Republican tactics to suppress the black vote mirror those of the post-Civil War era
On Ed
Fergus M. BordewichNovember 5, 2023
On Election Day, November 7, Americans will vote for thousands of candidates for public office, governors, state officials and legislators, mayors and a host of county and municipal supervisors. Their elections will be run by an army of poll workers, many of whom are citizen volunteers who receive only a token payment for their efforts.
They will open the ballot boxes, check the voter lists, monitor the voting machines and count the votes. These unsung jobs embody the machinery of democracy in action, where political partisanship meets the harsh reality of numbers. To function, this machinery depends on the trust of the American public, if the Republican government has any at all
What
to survive.
In recent years we have seen right-wing activists, backed by demagogic mainstream politicians, fuel baseless and ultimately subversive theories of widespread election fraud. Two-thirds of Republicans
Calm
believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Such suspicion has spread and infected even local elections and the most benign electoral practices. In 2022, as many as a third of election workers reported knowing at least one person who resigned due to fear and threats.
The systematic attack on the elections is reminiscent of the most politically charged period in our history: the reconstruction era after the civil war in the 1860s and 1870s.
The raw violence of that time was much worse than we see today. White supremacist Democrats knew that the survival of the South’s vulnerable Republican Parties depended on black voters, who would have to be chased out of the polls if the Democrats won.
Thousands of newly eligible black Americans and their white allies were threatened, beaten, and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan simply for daring to try to vote in the former Confederate states. Registrars were threatened while preparing certificates. White mobs physically pushed black voters away from the polls. In some places, black voters were driven to the polls by armed men and forced to vote Democratic. In some provinces, officers were too scared to guard polling stations. In Savannah, Georgia, local police shot and killed several black people and chased the rest away from the polls.
In dozens of counties, the Republican vote was simply erased.
Despite such dangers, astonishing numbers of determined black voters continued to flock to the polls, helping Republicans maintain their majorities in Congress. If the hundreds of thousands of black Southerners had not voted for Ulysses S. Grant, he would have lost the elections of 1868 and 1872 and Reconstruction would have come to an abrupt halt.
In 1872 the worst of the violence was over. But new forms of voter suppression replaced open terrorism as white supremacists steadily regained control of the Southern states. The Supreme Court ruled in a series of rulings that enforcement of civil rights rested with the states, not the federal government, effectively crippling the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantees. Beginning in the 1880s, literacy tests and other forms of discrimination methodically undermined black voting
and until
by the 20th century, almost no black Southerners voted.
In our time there was the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Gretchen Whitmer and the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol highlighted the climate of violence that increasingly permeates our political culture. The most immediate threat, however, may be the more subtle attacks on the electoral process.
Death threats against ordinary election workers have become commonplace. In some states, local vigilantes claiming to be freelance election monitors have attempted to intimidate both voters and poll workers. In the wake of the 2020 election, self-appointed cyber sleuths in several states gained access to county voting machines in their partisan effort to find evidence of widespread fraud that allegedly prevented Donald Trump from winning reelection. Frivolous lawsuits target poll workers with limited resources
force them
to defend yourself.
There are other sinister trends at work too. The systematic spread of disinformation from far-right sources continues to undermine public confidence in voting rights and democratic institutions. False rumors of fraud remain epidemic in the right-wing ecosphere.
In the 1960s, said Mayor Douglas, Georgia
Per Tem (per city website/doug)
Olivia Coley-Pearson, officials created impossible tests at the ballot box to prevent black people from voting. Where we are 1699190055 is a more sophisticated way to suppress voters, she said. We are currently going backwards. Coley-Pearson herself has been charged with crimes twice for helping inexperienced voters cast their ballots.
In many states, Republican legislatures have arbitrarily restricted voting by mail, limited the number of voting days, banned same-day registration, and aggressively purged voter rolls; all measures likely to have the greatest impact on minority voters. In recent weeks, Virginia has removed 35,000 legal voters from its voter rolls. In October, Republican lawmakers in North Carolina pushed through a bill that could ultimately allow the Republican Party-controlled State Assembly to decide disputed elections.
THE NEXT FOUR GRAFS ARE REWORKED:
Strong and consistent action by federal and, where possible, state authorities and by impartial citizen groups is essential if we do not want to let our democracy slip through our fingers.
The Justice Department must take swift action and use its existing powers to combat the intimidation of poll workers and racial discrimination against voters. More public resources should be devoted to the safety of election workers.
More confidence in the electoral system must be created through better citizenship education at all ages. Former elected officials from both parties should be brought in to support and explain election administration
and its integrity
to build public trust. More work is also needed at every level to combat election-related disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories.
Bipartisan citizen groups should demand independent redistricting commissions and work to end partisan purges of voter rolls, racial gerrymandering, and restrictions on easy access to polling places and early voting. They must also be prepared to challenge governments that refuse to act to protect the democratic process.
NEW:
These are challenging objectives. But they are not impossible things.
Secure and fair elections are ultimately in the interests of both major parties.
The urgent lesson to be learned from Reconstruction is that rights can be taken away by partisan forces that erode democracy. Passivity in the face of subversion is not a policy.
Fergus M. Bordewich is the author of
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Struggle to Save Reconstruction
.

Fernando Dowling is an author and political journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. He has a deep understanding of the political landscape and a passion for analyzing the latest political trends and news.