January 9, 2019
Page 13
O PINION
Suppressing the Vote and Stealing Ballots
The real truth
about ‘voter
fraud’
l eslie W atson
M alaChi
For years, Republicans in
North Carolina have tried to roll
back voter rights in the interest
of “preventing fraud.”
But now, one of their own —
Republican Mark Harris in the
state’s 9th congressional dis-
trict — stands credibly accused
of paying a consultant who may
have stolen or altered absentee
ballots cast for his opponent. Of-
ficials have refused to certify the
vote.
As we press for accountabil-
ity, it’s important that we also
seek moral and factual clarity
about voting more generally.
In the month after the Novem-
ber elections, claims of so-called
“voter fraud” seem to have
reached a dizzying new level.
Some politicians have even im-
plied that counting votes equates
to stealing an election.
But counting every vote in any
election is a legal and moral ob-
ligation. On the other hand, any
attempt to secretly steal ballots
by
— like in Blad-
en County, North
Carolina, where
residents reported
strangers coming
to their door and
demanding their
ballots — isn’t
just
shameless.
It’s also illegal.
Those who perpetrated this
scheme in Bladen County must
be held accountable. As impor-
tantly, these crimes must not be
used to justify the kind of racial-
ly discriminatory voting restric-
tions that some Republican leg-
islators have pushed in the name
of preventing “voter fraud.”
Most veteran voters know,
and every first-time voter must
learn, that the Voting Rights Act
was one of the great victories of
the civil rights movement. In ad-
dition to protecting voters who’d
been brutalized and barricad-
ed from the ballot box, the law
served as a national affirmation
of a clear moral truth: It’s wrong
to keep people from exercising
their right to vote.
Tragically, attempts to keep
political power away from Afri-
can Americans and other groups
endure. When arch-conserva-
tives on the Supreme Court gut-
ted one of the most important
protections in the Voting Rights
Act in 2013, legislators across
the old Confederacy enacted
new voting restrictions and drew
new voting districts.
These more recent voter sup-
pression laws have been de-
scribed by a federal court as
“targeting African Americans
with almost surgical precision.”
When those who defend voter
suppression laws refuse to ac-
knowledge that those laws are
designed to influence election
outcomes by preventing people
from voting, we must be democ-
racy’s moral compass.
And when they say restrictive
voter ID laws and other barri-
ers to the ballot are necessary to
stop “voter fraud,” we must call
it what it is — voter suppression.
The kind of “fraud” they talk
about — someone voting under
another person’s name or voting
when they’re not legally eligible
to do so — almost never happens.
Every vote matters, and every
eligible vote should always be
counted. That’s how we know
who won.
To suggest that black vot-
ers and Democrats are some-
how stealing elections through
“voter fraud” is to suggest that
there’s something sinister about
taking the time needed to count
each and every vote, as Presi-
dent Trump and others claimed
during ballot counts in Florida,
Georgia, and Arizona.
Unfortunately, some have
suggested that the delayed cer-
tification in North Carolina is
somehow a sign that Democrats
want to “try and steal an elec-
tion” there, too — even when
available evidence suggests that,
if anything, it was supporters
of the Republicans who tried to
steal the election.
What is stealing an election is
keeping people from voting.
Regardless of political affil-
iation, our public officials must
embrace these truths. As the late
Senator Edward Kennedy once
said, “For all those whose cares
have been our concern, the work
goes on, the cause endures, the
hope still lives, and the dream
shall never die.”
So let us press on for morality
in our processes and unburdened
participation in our democracy
— not just for a few, but for all.
Minister Leslie Watson Mal-
achi is the director of African
American Religious Affairs at
People For the American Way.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.
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Ringing in New Year with Focus on Success
This year, I’m
cataloging what’s
going right.
J ill r iCharDson
Usually, this time of
year, my mind turns to
New Year’s resolutions.
What longstanding bad
habits of my past will
the new and improved me shed in the year
to come?
In the 1990s, I had several resolutions
for giving up various junk foods in the new
year. Each year I’d pick a new food — ide-
ally something I didn’t like all that much
but ate anyway — and gave it up for the
year, or longer.
Then around 1998 I had a new idea: I’d
give up women’s fashion magazines. I’d
been reading them since my mom got me a
Teen magazine when I was in fourth grade.
When they came in the mail each month,
I’d hurry up to my room like Charlie Bucket
with a Wonka bar, as eager as if my maga-
zine contained a golden ticket. The articles
in these magazines never change: How to
lose weight, attract a man (or please the
man you’ve got), buy the right clothes and
by
put on makeup.
Back then, I thought my distaste for
makeup and lack of interest in men were
personal flaws to be corrected. If I could
only just try hard enough, I’d like both of
them. I had no idea one could have a hap-
py future as a chapstick-wearing lesbian, or
that my life would improve dramatically as
soon as I accepted that that’s who I was.
But what really put me off the magazines
was the part about them that I did like: the
weight loss tips and the clothes. For maybe
a day or two when I got each magazine, I’d
do all of the exercises, try to follow the diet,
and fantasize about all of the new clothes
I would buy so that I could remake myself
into someone I liked — and someone other
people liked too.
It took me another decade to work out
that the path to loving myself involved ther-
apy and mindfulness, not shopping and di-
ets.
In that moment, I realized that reading
those magazines made me less happy with
myself I’d been ludicrously promising my-
self that if I just spent thousands of dollars
I didn’t have on the products featured in
them, I could be as pretty, popular, and suc-
cessful as the models and celebrities on the
glossy pages appeared to be.
The magazines sold me consumerism and
bad self esteem.
For a few years in the 2000s, I made
resolutions to do things like ride my bike
and then didn’t. Finally, around 2012 and
2013, my resolutions turned into to-do lists.
I began making a list of what I hoped to ac-
complish in the new year, and then realized
that I might as well start getting it done and
crossing items off the list even before Jan-
uary 1.
This year, I’ve got a new plan yet again.
Rather than focusing on our failures, why
not focus on our successes? I’m coming off
an absolutely epic year in my personal life.
I’ve accomplished more that I’m proud of in
2018 than in any other year I’ve been alive.
Making a list of my many shortcomings
seems a lousy way to celebrate it.
When I feel good about myself, I’m more
productive. When I focus on the long list of
things I need to do, I shut down.
If you include introspection in your end
of year traditions, please join me. In addi-
tion to (or instead of) resolutions for the
New Year, take stock of your proudest ac-
complishments of the past year and pat
yourself on the back.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is
pursuing a PhD in sociology at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in San
Diego. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
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