OPINIONS/EDITORIALS Guest Columnist
By Marc H. Morial
Early Voting and Expanded Absentee Voting are Key to Fair Elections
“Georgia elections officials deployed a known strategy of voter suppression: closing and relocating polling places. Despite projections of record turnout, elections officials closed or moved approximately 305 locations, many in neighborhoods with numerous voters of color. Fewer polling places meant that the remaining locations strained to accommodate an influx of voters. Yet elections officials failed to supply sufficient, functioning voting
machines and enough provisional ballots … Depriving polling places of basic tools needed for voting meant that voters who arrived at polling places anxious and excited to express their patriotism through the basic, fundamental act of voting were met with hours-long lines. Some lines were four hours long. Georgians who could not wait — because of disability, health, or work or family obligations — effectively lost the right to vote.” — Fair Fight Action and Care in Action, plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against Georgia election officials Voter turnout in the 2018
Guest Columnist
midterms hit a 50-year high, with more than 47 percent of the voting-eligible population casting a ballot. Across multiple media platforms, images of voters standing in long lines were used to illustrate voter enthusiasm. While voter enthusiasm is great news, long lines at the polls are not. They are a sign of voter suppression, and immediate action must be taken at the state and federal level to expand early voting, voting my mail and other measures to reduce voter wait times and end voter suppression. Georgia was among the most egregious examples. In suburban
Gwinnett County, voters waited four hours when officials opened the polls to discover that their voting machines were not working. In downtown Atlanta, just three voting machines were provided for more than 3,000 registered voters, leading to wait times of three hours. In many cases, long wait times at the polls are not the result of innocent mistakes, but part of a deliberate campaign to discourage voting, particularly in communities of color. According to a University of Pennsylvania study, minority voters are six times as likely as Whites to wait longer
than an hour to vote, even within the same town or county. The study found that at least 200,000 people didn’t vote in 2014 because of the lines they encountered in 2012. In crafting North Carolina’s notoriously racist “monster” voter suppression law, lawmakers researched which of the 17 days of early voting Black voters were most likely to use, then eliminated those particular seven days. Fortunately, North Carolina’s law was overturned. But 13 states — even supposedly progressive
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By Bill Fletcher Jr.
CBC Needs to Get to Work on Western Sahara
The transition towards a new Congress is underway. Democrats are beginning to assume leadership positions as a result of their gaining a House majority. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) should now have many issues to bring forward and one of them needs to be the Western Sahara. Once upon a time the CBC
was one of the most significant so-called mainstream players in the realm of U.S. foreign policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, the CBC was central to work against white minority rule in Southern Africa. Some of its members also pushed the envelope on the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Yet, over the years the voice of the CBC on U.S. foreign policy has become far more distant. Yes, they have paid attention to matters such as U.S. trade policy with Africa, but they have shied away from addressing conflicts in Africa, let
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alone other major international issues. The question of the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony illegally occupied by the Moroccan government, is one such conflict site that the CBC has spent precious little time addressing. It is not that they don’t care, at least from what I can tell. Former Congressman John Conyers, for instance, was the co-chair of a congressional committee on the Western Sahara. Yet, what has been missing is the passion and engagement that should be asso-
ciated with resolving Africa’s last remaining colonial question. The Western Sahara is not a matter on the tip of everyone’s tongue. In part because there has been a long-term truce between the Moroccan occupation forces and the national liberation movement known as POLISARIO, Morocco’s litany of human rights abuses and its denial of national self-determination to the Sahrawi population rarely gets into the headlines. Yet the potential for regional destabilization is ever present, particularly as Morocco
ignores United Nations and African Union calls for the respect of national self-determination. Quite obviously, the conflict in the Western Sahara is an inner-African struggle. This colonialism is carried out by one African country against another, rather than a struggle against European colonialism. Nevertheless, it represents a struggle over the future of Africa not only because it may explode once again but because it calls into question
FLETCHER Page 46
By Wayne Dawkins
George H.W. Bush’s Complicated History with Blacks George Herbert Walker Bush, who died Saturday at age 94, had a complex and mixed record with Black America during his service as the 41st U.S. president from 1989-1993. He promised his administration would be less oppressive for African Americans after eight years of Reaganism, arguably the most racist presidency since the Jim Crow era. Bush, a moderately conservative Republican and Ronald Reagan’s vice president, promised a “kinder, gentler” style of governing that suggested a retreat
from mean-spirited rhetoric and policies of 1981-1989. Yet Bush’s 1988 campaign for president was accused of making racist appeals. Campaign advertisements displayed images of the convicted rapist and murderer Willie Horton, a Black man released on parole by Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, Bush’s Democratic opponent. Bush was elected handily. In a 1990 deathbed confession, Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater apologized for launching the racially inflammatory
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advertisements. Bush chose Louis Sullivan of Morehouse College for the Health and Human Services Cabinet post. Months later in 1989, Gen. Colin Powell was promoted to commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a first for an African American. By 1991, Condoleezza Rice appeared on America’s radar — the Black woman was Bush’s expert on Russia (the former Soviet Union) and nuclear arms control. Bush’s rhetoric and gestures indeed were less hostile than
Reagan’s had been, however he still pushed policies that a number of Black leaders said were harmful. Bush called a civil rights bill debated in Congress a “quota bill” even though the legislation forbade use of fixed numbers or percentages for affirmative action hiring. Congress passed the bill, but Bush vetoed it in 1990. In 1992, Bush signed a compromise civil rights bill. In 1990, Bush unsuccessfully attempted to place Black conservative William Lucas as assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice De-
partment. Bush’s lasting decision was his nomination of Clarence Thomas in July 1991 to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Thurgood Marshall, the first and at the time only African American on the high court. Thomas was presented as a poor Black boy from Georgia who overcame poverty and discrimination to excel in America. Thomas was an undistinguished federal judge — appointed by
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DECEMBER 6 - 12, 2018 27 THE WASHINGTON INFORMER