Republican Assaults On The 15^th Amendment To The Constitution Unconstitutional, Un-American.

In the sense that Democracy is defined by the American con­struct, the United States of America is the world’s old­est Democracy.
Credible his­to­ri­ans will have some­thing to say about the verac­i­ty of that asser­tion con­sid­er­ing that Africans were the first known peo­ple to engage in par­lia­men­tary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems of debate and prob­lem solv­ing, through dia­logue and dis­cus­sions through estab­lished tiered lev­els which con­sist­ed of chief­tains and elders.
Fast for­ward to recent times, and much of the world has embraced American Democracy, lit­er­al­ly split­ting our plan­et into two camps, one that prac­tices and strug­gles to adhere to the west­ern con­cept of Democracy and the oth­er that prac­tices and forces oth­ers to adhere to strict author­i­tar­i­an systems.

The west­ern world fought two world wars, with America at the tip of the spear of both wars. America stood up to the Soviet com­mu­nist pos­ture, ensur­ing that the world was spared being engulfed in the dark throes of com­mu­nist dom­i­na­tion.
America waged overt wars in Korea, in Vietnam, in Grenada, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Latin America, and count­less covert wars across the globe all in the name of ensur­ing and advanc­ing democ­ra­cy.
The most fun­da­men­tal build­ing block in the con­cept of democ­ra­cy is the fun­da­men­tal right that each cit­i­zen has to vote for lead­ers they want to rep­re­sent them.
(Democracy is not a stamped idea on a sheet of paper. It is a con­cept that has to be replen­ished, and authen­ti­cat­ed dai­ly. It requires that every cit­i­zen share equal­ly in a sys­tem of just & equi­table dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice.
Failing which, the very con­cept becomes emp­ty words that evoke anger rather than inspire hope).
As America con­tin­ues on its search for the elu­sive truth of full democ­ra­cy, inher­ent in her very foun­da­tions are built in anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic ele­ments that con­tin­ue to eat away and weak­en the very foun­da­tion of this great bea­con.
Unless America finds a way to final­ly and con­clu­sive­ly eschew hatred and divi­sive­ness, those vices will destroy the very foun­da­tion of this poten­tial demo­c­ra­t­ic nation.

The ideals enshrined in the accept­ed con­cept of what democ­ra­cy is, is that all who qual­i­fy should vote. That has been an elu­sive con­cept to America.
Despite the protes­ta­tions of excep­tion­al­ism and great­ness, America strug­gles might­i­ly to live up to her own creed that all men are cre­at­ed equal.
Seeking to pre­vent law­ful cit­i­zens from vot­ing, and con­spir­ing to pre­vent those who have paid their debt to soci­ety from doing so, are some of the most despi­ca­ble and cow­ard­ly acts politi­cians could sup­port. they are also uncon­sti­tu­tion­al acts.
When your pol­i­tics are so offen­sive that your only hope is to keep peo­ple from the polls, you are a com­mon thug and worse than a tin-pan dictator.

In some states, Republican offi­cials closed hun­dreds of polling sites. Recently, in Milwaukee, well over a hun­dred polling sites were closed by Republicans, only five sites were left open, sub­ject­ing tens of thou­sands of vot­ers to stand in line for up to eight hours in order to cast their votes.
Those bla­tant acts of vot­er sup­pres­sion were car­ried out only in areas that are heav­i­ly African-American.
In Native-American com­mu­ni­ties, there are reports that peo­ple are forced to dri­ve miles out­side their com­mu­ni­ties to cast a vote.
Voters attest­ed that none of those con­di­tions exist­ed in white sub­urbs that gen­er­al­ly sup­port Republican can­di­dates.
Republican elect­ed offi­cials may not be killing blacks as the try to vote, but they have found a litany of ways to ensure that few­er African-Americans have access to the polls.
Those are clear and unequiv­o­cal vio­la­tions of the 15^th amend­ment to the US constitution.

They are not requir­ing black Americans to guess cor­rect­ly how many jelly­beans are in a jar nowa­days. No, they are not ask­ing them ques­tions even they do not know the answers to, what they are doing is just as bad, and in many cas­es far worse.
Donald Trump has been wag­ing sur­gi­cal war­fare against the right to vote, he has essen­tial­ly embarked on a process of lying about vot­er fraud that even a kan­ga­roo com­mis­sion he set up after he entered the white house could not val­i­date.
He has used his twit­ter account to demo­nize mail-in vot­ing in an effort to cast doubt on the upcom­ing elec­tion results. Never mind that there is zero evi­dence of fraud in mail-in vot­ing, out­side of Trump’s Putin-esque lies.
Donald Trump is quite pre­pared to have anoth­er civ­il war of his cre­ation by sow­ing lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion about the valid­i­ty of the elec­tion results than lose the elec­tion.
Donald Trump votes by mail, by that account Donald Trump’s vote is fraud­u­lent. Donald Trump igno­rant­ly states that he is a sup­port­er of absen­tee vot­ing, the poor idiot still has not grasped that there is no dif­fer­ence between the two.
On the one hand, he is using social media and right-wing media to con­tin­ue a lie that vot­ing by mail will be fraught with mas­sive cor­rup­tion.
Arguably, there is zero evi­dence that there is a scin­til­la of truth to this lie, but this seems to be what Vladamir Putin urged him to do to stay in pow­er.
Trump-appoint­ed one of his hench­men to the post of Postmaster General, that hack is Louis DeJoy. 
Louis Dejoy has been tasked with slow­ing down all aspects of the postal ser­vice to ensure that the agency will not be able to cope with the mas­sive amount of mail-in bal­lots come nation­al elections.

As part of that sab­o­tage, Trump and his min­ions have done away with over­time work, effec­tive­ly ensur­ing that there will be a back­log, and most of all, mas­sive chaos that will throw the results of the upcom­ing elec­tions in doubt.
If and when that hap­pens, Trump will then say he warned that the elec­tions would be the most cor­rupt in his­to­ry as he has con­sis­tent­ly tried to do to cre­ate doubt in the elec­tion process.
The tragedy is that his unin­tel­li­gent sup­port­ers are too stu­pid to see the lies.
In order for the elec­tions to be [rigged] as he lied in his state­ments, fifty (50) states, Republican & Democrats would have to con­spire to do so as American pres­i­den­tial elec­tions are all state events that are held inde­pen­dent­ly of each other.

“These changes are hap­pen­ing because there’s a White House agen­da to pri­va­tize and sell off the pub­lic Postal Service,” said Mark Dimondstein, pres­i­dent of the American Postal Workers Union. “But there’s too much approval for the orga­ni­za­tion right now. They want to sep­a­rate the ser­vice from the peo­ple and then degrade it to the point where peo­ple aren’t going to like it any­more.”
Many peo­ple warned that Donald Trump would try to change the date of the elec­tion. This writer under­stood that Donald Trump had no pow­er to change the date of the elec­tion, nev­er­the­less, he has the pow­er to use the pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy to cre­ate such sit­u­a­tions that fright­en the pub­lic, there­after declar­ing that free and fair elec­tions can­not be held.
It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of Fascism.
He has already sug­gest­ed that the elec­tions be post­poned, despite the fact that elec­tions have been held dur­ing the civ­il war, dur­ing all kinds of upheavals.
He has poured fed­er­al thugs into the Democratic-run city of Portland Oregon. He has threat­ened to send oth­ers to Chicago, New York, and oth­er cities run by Democrats to insti­gate and stir up vio­lence, he then points to the pitch bat­tles between his cam­ou­flaged Gestapo and pro­tes­tors and argues that he will be a pres­i­dent to restore law and order.
The sad irony is that all of these things are hap­pen­ing under Donald Trump’s lead­er­ship. Why would Donald Trump be giv­en a sec­ond term to enact Vladimir Putin’s agen­da any further?

South Carolina’s state leg­is­la­ture in 2013, imposed a range of vot­ing restric­tions, includ­ing the new vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments. It was part of a wave of vot­ing restric­tions enact­ed after a 5‑to‑4 Supreme Court deci­sion that effec­tive­ly struck down a cen­tral part of the fed­er­al Voting Rights Act, weak­en­ing fed­er­al over­sight of vot­ing rights.
Civil Rights groups and the Obama Administration filed suit and a.
A tri­al judge reject­ed argu­ments that the law vio­lat­ed the Constitution and what remained of the Voting Rights Act. But a three-judge pan­el of the appeals court dis­agreed.
The appeals court rul­ing struck down five parts of the law: its vot­er ID require­ments, a roll­back of ear­ly vot­ing to 10 days from 17, an elim­i­na­tion of same-day reg­is­tra­tion and of pre­reg­is­tra­tion of some teenagers, and its ban on count­ing votes cast in the wrong precinct.
The court found that all five restric­tions “dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed African-Americans.” The law’s vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vi­sion, for instance, “retained only those types of pho­to ID dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly held by whites and exclud­ed those dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly held by African-Americans.”(NYT)
The court not­ed that the law went after African-Americans with sur­gi­cal precision.

The Republican Party con­tin­ues to try to pull the wool over the eyes of its white sup­port­ers, and sad­ly there are some Blacks who are fooled as well into believ­ing that the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, the par­ty that reluc­tant­ly signed the Emancipation Declaration, is the same par­ty of today.
Conversely, they want the nation to believe that the racist Democratic par­ty of the Confederacy, is the Democratic Party of today.
Like two ships pass­ing in the night, so has the two polit­i­cal par­ties essen­tial­ly swapped ide­olo­gies begin­ning in the 1960s after the sign­ing of the Civil & Voting Rights Acts in the 1960s.

The Republican par­ty and it’s fake pres­i­dent all across the coun­try have ramped up attacks on vot­ing rights, begin­ning with the Supreme Court’s uncon­scionable and inex­plic­a­ble attack on the act.
The Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder struck down Section 4(b), of the act, which set out the for­mu­la for deter­min­ing which states are sub­ject to the Section 5 pre­clear­ance require­ment, thus ren­der­ing Section 5 — which many con­sid­er the heart of the act — mean­ing­less.
After sign­ing the Act, Southern Democratic President Lyndon Johnson declared the sign­ing “a tri­umph for free­dom as huge as any vic­to­ry that has ever been won on any bat­tle­field.” [adapt­ed]
The leg­is­la­tion was meant to enforce the 15^th Amendment, which almost a cen­tu­ry before, pro­vid­ed that “The right of U.S. cit­i­zens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, col­or, or pre­vi­ous con­di­tion of servi­tude.”
How about that 15^th Amendment to the US Constitution?
Republican lead­ers across America, par­tic­u­lar­ly in states run by them
claim to be patri­ots, they wrap them­selves in the American flag and feign patri­o­tism when it suits them. However, they con­ve­nient­ly vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions of all Americans when they feel threat­ened elec­toral­ly.
Worse, when white suprema­cy is at risk at the bal­lot box.

There was no need for the high court to do any­thing to the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County, Alabama v Holder.
This was set­tled law that ought to have been left stand­ing. The con­cept of (stare deci­sis) Let the deci­sion stand was com­plete­ly thrown out, and inex­plic­a­bly, the rul­ing was that the law worked so well that it was no longer need­ed.
Ari Berman of the nation called the rul­ing a (the return of jim crow). Gilda Daniels | University of Baltimore School of Law, (pre­pare for the trash­ing of the demo­c­ra­t­ic process). Gerry Hebert | Campaign Legal Center,(a rad­i­cal act of judi­cial activism). Spencer Overton | Demos,(a set­back for democ­ra­cy). Paul M. Smith | Jenner & Block LLP,(open sea­son for vot­er id laws).
How about that Supreme Court inter­pret­ing the con­sti­tu­tion and rul­ing on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of laws?
How about that John Roberts and his con­ser­v­a­tive activist col­leagues on the court [call­ing balls and strikes]?

Demonizing mail-in bal­lots, reduc­ing the Post Office’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er bal­lots in a time­ly fash­ion, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly embark­ing on a mas­sive clo­sure of vot­ing sites in minor­i­ty areas, is a strat­e­gy Trump has for steal­ing the next elec­tions.
It is hap­pen­ing right out in the open. Democrats must find ways to get their vot­ers to vote ear­ly there­by reduc­ing the need for those long lines on elec­tion day.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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