We have an ongoing problem with racism and elections that has been amplified by recent technological developments. Presuming we remove the technological impediments to fair elections, I don't foresee substantive improvement in African American access to voting without a broad based administrative response to racist machinations at the polls. We will establish more laws and improve technology to support the intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but the basic racist framework will remain intact.
Desegregation without integration.
Allow the legal principle but resist the social reality by every means possible, whether it be bureaucratic obstructionism, underhanded schemes of disenfranchisement, or overt hostility and intimidation.
You may not have read far enough in my lengthy post on voting rights and James Forman's book to read the above. But this was what I really wanted to impress upon my readers. Instead of writing another post to say this in a more focused way, I've been writing it in the comments at other blogs. Over at Body and Soul I wrote:
my point is that the problems with voting far exceed those with the electronic machines. Yes we need paper trails, but if that's all we focus on, there will still be mass disenfranchisement of minorities. . . . It's not just about Florida. It's about the whole country and it's espeically about districts that are predominantly African American, whether in NJ, Florida, Tennessee, or NYC.
This is also question of emphasis. I think the emphasis should be a little less on "keeping the Republicans from stealing the election" and a little more on making voting democratic. It's easy to dismiss cries of election theft as partisan sour grapes. But fair elections—truly inclusive elections—is profoundly non partisan. If that becomes the issue politicians have to answer to, they will look a lot worse if they oppose or passively obstruct it.
And from earlier in the same thread:
Our national electoral system is very broken. To name just a few of the problems:
•decentralized systems [pdf] with appalingly little coordination between localities and state authorities
•understaffed polling places and poll workers who are improperly trained if they are trained at all
•unequal distribution of financial resources for functional voting technology, voter education and poll worker training
The opportunities for fraud and manipulation are rife, and it's reasonable to assume corrupt Republicans and corrupt Democrats alike will take advantage when and where they can. Rather than trying to determine which party is more corrupt we should focus on which people are losing out of the democratic process: minorities—especially African Americans—and poor people.
There is here grist for a more research filled post, but that will have to wait a little while—at which point I'll also explain where this post's title comes from.
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