Clyde Haberman's article "16 Years After Bush v. Gore, Still Wrestling With Ballot-Box Rules" was published by the New York Times on February 21, 2016. During the 2000 election, the state in Florida was too close to call, and the media attention exposed flaws in the voting process in America. In reaction, laws were passed requiring states to standardize their voting system. Politicians have taken this as an opportunity to pass laws requiring voters show an ID, saying that voter fraud is a huge problem. In fact, there have been very few cases of voter fraud. These laws just make it harder for minority groups to vote. It also impacts the United States' already poor voter turn out rates. In 2012, only 36.7% of eligible voters went to the polls. Compared to other democratic nations, this is really small.
The article relates to how the South maintained white supremacy after the Civil War by preventing freed slaves from voting. Although the fifteenth amendment gave all American men the right to vote, white southerns passed voting laws with grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and literacy tests that prevented African Americans from being politically active. Poll taxes prevented the poor from voting and literacy tests prevented the uneducated. Many former slaves were both right after the Civil War, but so were many white farmers. To account for this, Southerners included grandfather clauses, which stated that voters were exempt from literacy tests and taxes if their grandfather had been able to vote before the Civil War. Now, with voter identification laws, the same minority groups are being targeted. Hopefully, politicians will take a look at history and see that what they are doing is wrong.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/us/politics/16-years-after-bush-v-gore-still-wrestling-with-ballot-box-rules.html?ref=politics&_r=0
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