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With all the fuss about alleged Russian interference in US elections the
question of voter suppression seems to have been largely forgotten until now.
I hope this will change.
Chris Slee
From: Marxism on behalf of Louis Proyect
via Marxism
Sent: Sunday, 5 August 2018 10:07:34 PM
To: Chris Slee
Subject: [Marxism] Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting.
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NY Times, Aug. 2, 2018
Arrested, Jailed and Charged With a Felony. For Voting.
By Jack Healy
GRAHAM, N.C. — Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from
dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for
running a red light. The officer ran a background check and came back
with bad news for Mr. Sellars. There was a warrant out for his arrest.
As his girls cried in the back seat, Mr. Sellars was handcuffed and
taken to jail.
His crime: Illegal voting.
“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Sellars, who spent the night in jail before
his family paid his $2,500 bond. “I thought I was practicing my right.”
Mr. Sellars, 44, is one of a dozen people in Alamance County in North
Carolina who have been charged with voting illegally in the 2016
presidential election. All were on probation or parole for felony
convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies
a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison.
While election experts and public officials across the country say there
is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, local prosecutors and state
officials in North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Idaho and other states have
sought to send a tough message by filing criminal charges against the
tiny fraction of people who are caught voting illegally.
“That’s the law,” said Pat Nadolski, the Republican district attorney in
Alamance County. “You can’t do it. If we have clear cases, we’re going
to prosecute.”
The cases are rare compared with the tens of millions of votes cast in
state and national elections. In 2017, at least 11 people nationwide
were convicted of illegal voting because they were felons or
noncitizens, according to a database of voting prosecutions compiled by
the conservative Heritage Foundation. Others have been convicted of
voting twice, filing false registrations or casting a ballot for a
family member.
The case against the 12 voters in Alamance County — a patchwork of small
towns about an hour west of the state’s booming Research Triangle — is
unusual for the sheer number of people charged at once. And because nine
of the defendants are black, the case has touched a nerve in a state
with a history of suppressing African-American votes.
Local civil-rights groups and black leaders have urged the district
attorney to drop the prosecution, saying that black voters were being
disproportionately punished for an unwitting mistake. African-Americans
in North Carolina are more likely to be disqualified from voting because
of felony convictions; their rate of incarceration is more than four
times that of white residents, according to the Prison Policy
Initiative, a nonprofit organization.
“It smacks of Jim Crow,” said Barrett Brown, the head of the Alamance
County N.A.A.C.P. Referring to the district attorney, he added, “I don’t
think he targeted black people. But if you cast that net, you’re going
to catch more African-Americans.”
Mr. Nadolski said that race and ethnicity are not a factor in any case
he prosecutes.
The prosecution comes even as several states are reconsidering
longstanding laws that strip voting rights from an estimated 6 million
Americans who have been convicted of felonies. A growing national
movement is encouraging former felons to register to vote, or to push to
have their rights restored, with the hope of empowering them and
shedding the stigma of criminal convictions.
The North Carolina case also has become part of a partisan war over
voting rights ahead of this November’s midterm elections. At a rally on
Tuesday, President Trump — who has made baseless claims that millions of
people voted illegally in 2016 — renewed his calls for laws requiring
voters to show photo identification. He said, incorrectly, that shoppers
need to show identification to buy groceries, while people voting for
president and senator do not.
When asked Wednesday about the president’s comments, Sarah Huckabee
