FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 10, 2013
For More Information: Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137
Mrs. Amina J. Turner, Executive Director, 919-682-4700
Atty. Jamie Phillips, Public Policy Coordinator, 919-682-4700
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, NC NAACP
April 10, 2013
Representative David Lewis
House Elections Committee Chair
NC House of Representatives
16 W. Jones Street, Room 1326
Raleigh, NC 27601
RE: Voter Suppression Tactics of the Republican Led NC General Assembly
Chairman Lewis,
Let me begin my testimony today not with words from this century but words spoken by one our state's most gifted leaders who was a Lincoln Republican and an African American preacher who helped lead the Fusion Movement in NC with blacks and whites who sought to turn this state from its ugly and unjust history of slavery, discrimination, and degradation and move them towards the path of freedom and justice. Standing on the floor of the Constitutional Convention of 1868, Rev. J.W. Hood, a leader in the Reconstruction Legislature who would later become President of Livingstone College and Grand Master of Prince Hall Masons said these words:
"Gentlemen of the Convention, there has never been before and there would probably never be again so important an assemblage of the colored people of North Carolina as the present in its influence upon the destinies of the people for all time to come. .....Let us have faith, and patience, and moderation, yet assert always that we want three things, -- first, the right to give evidence in the courts; second, the right to be represented in the jury-box; and third, the right to put votes in the ballot box. These rights we want, these rights we contend for, and these rights, under God, we must ultimately have."
With clarity and commitment and character Rev. Hood stood boldly and helped write for North Carolina a constitution that would not be maligned with discrimination, inequalities, and the vestiges of white supremacy.
Article I, Section 2 of our constitution penned in those days and that still stands today says: All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.
Section 5 says: every citizen of this State owes paramount allegiance to the Constitution and government of the United States, and no law or ordinance of the State in contravention or subversion thereof can have any binding force.
Section 10 says: "All elections shall be free."
Section 11 says: "As political rights and privileges are not dependent upon or modified by property, no property qualification shall affect the right to vote or hold office."
Section 19 says: "No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be subjected to discrimination by the State because of race, color, religion, or national origin." In those same days of reconstruction this nation reshaped the Federal Constitution to erase the legal vestiges of discrimination and inequities.
The 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution: Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The 15th Amendment of the United States Constitution says: "The right of citizens of the United States 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. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
Abridge means curtail, truncate, diminish, and cutting the citizens' rights;
The 24th Amendment of the United States Constitution says: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
Two years after the march on Washington the nation, in the middle of a Second Reconstruction, faced the literal blood sacrifice of whites, blacks, Jews and Christians and so many others fighting to undo the legalized systems of Jim Crow. Systems that had been put in place in the late 1800s to stop the First Reconstruction, and the power of a broad black and white fusion coalition that forced this nation to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 over and against the strong white supremacist regressive forces. The Voting Rights Act was an act to enforce the provisions of the 15th Amendment and ensure that no federal, state or local government may in any way impede people from registering to vote or voting because of their race or ethnicity.
This act was introduced in the Senate as Senate Bill 1564 by Mike Mansfield, a Democrat, and Everett Dirksen, a Republican, on March 18, 1965, eleven days after the brutal beatings seen by whole world on March 7th, called Bloody Sunday in Selma Alabama at the Edmunds Pettus Bridge. When the Senate voted, 73% of Democrats and 94% of Republicans supported the historic bill.
We are committed to five principles, from which we will never turn. 1) Economic sustainability and ending poverty by fighting for full employment, living wages, the alleviation of disparate unemployment, a green economy, labor rights, affordable housing, targeted empowerment zones, strong safety net services for the poor, fair policies for immigrants, infrastructure development and fair tax reform. 2) Educational equality by ensuring every child receives a high quality, well-funded, Constitutional, diverse public education, access to Community Colleges and Universities and equitable funding for minority colleges and universities. 3) Healthcare for all by ensuring access to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security and providing environmental protection. 4) Fairness in the criminal justice system by addressing the continuing inequalities in the system and providing equal protection under the law for black, brown and poor white people. 5) Voting rights by defending the right to vote and expanding voting rights for all people by standing against suppression tactics, such as voter ID, restriction of Early Voting, race-based redistricting, or any other effort that undermines equal protection under the law.
The preponderance of the policy you are promoting is eerily reminiscent of the Old South policies. For example: your attack on Medicaid that denies coverage to 500,000 poor people; your attack on the unemployed that hurts over 150,000 and denies 700 million federal dollars to our state; your disdain for immigrants; the defunding of public education and setting up new forms of privatization through charters and vouchers which will lead to more re-segregation; and your decision to crucify voting rights. You have launched an all out war on voting. Your voter suppression tactics making it harder to vote while at the same time making it easier to get guns is almost identical to the policy direction of the white Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon and the interposition and nullification policies of George Wallace with a 21st century twist. Is this really how the leadership of this General Assembly wants to be known - as being on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of democracy and the wrong side of the Constitution?
Do you not know or understand that when this Republican-led General Assembly seeks to push a poll tax disguised as voter ID, curtail Early Voting, ban Same-Day registration, eliminate Sunday voting, add additional qualifications and burdens to the formerly incarcerated and so-called mentally incompetent, draw racially designed redistricting maps and in every way attempt to block and suppress the rights to vote for all North Carolinians, it not only stinks of constitutional and voting rights violations, it also reveals what one of your own, General Colin Powell, called a shameful dark vein of intolerance that runs through your party. You have become something other than Republicans and are deliberately and decidedly abandoning your own conservative heritage to uphold the Constitution and instead pouring the old wine of Old South legislative logic into the new wineskin of 21st century regressive extremism. We see what is happening here as a form of power grabbing and regressive policy that is bad for North Carolina, bad for America and bad for everyday people of North Carolina.
Attempting to steal and suppress the vote, cutting insurance for the poorest among us, wiping out unemployment, under-cutting funding for education, fighting paths to citizenship for immigrants, but working to insure people get more guns is a weird set of policy initiatives for elected official who claim they want the state to move forward. Stevie Wonder can see this is the wrong direction.
Instead of going backwards we call on this body to expand democracy by working towards the following:
- Enforce universal compliance with the 14th, 15th, and 24th Amendments to the Constitution, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Maintain the best voting laws in the nation: Signature attestation combined with a five-year felony charge for lying.
- Stop race-based gerrymandering and redistricting which disenfranchises black and minority voters.
- Enforce the N.C. Constitution's requirement that all elections are free.
- Improve Early Voting by opening polls on more Saturdays and Sundays.
- Open countywide voting centers on Election Day with Same Day Registration.
- Felony enfranchisement after people have paid their debt to society.
- Release Help American Vote Act (HAVA) funds to allow for smoother elections.
- Automatic registration on 18th Birthday, like the draft.
- Make Election Day a State Holiday.
North Carolina has the best election laws in the country. It protects access and security. It already keeps them in balance. One of the key features of our law is voter attestation with a felony penalty for lying, which came about in 2003 as a bipartisan compromise. Rep. Mickey Micheaux (D) of Durham and Rep. Paul Stam (R) of Apex sponsored the bipartisan legislation with this provision. It says voters have to attest who they are by signing their name when they vote, and there's a felony charge against them if they lie. This simple procedure works. It has been working for a decade. It is not broken.
We have had elections for 237 years in NC without a so-called Voter Photo ID - 237 years! Only after the massive turnout of African Americans, Latinos, progressives, whites, students and the elderly - fundamentally changing the electorate here in the South - did the false witness and distortion about fraud begin and the cry for voter poll tax disguised as Voter ID. It is as though those of you pushing this bill are scared of true democracy and scared that your narrow agenda might not get a good hearing in a public square filled with all people.
Since 2004, NC has had the greatest increase in voter participation in the nation. So to say NC should try to imitate other states like Georgia or Indiana makes no sense. In fact, I went to Georgia last week and the citizens there contradicted the claims of their Secretary of State, Brian Kemp claimed here last week. People in Georgia say photo ID requirements have been hard on voters. We are a leader not a follower! Just last year 70% of African Americans and a record number of Latinos voted - the second highest number of North Carolinians and large numbers of students. But this heterogeneous growth in the electorate must frighten some people and so the only way they can emotionally account for it is to raise the irrational and unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
The new poll tax disguised as voter ID wants to require people without driver's licenses - mainly poor, elderly, and disabled people without cars - to obtain a photo ID. We believe on strong legal basis that it violates the principals of the 14th and 15th Amendments as well as the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits a state from abridging a citizen's right to vote by requiring "any poll tax or other tax." We also believe it fundamentally goes against the provisions of our State Constitution regarding elections and our constitutional mandate to comply with and not subvert federal law.
Experts estimate car-less people would need to spend between $50 to $150 for transportation, time, waiting in line, and gathering related documentation such as a birth certificate. If they want to plead they are too poor, then they have to find a ride to another government office and swear or affirm they are poor. And even if just one or two percentage points of North Carolinians are kept from voting it can fundamentally change the political representation of our state. Requiring voters to show a voter ID would hurt thousands of registered voters in NC who have voted for years but don't have a photo ID. These loyal citizens are disproportionately people of color, seniors, and women who changed their name.
African Americans are 22% of all active voters, but they are 31% of the registered voters who do not have a government-issued photo ID. Seniors are 18% of active voters, but 26% of those without a photo ID. Women are 54% of active voters, but 66% of those without a photo ID. We do not fall for "We need ID for prescription drugs, to use a credit card, and to fly on a plane, so why not to vote?" Those things are privileges. Voting is a constitutional right, protected by more constitutional amendments than any other right we have as Americans. We as a nation don't provide constitutional rights based on false analysis, polls, or popular thinking. Constitutional rights are given to keep the majority from exercising tyranny over the minority. And they are non-negotiable.
Finally, let me say that the misinformation you are feeding the public by leading our state down this path is dangerous, literally dangerous. The constant false assertion by legislators and others that elections recently have been filled with fraud or even that we must protect against fraud, as though we don't already do that, is wrong and feeds a crazy conspiracy theory.
Constant irresponsible usage of falsehoods about fraud that have no empirical basis feeds a crazy conspiracy that claims recent candidates like our President of these United States and others who serve in office, that use to be historically limited to white people, are there because of fraud and cheating. The more you push the lie of fraud you spawn the life of these crazy unfounded theories and incite unstable people.
In two newspapers, among many, are quotes that grow out of the debate you are forcing on this state at a time we should be talking about jobs, education, and health care. Listen and listen well:
1. "TYPICAL! This man and his terrorist group the naacp is why we need ID laws! We need laws to keep people like Barber from letting people vote who are not registered or LEGAL RESIDENTS!"
"Barber had his way all felons could vote and all you need is just your name and sign on the line as long as you vote for their guy!"
"That's how we got in this mess with Obama!"
2. "use your logic how dumb does one have to be to vote."
"Why don't you get a real job & stop spewing your vile & hatred among simple minded people. It's self-appointed groups like your that are major contributors to the civil & moral break-down in our black communities."
3."What dumb s---you all are no one said voter is just for blacks the NAACP is the most racist organization that has ever existed"
These are the kind of vicious and hateful emotions you incite when you irresponsibly misinform the public about fraud rather than have a constitutional conversation. Rather than agree that these fights have already been fought, you instead try to go backwards. I pray you will turn around, stop this debate and deal with the real issues rather than this one. But know if you continue and cause people who have very extreme and unstable attitudes to act in negative ways, because ugly language is often the precursor to ugly actions, the responsibility will lie at your feet and in your hands.
The only proven fraud in our nation is fraud perpetrated by elected officials and fraud by politicians who try to change the rules as you go. Intentionally giving voter misinformation about election times and places and voter intimidation at the polls are the areas we should really be addressing if fraud is something we want to address. The claim of citizens voting fraudulent in mass numbers or even in minuscule numbers is fraudulent itself.
The right of all eligible citizens to vote and to have their vote count is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it is a fundamental civil right guaranteed by our Constitution. This and only this should be the goal of any legislative body. Anything else is an affront to every claim of justice we hold dear and we will fight any attempt to undermine the rights ordained by God and guaranteed by our constitution.
Respectfully Submitted,
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President,
North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP
Chair, Political Action Committee of the NAACP National Board of Directors
Convener, Historic Thousands on Jones Street People's Assembly Coalition
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