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      Voter Suppression Is Grand Larceny

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyVoter Suppression Is Grand LarcenyWe are watching another theft of power.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 28, 2021, 7:20 p.m. ETCredit…Charles Krupa/Associated PressIn 1890, Mississippi became one of the first states in the country to call a constitutional convention for the express purpose of writing white supremacy into the DNA of the state.At the time, a majority of the registered voters in the state were Black men.The lone Black delegate to the convention, Isaiah Montgomery, participated in openly suppressing the voting eligibility of most of those Black men, in the hope that this would reduce the terror, intimidation and hostility that white supremacists aimed at Black people.The committee on which he sat went even further. As he said at the convention:“As a further precaution to secure unquestioned white supremacy the committee have fixed an arbitrary appointment of the state, which fixes the legislative branch of the government at 130 members and the senatorial branch at 45 members.” The majority of the seats in both branches were “from white constituencies.”Speaking to the Black people he was disenfranchising, Montgomery said:“I wish to tell them that the sacrifice has been made to restore confidence, the great missing link between the two races, to restore honesty and purity to the ballot-box and to confer the great boon of political liberty upon the Commonwealth of Mississippi.”That sacrifice backfired horribly, as states across the South followed the Mississippi example, suppressing the Black vote, and Jim Crow reigned.That same sort of language is being used today to prevent people from voting, because when it comes to voter suppression, ignoble intentions are always draped in noble language. Those who seek to impede others from voting, in some cases to strip them of the right, often say that they are doing so to ensure the sanctity, integrity or purity of the vote.However, when the truth is laid bare, the defilement against which they rail is the voting power of the racial minority, the young — in their eyes, naïve and liberally indoctrinated — and the dyed-in-the-wool Democrats.In early February, a Brennan Center for Justice report detailed:“Thus far this year, thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 bills to restrict voting access. These proposals primarily seek to: (1) limit mail voting access; (2) impose stricter voter ID requirements; (3) slash voter registration opportunities; and (4) enable more aggressive voter roll purges. These bills are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election.”On Feb. 24, the center updated its account to reveal that “as of February 19, 2021, state lawmakers have carried over, prefiled, or introduced 253 bills with provisions that restrict voting access in 43 states.”But it is the coded language that harkens to the post-Reconstruction era racism that strikes me.In Georgia, which went for a Democrat for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992 and just elected two Democratic senators — one Black and one Jewish — there have been a raft of proposed voter restrictions. As State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican and chair of the newly formed Special Committee on Election Integrity, put it recently, according to The Washington Post, “Our due diligence in this legislature [is] to constantly update our laws to try to protect the sanctity of the vote.”Kelly Loeffler, who lost her Senate bid in the state, has launched a voter organization because, as she said, “for too many in our state, the importance — and even the sanctity of their vote — is in question.” She continued, “That’s why we’re rolling up our sleeves to register conservative-leaning voters who have been overlooked, to regularly engage more communities, and to strengthen election integrity across our state.”Senator Rick Scott and other Republicans on Feb. 25 introduced the Save Democracy Act in what they said was an effort to “restore confidence in our elections.”Jessica Anderson of the conservative lobbying organization Heritage Action for America said of the legislation: “I applaud Senator Scott for putting forward common-sense, targeted reforms to help protect the integrity of our federal elections and the sanctity of the vote. The Save Democracy Act will protect against fraud and restore American’s confidence in our election systems while respecting the state’s sovereignty.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is pushing a slate of restrictive voter laws that would make it harder for Democrats to win in the state. On his website, the announcement read this way: “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis proposed new measures to safeguard the sanctity of Florida elections. The Governor’s announcement reaffirms his commitment to the integrity of every vote and the importance of transparency in Florida elections.”They can use all manner of euphemism to make it sound honorable, but it is not. This is an electoral fleecing in plain sight, one targeting people of color. We are watching another of history’s racist robberies. It’s grand larceny and, as usual, what is being stolen is power.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      N.A.A.C.P. Sues Trump and Giuliani Over Election Fight and Jan. 6 Riot

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionKey TakeawaysTrump’s RoleGeorgia InvestigationExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.A.A.C.P. Sues Trump and Giuliani Over Election Fight and Jan. 6 RiotThe civil rights group brought the suit on behalf of Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, with other Democrats in Congress expected to join as plaintiffs.Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against former President Donald J. Trump and others over the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — The N.A.A.C.P. on Tuesday morning filed a federal lawsuit against former President Donald J. Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, claiming that they violated a 19th century statute when they tried to prevent the certification of the election on Jan. 6.The civil rights organization brought the suit on behalf of Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi. Other Democrats in Congress — including Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey — are expected to join as plaintiffs in the coming weeks, according to the N.A.A.C.P.The lawsuit contends that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 statute that includes protections against violent conspiracies that interfered with Congress’s constitutional duties; the suit also names the Proud Boys, the far-right nationalist group, and the Oath Keepers militia group. The legal action accuses Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and the two groups of conspiring to incite a violent riot at the Capitol, with the goal of preventing Congress from certifying the election.The suit is the latest legal problem for Mr. Trump: New York prosecutors are investigating his financial dealings; New York’s attorney general is pursuing a civil investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s company misstated assets to get bank loans and tax benefits; and a Georgia district attorney is examining his election interference effort there. In the lawsuit, Mr. Thompson said he was forced to wear a gas mask and hide on the floor of the House gallery for three hours while hearing “threats of physical violence against any member who attempted to proceed to approve the Electoral College ballot count.” Mr. Thompson also heard a gunshot, according to the suit, which he did not learn until later had killed Ashli Babbitt, one of the rioters in the Capitol lobby.Mr. Thompson is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in the lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington. The suit does not include a specific financial amount.Mr. Thompson, 72, claims he was put at an increased health risk by later being required to shelter in place in a cramped area that did not allow for social distancing. The lawsuit notes that Mr. Thompson shared confined space with two members of Congress who tested positive for the coronavirus shortly after the attack at the Capitol.In an interview on Monday, Mr. Thompson said he would not have brought the suit against Mr. Trump if the Senate had voted to convict him in last week’s impeachment trial.“I feared for my life,” Mr. Thompson said. “Not a day passes that I don’t think about this incident. I was committed to seeing justice brought to this situation.”He added: “This is me, and hopefully others, having our day in court to address the atrocities of Jan. 6. I trust the better judgment of the courts because obviously Republican members of the Senate could not do what the evidence overwhelmingly presented.”Mr. Thompson said he had already received a second dose of a Covid vaccine by Jan. 6 and therefore did not quarantine after his close contacts with colleagues who tested positive. But he noted, “There were a number of members who were very concerned about being housed in those numbers with people refusing to wear masks.”Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have recently raised the prospect of Mr. Trump being held accountable in the courts for the riot. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, voted to acquit Mr. Trump in the impeachment trial but then appeared to encourage people to take their fight to the courts.“He didn’t get away with anything, yet,” Mr. McConnell said at the trial’s conclusion, noting: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation.”Derrick Johnson, president of the N.A.A.C.P., said the decision to seek compensatory and punitive damages was rooted in a history of tools that have worked to fight back against white supremacy.“The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan that bankrupted a chapter,” he said, referring to a 2008 judgment against a Kentucky-based Klan outfit that ordered the group to pay $2.5 million in damages. “This is very similar. If we do nothing, we can be ensured these groups will continue to spread and grow in their boldness. We must curb the spread of white supremacy.”While much of the focus of the impeachment trial rested on how the violent mob was threatening former Vice President Mike Pence as well as congressional leaders like the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, N.A.A.C.P. officials said the attack was deeply rooted in racial injustice.“Underlying this insurrection were the actions of folks who were challenging the voices of people of color,” said Janette McCarthy Louard, deputy general counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. “If you look at whose votes were being challenged, these came from largely urban areas. The votes of people of color were being challenged.”The suit, for instance, charges Mr. Giuliani with attempting to reject “the votes cast by voters in Detroit, the population of which is 78 percent African-American.” It also says Mr. Giuliani inaccurately claimed there was fraud in voting in Milwaukee and Madison, Wis., “both of which have large African-American populations.”Joseph M. Sellers, a partner at the civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which jointly filed the case, said the lawsuit named Mr. Trump in his personal capacity because his conduct challenging another branch of government to do its job falls outside the official duties of the president.“He was engaging in conduct that is so far outside any remotely legitimate scope of his presidential duties,” Mr. Sellers said. “He no longer has the immunity of the president.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State Blue

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      Credit…June ParkSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionStacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo: How to Turn Your Red State BlueIt may take 10 years. Do it anyway.Credit…June ParkSupported byContinue reading the main storyStacey Abrams and Ms. Abrams was the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia in 2018. Ms. Groh-Wargo was her campaign manager. They opened Fair Fight Action in late 2018.Feb. 11, 2021We met and became political partners a decade ago, uniting in a bid to stave off Democratic obsolescence and rebuild a party that would increase the clout of regular, struggling Georgians. Our mission was clear: organize people, help realize gains in their lives, win local races to build statewide competitiveness and hold power accountable.But the challenge was how to do that in a state where many allies had retreated into glum predictions of defeat, where our opponents reveled in shellacking Democrats at the polls and in the Statehouse.That’s not all we had to contend with. There was also a 2010 census undercount of people of color, a looming Republican gerrymander of legislative maps and a new Democratic president midway into his first term confronting a holdover crisis from the previous Republican administration. Though little in modern American history compares with the malice and ineptitude of the botched pandemic response or the attempted insurrection at the Capitol, the dynamic of a potentially inaccurate census and imminent partisan redistricting is the same story facing Democrats in 2021 as it was in 2011. State leaders and activists we know across the country who face total or partial Republican control are wondering which path they should take in their own states now — and deep into the next decade.Georgians deserved better, so we devised and began executing a 10-year plan to transform Georgia into a battleground state. As the world knows, President Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral votes in November, and the January runoff elections for two Senate seats secured full congressional control for the Democratic Party. Yet the result wasn’t a miracle or truly a surprise, at least not to us. Years of planning, testing, innovating, sustained investment and organizing yielded the record-breaking results we knew they could and should. The lessons we learned can help other states looking to chart a more competitive future for Democrats and progressives, particularly those in the Sun Belt, where demographic change will precede electoral opportunity.We realize that many people are thinking about Stacey’s political future, but right now we intend to talk about the unglamorous, tedious, sometimes technical, often contentious work that creates a battleground state. When fully embraced, this work delivers wins — whether or not Donald Trump is on the ballot — as the growth Georgia Democrats have seen in cycle after cycle shows. Even in tough election years, we have witnessed the power of civic engagement on policy issues and increases in Democratic performance. This combination of improvements has also resulted in steady gains in local races and state legislative races, along with the continued narrowing of the statewide loss margin in election after election that finally flipped the state in 2020 and 2021.The task is hard, the progress can feel slow, and winning sometimes means losing better. In 2012, for example, we prevented the Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the Georgia House of Representatives, which would have allowed them to pass virtually any bill they wanted. We won four seats they had drawn for themselves, and in 2014 we maintained those gains — just holding our ground was a victory.The steps toward victory are straightforward: understand your weaknesses, organize with your allies, shore up your political infrastructure and focus on the long game. Georgia’s transformation is worth celebrating, and how it came to be is a long and complicated story, which required more than simply energizing a new coterie of voters. What Georgia Democrats and progressives accomplished here — and what is happening in Arizona and North Carolina — can be exported to the rest of the Sun Belt and the Midwest, but only if we understand how we got here.Understand why you’re losing.To know how to win, we first had to understand why a century of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia had been erased. For most of the 20th century, Georgia Democrats had existed in a strained alliance of rural conservatives, urban liberals and suburbanites, all unconvinced that voting Republican would serve their ends. After serving as the incubator of the Gingrich revolution in the early 1990s, Georgia turned sharply to the right. When Democrats lost U.S. Senate seats in 2002 and 2004, as well as the governorship in 2002, it showed that former conservative Democrats had fully turned Republican. The Democratic Party lost its grip on power. By 2010, Democrats were losing every statewide race, and in 2012 the State Senate fell to a Republican supermajority. Clearly, Democrats had to change tactics. More

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      How Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher In a Democratic Senate

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher In a Democratic SenateSenator Raphael Warnock was sworn in this week as Georgia’s first Black senator, and he arrived with a canny canine assist.Senator Raphael Warnock and Alvin the beagle during the production of his campaign ad.Credit…Warnock for GeorgiaPublished More

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      Raphael Warnock and the Solitude of the Black Senator

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      In late January 1870, the nation’s capital was riveted by a new arrival: the Mississippi legislator Hiram Rhodes Revels, who had traveled days by steamboat and train, forced into the “colored” sections by captains and conductors, en route to becoming the first Black United States senator. Not long after his train pulled in to the New Jersey Avenue Station, Revels, wearing a black suit and a neat beard beneath cheekbones fresh from a shave, was greeted by a rhapsodic Black public. There were lunches with leading civil rights advocates; daily congratulatory visits from as many as 50 men at the Capitol Hill home where he was the guest of a prominent Black Republican; and exclusive interracial soirees hosted by Black businessmen, including the president of the Freedman’s Savings Bank.

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      On King Holiday, New York’s Mayoral Hopefuls Vie for Attention

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn King Holiday, New York’s Mayoral Hopefuls Vie for AttentionWith the Rev. Al Sharpton playing host in Harlem, the crowded field of Democratic candidates tried to sell themselves and inspire a battered city.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, emphasized his long-held ties to New York City, as a former police officer and as an elected official.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2021, 7:22 p.m. ETIt was something of a familiar scene: One by one, the candidates running for mayor of New York City took a turn at the lectern at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s headquarters in Harlem to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday.Eric Adams talked about being a Black police officer and invoked another officer’s memory: the one who saved Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life after a stabbing in 1958.Raymond J. McGuire talked about how his goal was to get the Black community more than just “crumbs” when it comes to economic empowerment.And Andrew Yang recalled how he campaigned in Georgia in the U.S. Senate races with Martin Luther King III, who is now Mr. Yang’s campaign co-chairman.For three decades, lawmakers and would-be public servants have turned out at Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network in Harlem on the third Monday in January to spend a few minutes speaking about Dr. King’s legacy and to court the Black vote, trying to draw church-like shouts of approval from one of the toughest assemblages north of 110th Street.But this year’s ceremony felt different. The country was days removed from a riot on Capitol Hill aimed at overturning the results of an election in which Black voters played a pivotal role in delivering a victory for the Democratic candidate.New York City — once the center of the coronavirus pandemic and still reeling unevenly from its effects — is five months away from holding its most consequential mayoral primary election in a generation.The gathering at the National Action Network in Harlem has become a must-attend event for many political hopefuls.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesWith much of the mayoral campaign being conducted virtually, the Sharpton event was the first public gathering of many of the candidates, and many acknowledged the precarious moment, pledging to enact sweeping policies such as police reform, universal basic income and equity bonds for every child in New York City that would uplift the lives of the city’s most vulnerable.“We are ending in 48 hours the most bigoted and racist presidential term in our lifetime,” Mr. Sharpton told the audience.The candidates, he said later, have a tough road ahead with the myriad problems facing the country and the difficulties awaiting whoever is elected to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio.“People feel vulnerable,” Mr. Sharpton said. “So we have to have a mayor that makes you feel comfortable that they understand that your basic existence is at stake.”In spite of the high stakes, the race for mayor is still a messy and amorphous affair. There are established politicians such as Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller. They have both collected massive war chests and a string of important endorsements.There are wild card candidates like Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate who attracted a storm of attention, both good and bad, when he entered the race last week; Maya Wiley, the former MSNBC commentator who bolstered her campaign by meeting fund-raising goals; and Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive and favored candidate of the business community who raised $5 million in just three months.Andrew Yang has snared Martin Luther King III to become his campaign manager.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesMr. Yang, the first mayoral candidate to speak, said that universal basic income, the proposal he is most associated with, was based on the beliefs and teachings of Dr. King.“It was what he was fighting for, what he was assassinated for, a universal basic income,” Mr. Yang said to polite applause.Mr. Yang added that Dr. King was a revolutionary thinker whose memory “has been sanitized.”Maya Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst who was counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, became the third mayoral candidate to qualify for public matching funds.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesMs. Wiley said the country “stands at a crossroads” and was “staring down the face of white supremacy.” Falling back on her initial introduction as a police reformer she said that “we the people will tell you the police department what the job is and what the rules of the road are.”Mr. Adams told the crowd that he had been fighting for the Black community in New York City for decades, even when he was a police officer seeking to reform the department from within. He also recalled how a Harlem police officer, Al Howard, once came to Dr. King’s aid after he was stabbed in 1958.“I am not new to this, I am true to this,” he said, drawing some of the loudest applause of the day.Mr. Sharpton spoke highly of Mr. McGuire, defending his background in business and saying that he had secretly financed the efforts of activists to fight for civil rights and against police brutality.“A lot of us resent the stigmatizing of Black success,” Mr. Sharpton said. “Don’t beat a guy up because he’s successful in a city where we tell every white kid to be successful. He shouldn’t be subjected to a double standard.”Mr. McGuire leaned into his support from the business community and Wall Street background, saying that he was here to fix the city’s crisis in a way that benefited those who have not always shared in its economic success.“We’ve been outside for so long that they give us crumbs and want us to feel full,” Mr. McGuire said. “I’m not interested in crumbs. I’m not interested in cake. I’m interested in the bakery.”The Rev. Al Sharpton disclosed that Raymond McGuire had given Mr. Sharpton’s group some financial assistance when it was struggling.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesThere were no clear winners among the candidates. Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive and perhaps the most progressive candidate in the race, said the current tensions the city and nation are seeing are part of the ongoing struggle to realize Dr. King’s vision of a “radical redistribution of political and economic power.”Zach Iscol, a former Marine, spoke of how his combat experience had shaped him; Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary under President Obama, suggested providing $1,000 “equity bonds” to every child in New York City, a proposal last heard from Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey during the presidential campaign.Loree Sutton, the former veteran affairs commissioner, slightly flubbed the melody and some lyrics when she led the crowd in a rendition of “We Shall Overcome,” but the crowd persevered, carrying her to the end of the song.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Raphael Warnock and the Legacy of Racial Tyranny

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyRaphael Warnock and the Legacy of Racial TyrannyHis victory in the Georgia Senate runoff made history, and also echoed it.Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.Jan. 17, 2021Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesLost in the horror and mayhem of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was another momentous event that happened barely 12 hours earlier and hundreds of miles away: the election to the Senate of the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, the first Black Democratic senator from the South in the nation’s history.Mr. Warnock’s triumph, along with that of Jon Ossoff, who won the other Georgia runoff on that Tuesday night, gave Democrats the Senate majority they lost in 2014, and full control of Congress for the first time in a decade.That was the salient political fact, at least before the insurrection began. But the proximity of those two events — the election of a Black man to the Senate followed hard on by the violent ransacking of the Capitol by an overwhelmingly white mob — rang loudly with echoes of the past.A little more than 150 years ago, on the afternoon of Feb. 25, 1870, America’s first Black senator, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, sat on the floor of the Senate preparing to take his oath of office.“There was not an inch of standing or sitting room in the galleries, so densely were they packed,” this newspaper reported in the following day’s edition. “To say that the interest was intense gives but a faint idea of the feeling which prevailed throughout the entire proceeding.”Hiram Rhodes RevelsCredit…Library of CongressRevels was, like Mr. Warnock, a preacher, ordained by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He had been raised in North Carolina and served as a chaplain to a Black regiment during the Civil War. He was elected to the Mississippi State Senate in 1869, part of a wave of Black lawmakers who took office throughout the South during Reconstruction.In 1870, the State Legislature chose Revels to fill one of Mississippi’s two U.S. Senate seats, both of which had been abandoned several years earlier, when the state seceded. It was a bold and unapologetic statement that Black Americans — Black men, anyway — were the political equals of whites, and were entitled to hold office alongside them.But the wounds of the Civil War were still fresh, and Southern whites were furious at being forced to share power with the people they had so recently enslaved. Before Revels could raise his right hand, the objections began raining down. George Vickers, a Democrat from Maryland, argued that Revels was ineligible to serve because the Constitution requires a senator to have been an American citizen for at least nine years. According to the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Black people could never be citizens. While the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, effectively negated that ruling, Vickers contended — with a dose of birtherism that would make Donald Trump proud — Revels had therefore only been a citizen for two years.Revels’s backers argued that he was in fact a lifelong citizen of the United States, because he was born to free Black parents.After more objections and heated debate, the efforts to block Revels’s admission were voted down by the antislavery Republicans who dominated the Senate. “When the Vice-President uttered the words, ‘The Senator elect will now advance and take the oath,’ a pin might have been heard drop,” The Times wrote. “Mr. Revels showed no embarrassment whatever, and his demeanor was as dignified as could be expected under the circumstances. The abuse which had been poured upon him and on his race during the last two days might well have shaken the nerves of any one.”Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts spoke up in Mr. Revels’s defense. “All men are created equal, says the great Declaration,” he said, but “the Declaration was only half established by Independence. The greatest duty remained behind. In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work.”The rioters incited by President Trump and Republicans to storm the seat of the federal government on Jan. 6 did not have Mr. Warnock’s name on their lips. They didn’t have to. In their eagerness to destroy American democracy rather than share it, they showed themselves to be the inheritors of a long tradition of rebellion against a new world order: a genuine, multiracial democracy.Reconstruction was the first attempt to make that world order a reality, and it succeeded remarkably for a few years, as evidenced by the election of leaders like Hiram Revels. But it soon collapsed as the federal government gave up and pulled troops out of the South, leaving Black people at the mercy of vengeful state governments intent on re-establishing white supremacy.In the Jim Crow era that followed, millions of Black Americans were erased from American political life. They may have technically counted as five-fifths of a person, rather than three-fifths as the Constitution had originally set out, but they were no more able to participate in their own governance than their enslaved forebears had been. Those who tried to take part faced everything from poll taxes and literacy tests to campaigns of terrorism and state-sanctioned murder. By the first decades of the 20th century, Black voter registration had fallen into the low single digits across much of the South.That racist, anti-democratic regime was brought down only by the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, led at its apex by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Historians often refer to this time as a second Reconstruction, because it wasn’t until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the United States could claim to be anything resembling a true representative democracy. But this second Reconstruction, like the first, faced reactionary backlash from the start. That backlash has found expression primarily in the Republican Party, which had by then abandoned its abolitionist roots — from Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy to Ronald Reagan’s race-baiting dog whistles to the openly racist campaign and presidency of Donald Trump.If Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, following the eight-year tenure of the nation’s first Black president, was a symbolic assault on the ideal of a multiracial democracy, the riot he incited at the Capitol on Jan. 6 made that assault literal.There will be no new Jim Crow regime, but the effort to preserve white political domination continues. Republican lawmakers have been working for years to make it harder, if not impossible, for Black voters — who vote roughly 9 to 1 for Democrats — to register and cast their ballots. While no state caved to the outrageous pressure from Mr. Trump to reject its popular vote in favor of Joe Biden and give its electors to him, many states are already debating legislation to cut back access to voting and to strengthen voter ID requirements, both of which would hurt Black voters disproportionately.Those voters were critical to the Democrats’ victories in Georgia, and their showing up despite the obstacles placed in their way has ensured that Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff will be sworn in over the coming days. But it is clearer than ever that as America approaches 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s work of assuring equal rights for all is far from complete. As in 1870, the greatest duty still remains before us.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Stop the Steal’ Didn’t Start With Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main story‘Stop the Steal’ Didn’t Start With TrumpMainstream Republicans and conservative commentators have been pushing the idea that Democrats can only win through fraud for decades.Opinion ColumnistJan. 15, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETJan. 6, 2021.Credit…John Minchillo/Associated PressTo explain the attack on the Capitol, you can’t just turn your focus to Donald Trump and his enablers. You must also look at the individuals and institutions that fanned fears of “voter fraud” to the point of hysteria among conservative voters, long before Trump. Put another way, the difference between a riot seeking to overturn an election and an effort to suppress opposing votes is one of legality, not intent. And it doesn’t take many steps to get from one to the other.Conservative belief in pervasive Democratic Party voter fraud goes back decades — and rests on racist and nativist tropes that date back to Reconstruction in the South and Tammany Hall in the North — but the modern obsession with fraud dates back to the 2000 election. That year, Republicans blamed Democratic fraud for narrow defeats in New Mexico, which George W. Bush lost by just a few hundred votes, and Missouri, where the incumbent senator, John Ashcroft, lost his re-election battle to a dead man.Ashcroft’s opponent, Mel Carnahan, was killed three weeks earlier in a plane crash, but his name was still on the ballot, with his wife running in his stead. Shocked Republicans blamed Ashcroft’s defeat on fraud. At Ashcroft’s election-night party, the state’s senior Republican senator, Kit Bond, said, “Democrats in the city of St. Louis are trying to steal this election.”In 2001, as the newly minted attorney general under President George W. Bush, Ashcroft announced a crackdown on voter fraud. “America has failed too often to uphold the right of every citizen’s vote, once cast, to be counted fairly and equally,” he said at a news conference that March:Votes have been bought, voters intimidated and ballot boxes stuffed. The polling process has been disrupted or not completed. Voters have been duped into signing absentee ballots believing they were applications for public relief. And the residents of cemeteries have infamously shown up at the polls on Election Day.The Republican National Committee supported this push, claiming to have evidence that thousands of voters had cast more than one ballot in the same election.Over the ensuing years, under pressure from the White House ahead of the presidential election in 2004, the Justice Department ramped up its crusade against voter fraud. Of particular interest was ACORN, a now-defunct advocacy organization that was working — as the presidential election got underway — to register hundreds of thousands of low-income voters. Swing-state Republicans accused the group of “manufacturing voters,” and federal prosecutors looked, unsuccessfully, for evidence of wrongdoing. Later, Karl Rove would press President Bush’s second attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, to fire a number of U.S. attorneys for failure to investigate voter fraud allegations, leading to a scandal that eventually led to Gonzales’s resignation in 2007.ACORN and voter fraud would remain a bête noire for Republicans for the rest of the decade. Conservative advocacy groups and media organizations produced a steady stream of anti-ACORN material and, as the 2008 election campaign heated up, did everything they could to tie Democratic candidates, and Barack Obama in particular, to a group they portrayed as radical and dangerous. ACORN, Rush Limbaugh said in one characteristic segment, has “been training young Black kids to hate, hate, hate this country.”During his second debate with Obama, a few weeks before the election, the Republican nominee, John McCain, charged that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” And his campaign materials similarly accused Obama, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party of orchestrating a vast conspiracy of fraud. “We’ve always known the Obama-Biden Democrats will do anything to win this November, but we didn’t know how far their allies would go,” read one mailer. “The Obama-supported, far-left group, ACORN, has been accused of voter-registration fraud in a number of battleground states.”McCain and the Republican Party devoted much of the last weeks of the election to a voter fraud scare campaign with ACORN as the villain. And while, in the wake of the election, these allegations of illegal voting never panned out, the conservative fixation with voter fraud would continue into the Obama years and beyond.Not that this was a shock. As an accusation, “voter fraud” has been used historically to disparage the participation of Black voters and immigrants — to cast their votes as illegitimate. And Obama came to office on the strength of historic turnout among Black Americans and other nonwhite groups. To the conservative grass roots, Obama’s very presence in the White House was, on its face, evidence that fraud had overtaken American elections.In 2011, Republicans in Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin capitalized on their legislative gains to pass new voter restrictions under the guise of election protection. Other states slashed early voting and made it more difficult to run registration drives. One 2013 study found that in states with “unencumbered Republican majorities” and large Black populations, lawmakers were especially likely to pass new voter identification laws and other restrictions on the franchise.The 2012 election saw more of the same accusations of voter fraud. Donald Trump, who had flirted with running for president that year, called the election a “total sham and a travesty” and claimed that Obama had “lost the popular vote by a lot.” According to one survey taken after the election, 49 percent of Republican voters said they thought ACORN had stolen the election for the president.ACORN, however, no longer existed. It closed its doors in 2010 after Congress stripped it of federal funding in the aftermath of a scandal stoked by right-wing provocateurs, whose accusations have since been discredited.The absence of any evidence for voter fraud was not, for Republicans, evidence of its absence. Freed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which ended federal “preclearance” of election laws in much of the South, Republican lawmakers passed still more voter restrictions, each justified as necessary measures in the war against fraud.Prominent Republican voices continued to spread the myth. “I’ve always thought in this state, close elections, presidential elections, it means you probably have to win with at least 53 percent of the vote to account for fraud,” Scott Walker, then the governor of Wisconsin, said in a 2014 interview with The Weekly Standard. “One or two points, potentially.”Rank-and-file Republicans had already been marinating in 16 years of concentrated propaganda about the prevalence of voter fraud by the time Donald Trump claimed, in 2016, that Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote with millions of illegal ballots. If Republican voters today are quick to believe baroque conspiracy theories about fabricated and stolen votes, then it has quite a lot to do with the words and actions of a generation of mainstream Republican politicians who refused to accept that a Democratic majority was a legitimate majority.The narrative of fraud and election theft that spurred the mob that stormed the Capitol would be unintelligible without the work of the Republican Party, which inculcated this idée fixe in its voters. “Stop the Steal” wasn’t a Trump innovation as much as it was a new spin on an old product line that, even after the violence on Jan. 6, Republicans are still selling.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More