Unions say “voter ID” is Jim Crow revisited

[Omaha Steve]

http://peoplesworld.org/unions-say-voter-id-is-jim-crow-revisited/

Unions say “voter ID” is Jim Crow revisited

by: Mark Gruenberg
August 5 2011

SILVER SPRING, Md. - Calling state "voter ID" efforts moves reminiscent of the days of Jim Crow segregation and poll taxes in the South, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker says the federation is lobbying the Obama administration vigorously to battle such moves. The AFL-CIO executive council, meeting here this week, issued a formal statement on the issue.

The federation is also mapping plans to educate its members, other workers and the wider electorate in how to overcome efforts to suppress the right to vote, according to Holt-Baker. "We're making everyone among our allies aware so these Jim Crow tactics and this modern poll tax will not deter people from voting," she said.

Holt Baker outlined the federation's plans in an interview Aug. 3 with reporters covering the gathering of union leaders. A veteran of the civil rights movement who was born in the South, Holt Baker is no stranger to the methods states used to keep African-Americans from voting prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The "voter ID" movement in state legislatures reminds her of those days, she said.

GOP-run states, pushed by the same radical right-GOP-business cabal that is trying to destroy unions, the right to organize and the middle class, also pushes the "voter ID" restrictions. The Supreme Court, in a ruling involving Indiana several years ago, opened the way to such efforts, giving states large leeway in demanding voters show they're qualified to cast ballots.

As a result, GOP-run states, with Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and several others in the lead, approved new restrictions on identification people must show before they can register to vote.

FULL story at link.