Community Corner

Opinion: Join Rally for Voting Rights

'New rules will create a modern-day poll tax.'

Darryl Dodson is president of the Huntington chapter of the NAACP.

On Dec. 10 – Human Rights Day – the Huntington Branch of the NAACP will join a coalition of civil rights activists to protest the attacks on voting rights by state legislatures across the country. 

The “Stand for Freedom” march and rally will begin at the headquarters of leading voter suppression funders, the Koch brothers, and will conclude outside the United Nations.

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State politicians across the country are engaged in an unprecedented effort to suppress voter participation by people of color, women, students and seniors. We refuse to sit idly by while politicians work to strip us of our constitutional right to vote.

In dozens of states, new rules will create a modern-day poll tax by requiring voters to obtain and present official photo ID in order to cast a ballot.  While voters in some states can request free photo IDs from state motor vehicles departments, they must still pay to obtain underlying documents, such as birth certificates, necessary to get the photo ID, possibly discouraging them from voting as a result.

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In many of these same states, new laws significantly cut early voting and Sunday voting opportunities and strip the right of reformed criminal offenders to vote.  Reports show these laws disproportionately impact African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, seniors, students, working women and immigrants.

 “We are in the midst of the greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow,” said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP. “Voter ID laws are nothing but reincarnated poll taxes and literacy tests, and ex-felon voting bans serve the same purpose today as when they were created in the wake of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing ex-slaves the vote—suppressing voting numbers among people of color.”

The March begins at 10 a.m. at the corner of 61st and Madison in New York and moves to the New York City offices of the Koch brothers and ends with a rally by the U.N.

For more details about Stand for Freedom and the fight to protect voting rights, visit www.stand4freedom.org or text “STAND” to 62227 or email the Huntington branch at huntingtonNAACP@gmail.com.

Join us.

 Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization.


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