Voting rights are integral to the sanctity and integrity of any republic. No one should be prevented from voting, if they are born or naturalized citizens of the legal age. I also believe that felons should be allowed to vote, if they have a demonstrable record of reintegrating themselves into society with model behavior, with no continued record of wrong-doing.
Having shared this point of view, I do not understand why progressives continue to argue that Voter ID laws are repressive measures which suppress minorities and youth. Throughout the United States, individuals have to provide a photo ID to open a bank account, to purchase and drive a car, to consume alcohol and cigarettes, and even to obtain a library card. Surely, liberals do not think that the right to vote is so trivial compared to these other transactions.
Ironically enough, Random Lengths News featured the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, whose members were protesting the Voter ID laws enacted by the Republican supermajority legislature and governor Pat McCrory. Yet in order for those individuals to attend the protest, they were required to present the same kind of photo ID required by North Carolina’s new legislation. Prior to that, in 2012, the Texas Chapter of the NAACP required attendees to present photo ID before entering to hear from Attorney General Eric Holder (the same Attorney General who allowed DOJ officers to seize AP reporters phone records and conduct a felony-stupid gun running operation along the American-Mexican border).
This double-standard is not the only hypocrisy among the leadership of the NAACP. While those leaders claim that Republicans, conservatives, and limited government advocates inadvertently manifest a “dark vein of intolerance”, in the words of former Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell, they refuse to reprimand their own members, who neglect to render the same respect. One leader in the North Carolina NAACP, William Barber, referred to African-American US Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) as a “dummy” manipulated by the “ventriloquist” Right. Such comments are shameful and demeaning. Where’s the outrage?
In 1996, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume called for a renewed commitment to end the “national scourge of intolerance and insensitivity”. In 2013, FreedomWorks Outreach Director Deneen Borelli and Senior Fellow Rev. CL Bryant called for NAACP leadership to stop condemning black conservatives.
When will liberals and progressives (including NAACP leaders) stop their hypocritical attacks on voter ID laws and black conservatives?
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