear retribution by friends, neighbors, and family members.\u00a0 Today, most Democrat party faithful in the South are the low-information rednecks who keep their Klan robes in a drawer, washed and pressed, longing for the return of the good old days.<\/p>\n So while liberals and Democrats continue to insist that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 must be renewed and enforced, they do so not because of evidence of voter suppression by whites against blacks.\u00a0 Instead, their continued support of the Voting Rights Act is principally related to the need to keep blacks convinced that their voting rights are in jeopardy at the hands of white Republicans.\u00a0 In truth, it is the voting rights of Republicans that are most in jeopardy today.<\/p>\n In 2000, the New York Daily News<\/em> found that some 46,000 New Yorkers, mostly Democrats, were registered to vote in New York and<\/em> in Florida.\u00a0 An investigation showed that at least 408 of those individuals voted both in New York and in Florida, an election won by Bush and Cheney by only 537 votes.\u00a0 No one knows how many hundreds or thousands of Democrats from other northern states also voted illegally in Florida. \u00a0What we do know is that at least 408 Florida Republicans had their votes invalidated by Democrats, a serious violation of their civil rights.<\/p>\n In the 2008 U.S. Senate election in Minnesota, incumbent Republican Norm Coleman defeated Saturday Night Live<\/em> comic Al Franken by 725 votes.\u00a0 However, with Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie in charge of a recount, approximately 17,000 more ballots were counted than there were recorded voters\u2026 including 1,400 illegal votes cast by convicted felons, essentially all for Franken.\u00a0 As a result, the 725 Minnesota voters who provided the winning margin for Coleman had their votes fraudulently invalidated.\u00a0 Their civil rights were seriously violated.<\/p>\n In 2008, members of the New Black Panther Party, led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, stood outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day, armed with night sticks, intimidating white voters as they entered the polls.\u00a0 In April 1964, an Atlanta restaurateur named Lester Maddox, stood in the doorway of his Pickwick Restaurant armed with a pickaxe handle, threatening blacks who tried to enter.\u00a0 Malik Zulu Shabazz is the Lester Maddox of the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n In the November 2010 General Election, Lessadolla Sowers, a member of the Tunica County, Mississippi \u00a0NAACP Executive Committee, cast five fraudulent absentee ballots, four of them for dead people.\u00a0 In November 2012, Sowers was sentenced to five years in prison for what the judge called crimes that cut \u201cagainst the fabric of our free society.\u201d\u00a0 Because of her crime, five Mississippi Republicans had their votes invalidated, a major violation of their civil rights.<\/p>\n In 2012, a black woman in Cincinnati, Melowese Richardson, admitted to having voted at least six times for Barack Obama… once for herself and five times in the name of others.\u00a0 She said she just wanted to make sure that her vote \u201ccounted.\u201d\u00a0 As a result, five Ohio Republicans were disenfranchised.\u00a0 Their votes were invalidated and their civil rights were seriously violated.<\/p>\n In states with \u201csame day\u201d registration, such as Idaho<\/a>, Iowa<\/a>, Maine<\/a>, Minnesota<\/a>, Montana<\/a>, New Hampshire<\/a>, Wisconsin<\/a>, Wyoming<\/a>, and Washington DC<\/a>, where voters can register at the polling place just minutes before voting, Democrats have been known to hire groups of college students to go from precinct to precinct, registering and voting numerous times in a single day.\u00a0 As a result, countless Republicans are disenfranchised, their civil rights seriously violated.<\/p>\n If the Republican Party had any leaders worth their salt, they would be offering amendments to the Voting Rights Act, making vote fraud the civil rights issue of the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 If Harry and Maude, \u201csnowbirds\u201d from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and maybe a half dozen others, found themselves doing five years hard time in a Florida state penitentiary, the double voting would soon stop.\u00a0 The use of fraud, violence, and intimidation in the political process is the stuff of banana republics; it is not what the Founders saw as a staple of the American political process.<\/p>\n Although Melowese Richardson may not think of herself as the 21st<\/sup> century reincarnation of \u201cBull Connor,\u201d that\u2019s exactly who she is.\u00a0 She has been indicted by the Hamilton County district attorney and now faces up to 15 years in prison.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s time for Republicans in Congress to finally deal with the problem of fraud, violence, and intimidation in the electoral process by making vote fraud the civil rights issue of the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0 And if our Republican leaders fail to act, then it\u2019s time we hired some new leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the closing days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves held by U.S. citizens.\u00a0 Subsequently, Republicans in Congress sponsored three amendments to the U.S. Constitution: The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery … Continue reading