Is asking someone for an ID racist? Of course not.
There was a line in the Fay Vincent article posted earlier that where Vincent writes that MLB should not have pulled the All-Star game without first protesting the substance of the law. The substance of the law is something many on both sides seem to be missing.
First, look at the onslaught of 2021 in a historical context.
In 1870, the 15th Amendment gave Black men the right to vote. Shortly thereafter, you saw a massive rise in things like poll taxes and literacy tests. Poll taxes were often made to be paid at police precincts and were sometimes backdated all the way to the time the individual became of legal voting age. Literacy tests were mostly administered at the polling station and the questions asked were left up to the poll worker. As you can imagine, these tactics were highly successful in keeping Black folks from casting ballots.
The 24th Amendment was passed in 1962, which outlawed the poll tax. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed the use of literacy tests as a requirement for voting.
Amazingly enough, the 1970s saw a rise in states attempting to enact voter ID laws as well as to ramp up efforts to purge voter rolls. Prior to the changes of 1962 and 1965, the only state to have any voter ID law was South Carolina, which passed theirs in 1950. As it should go without saying, these actions were not as successful at voter suppression as earlier moves.
Now, moving on to present day. The "voter integrity" push of 2021 has actually been anticipated and predicted for a while.
Stuart Stevens, a lifelong Republican who worked as a media strategist on the Dole, GW Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns, wrote in his book, "It Was All a Lie," that had basically given up on the idea of expanding their appeal and seemed more interested in simply limiting voter turnout. He would have written this sometime in 2018 or 2019, well before the pandemic and the subsequent outrage over absentee voting.
In addition to predictions like Stevens's, another commonly discussed topic following 2018 and 2020 is the ability of the the GOP to continue to win statewide elections in certain Republican-strongholds. The states most often mentioned were Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas. These states would still most-likely have strong red state legislatures due to districting, but it would be a challenge overcoming the heavily Democratic metropolitan areas and their surrounding suburbans. With the direction the Republican party seems to be headed, it should be no surprise that it will take big losses in areas like Atlanta and Phoenix. If the current party line continues to be walked and those cities to continue to grow with educated whites and people of color flocking to them for career purposes, those losses will likely continue and could possibly begin to be seen in Texas and Florida.
The last paragraph is where the Georgia voting laws get into suppression and appear to be what Steven's predicted in a reaction to the losses of 20.
Some of the interesting parts:
1. The Secretary of State is removed as the chairperson of the State Election Board. This is highly unusual and appears to be have been done as a shot at Brad Raffensperger.
2. Three of the five slots on the State Election Board are appointed by the State Legislature. This is important because the state legislature is heavily Republican due to geographic districting throughout the state while the greater Atlanta area is highly democratic and seemingly getting bluer. It should be noted here that the greater Atlanta area has a population of over six million where the entire state is just above 10 million.
3. The food, water and making it increasingly difficult to extend voting hours. These are going to disproportionately affect cities which, in Georgia, disproportionately affects Black folks.
4. Reducing the number of voting machines to 1 per 250 voters. Again, the areas most affected by something like this is metro areas, which in Georgia are highly populated by Blacks.
5. Limiting of drop boxes of 1 per county and no greater than 1 per 100,000 voters. Again, this is simply a way to make it more inconvenient for metro residents to vote.
I'm not going but the last thing I would like to point out is the inclusion of legislation around the ability to file complaints.
An anonymous hotline will be created where people can log complaints about suspected voter fraud. This combined with giving the SEB the ability to sanction any county that doesn't investigate a claim is a disaster waiting to happen.
So, back to the beginning. Is asking or requiring someone to provide their ID for something racist? No.
It is hard, though, to read through many of the measures of the Georgia law while looking at a few surrounding circumstances and not conclude that the purpose of the law is to make it more difficult for voters in heavily-populated areas to vote, which are people who are less likely to vote Republican. In Georgia, the majority of the folks in those areas are Black.
This is not as out front as poll taxes and literacy tests. It doesn't mean that it is any which should surprise no one, but one sid
