InAmerica, you can actually be prosecuted for trying to vote. Seriously. Gov. Ron DeSantis, of Florida, just reminded us how precarious the right to vote is in America.
Recently, it was uncovered that DeSantis put together a phony sting operation trying to set people up as illegal voters. The scam has been exposed. It was very sloppy and evil.
DeSantis basically had his government inform some voters they could vote legally by providing them with the means to vote even though the government was aware that these individuals had lost their right to vote. Then DeSantis staged a self serving news conference announcing the arrest of these individuals for illegally voting. DeSantis did not count on those arrested speaking up and exposing his scam:
Here is a synopsis according to Politico:
“In the days since the announcement, however, several of those arrested have told media outlets or authorities that they had no idea they were not eligible to vote. In court documents filed in five counties, most say at least one official government body — in most cases a local election supervisor — incorrectly indicated to them they could vote, including allowing them to register and sending them voter cards in the mail.”
This sting is similar to a drug sting but hardly the same and much more depraved. Controlled substances are still illegal. Voting is legal; it is just that some Americans have lost their right to vote for a variety of questionable reasons.
But, Governor DeSantis is not doing anything that hasn’t been done before.
Take, the prosecution of three civil rights workers in Alabama in 1985 for example. The case was brought by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Yes, that Jeff Sessions.
These workers were trying to help other people exercise their right to vote. For their noble acts of citizenship, Jeff Sessions, ex-Attorney General for the United States under the 45th President, charged the workers with crimes.
The actions of the workers is legal (or was legal back then). Sessions was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the state of Alabama at the time when he aggressively went after the workers. The case is known today as “The Perry County case.” The charges were baseless.
The workers were acquitted and very quickly. This all occurred in Alabama, a state associated more than most with denying blacks the right to vote, and willing to use the brute force of the state to stop them. Luckily, the case has an extensive public record because Sessions was once nominated to become a federal judge during the Reagan administration.
The Perry County case was resurrected during the hearings confirmation hearings in 2017. The hearings exposes the truth about voting rights and access in America for African Americans.
Two individuals who testified back then had direct knowledge of the Perry County case are the late, Lani Guinier and Deval Patrick. They provided legal representation to the defendants.
Guinier’s role in the Perry case was as defense counsel for Spencer Hogue, one of the workers. Guinier served at the time as counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and litigated extensively in the area of voting rights.
As Guinier noted in her testimony, all three of the civil rights workers cooperated with Sessions’ grand jury investigation. The workers were members of the Perry County Civic League, an organization formed in 1962 to help blacks obtain the right to vote in the county. Perry County is rural and many of the voters, black voters as well, are “poor” and “illiterate” or “barely literate.”
The civil rights workers assist them in filling out their absentee ballots and only make marks on the ballots and changes in their presence and with their permission. It was a common practice and is legal, as Guinier testified, under the Voting Rights Act.
Guinier’s testimony against Sessions notes that serious questions arise regarding his “judicial temperament, fitness and competence” because of the manner in which he investigated the case and that he prosecuted it. Guinier testified that the acts taken by the workers were legal and many whites also performed the same function in that county but Sessions brought no cases against whites.
Guinier also testified that the problem isn’t that Session lost the cases against the workers; the problem is there was never any case at all against the civil rights workers.
“These prosecutions represent an apocryphal attempt affirmatively to use the resources of the federal government to stop blacks from voting,” Guinier testified.
Sessions should be “excoriated” for his actions, Guinier added, not rewarded with “lifetime tenure” on the federal bench.
Deval Patrick, the former Governor of Massachusetts, also testified, and he too worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund at the time. He also represented Spencer Hogue in the case along with Lani Guinier. Patrick noted many important details to the case that were not mentioned in the hearing.
First, according to Patrick, Sessions attempted to move the prosecution of the civil rights workers to Mobile, Alabama from Selma. Selman much closer to the alleged incident.
Patrick noted that the number of blacks on any potential jury pool in Mobile would be far less than in Selma. Sessions wanted to move the trials to get a white jury for the black civil rights workers’ cases.
In addition, Patrick noted that the Hogue case brought by Sessions was so weak the government attempted to “impeach” its own witnesses through negative inferences during the trial. In effect, Sessions had no case so they he was forced to discredit his own witnesses.
Moreover, Patrick testified that Sessions’ case against his client was so weak and frivolous, twenty of the twenty-six accounts were dismissed after the government put on its case. When Patrick’s client, Mr. Hogue was acquitted of all counts quickly, Sessions sought to bring a new indictment against Mr. Hogue.
Patrick opposed that as well and described the charges as totally frivolous. In the end, Patrick also questioned Sessions’ judicial temperament and judgment to sit on the federal bench for life.
Sessions was denied his seat on the bench back then but he did become Attorney General many years later under the 45th President. Also, voter suppression, and other efforts to stop people from voting for no valid reasons, remains a threat. The Sessions debacle back in 1985 is just one example of how the rights of people, mostly people of color, remain under attack in many ways.
Likewise. the scam sting by Gov. DeSantis demonstrated the length that some will go to stop people from voting. Other states are already engaging in tactics designed to stop people from voting, not to make voting easier.
There is no evidence that there is any significant voting fraud in the U.S. However, voter suppression is one of the Republican party’s key tactics in winning elections now. All political parties and their members must be pushed to uphold voting rights for all who legally exercise their rights.
But keep your eyes open. Check your registration now.
Get ready to vote in November. Spread the word. Don’t wait.
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Thanks for reading —
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This post was previously published on writersandeditorsofcolor.com.
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Photo credit: Manny Becerra on Unsplash