Voter suppression happens as described by the Republican John Meredith

Echo opinion published in the Birmingham Alabama newspaper AL.com by John Meredith

Remembering what happened to his father.....

I learned what voter suppression is and the lengths some will go to keep others from voting. Whether suppression occurs at the end of a racist’s gun or by the stroke of a lawmaker’s pen, it is an act of cowardice. It is the last ditch effort of a party that no longer wins on its merits and must cheat to succeed.

John Meredith of Huntsville, is a former Capitol Hill lobbyist who was recognized as one of the country’s 100 most influential Black Republicans.

Ever since the landmark Supreme Court decision in 2013 that gutted Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it is the GOP that has used unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to justify the wholesale disenfranchisement of minority communities.

Students at historically black colleges throughout the south have found their right to vote under attack with the passage of laws either restricting the registration of student voters or forcing them to vote at off-campus locations.

In North Dakota, 5,000 Native Americans had their voting rights taken away when rules were changed requiring street addresses to vote when state government only provides them post offices boxes. There is no denying this act of voter suppression is entirely race-based. Unfortunately, in today’s post-truth society, if your vote stands in the way of a Republican victory it will be suppressed.

The worst single offender of voter suppression in America is Georgia gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp. 

Secretary of State since 2012, Kemp has taken voting rights from over 1.6 million Georgians during his time in office.

If Republican majorities begin to narrow in the years to come, even more nefarious and judicially sanctioned voter suppression efforts will be deployed against the American people. My Republican friends will contend I’m crazy to say anyone will have their right to vote unjustly taken.

I will then have to remind them that blacks terrorized under Jim Crowe unjustly lost their vote for nearly 100 years. To those who insist “that would never happen today,” I simply respond, “an entire race in North Dakota living on reservations controlled by the U.S. Government lost their right to vote this year.”

America is a vast and differing nation. The GOP once embraced that diversity. Today’s Republican Party is shrinking and becoming homogeneous. As this transformation occurs, it would be wise for those of us remaining in the party to stop acting as though anyone who disagrees with us is somehow unpatriotic, or worse, unworthy of the right to vote.