Voting Rights and Reforms

August 6th was the 40th Anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law by LBJ on this date in 1965. Yet Georgia recently passed a law requiring photo ID’s to vote, which may disenfranchise thousands of people, not to mention violating their privacy rights and opening them up to intimidation at the polling places in Georgia. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., urged Congress to reauthorize the landmark Voting Rights Act, saying Saturday that failing to do so would imperil 40 years of progress for African-American voters.

He’s right, of course. And then there is the matter of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III. As near as I can tell, nothing has come of this commission since it’s “hearings” which were held on 30 June 2005. The news section of their website is, apparently, simply a bunch of links to media reports about the commission, and those stop on the day of the hearings (30 June). Their findings and recommendations are supposed to be published in the Commission’s report, scheduled for release in September 2005.

The fact that one of the co-chairs, Mr. Baker, is/was the lead lawyer defending the Saudi royal family AGAINST the families of the victims of 9/11 is, I think, also significant. He was also Bush’s personal envoy to Iraq on the issue of Iraqi debt, named to that post in 2003. I don’t see him as a legitimate champion of the American people in the realm of voting reform. He headed George W. Bush’s team in Florida during the dispute over the 2000 presidential election and managed George H.W. Bush’s presidential election campaigns in 1980, 1988 and 1992. Why should he be interested in legitimate voting reform when the voting machine companies (corporatists all) are clearly in the Republican Party’s “Big Oil Interest’s” pockets?

PNAC has an interesting Who’s Who as well… Heh. The last thing these people want are fair and accountable elections.