This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated January 21, 2022
There is no greater threat to our democracy than attacks on the right to vote in free and fair elections. There is no more important issue facing our country than the need to guarantee voting rights for all Americans in elections that will reflect the will of the people.
This year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day took on special meaning, as many noted how the voting rights Dr. King worked so hard to ensure have been undermined recently and efforts to pass legislation to protect them have faced a dead-end in Congress. The Freedom to Vote Act, drafted by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), both have majority support in the House and Senate, but are dead on arrival, due to the Senate filibuster rule requiring 60 votes for either to pass and there not being ten Republicans who will support either bill.
“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting. They won’t let the majority of Senators vote and certainly they wouldn’t want the majority of people to vote because they know they do not represent the majority of American people.” Dr. King said this 59 years ago as the voting rights legislation he was advocating for was being blocked by GOP senators by way of the filibuster, as it is, again, today.
Many Republican members of Congress refused to accept the free and fair 2020 election results, which showed that their presidential candidate did not represent the majority of American people. Restricting voting rights is the means by which they plan to overcome that. The extremely restrictive voting laws enacted in Texas just two days after the most recent Election Day have already led to the rejection of half of all voter ballot requests, the overwhelming majority of which are from cities with high percentages of registered Democrats.
“Their words on that one day of the year may be in line with the 94 percent of Americans who approve of Dr. King today, but their actions are in step with the more than three-quarters of the country who opposed him at the time of his assassination.”
“All types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition.” Dr. King said this in his 1957 ‘Give Us the Ballot Speech.’ In 2021, hundreds of bills seeking to make it more difficult to vote were introduced in nearly every state, whereas the year before there were one-tenth as many proposed.
New laws in Florida and Georgia will specifically create impediments to voting that will disproportionately affect African Americans. The Republican party has pivoted fully toward disenfranchising as many of those they feel are unlikely to vote for their candidates as the way to win more elections.
Yet on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, many Republicans shared quotes from Dr. King, claiming to honor his legacy, while their actions dishonor his life’s work. Texas Gov. Abbott did this, sharing how Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream Speech’ has “…inspired hope in our nation.” In the past year, Abbott has signed into law his state’s restrictive voting bill and signed another piece of legislation that forced schools to remove teaching about Martin Luther King, Jr. from the curriculum.
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, and Florida Gov. Mike DeSantis are some of the many GOP elected leaders who have either already helped enact new laws to restrict voting access or are preventing the passage of legislation that would protect voting rights, who made statements honoring Dr. King on his namesake holiday. Their words on that one day of the year may be in line with the 94 percent of Americans who approve of Dr. King today, but their actions are in step with the more than three-quarters of the country who opposed him at the time of his assassination.
Their current work is the antithesis of Dr. King’s life’s work. Their use of the filibuster today to prevent ensuring the rights King fought for, reminds us of a GOP Senator’s attempt to use the filibuster in 1983 to prevent the creation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
