‘Give us the ballot,” said Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957, “and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.”
Voting rights are key to civil rights, the celebrated leader would surely still argue now, 65 years later. Years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, and for decades that followed, upholding voting rights was viewed as a nonpartisan issue.
Sadly, that assumption is no longer valid. In the U.S. Congress, and in state houses across the country, there is now a fight over the way American elections are run. What does improving them entail: avoiding fraudulent votes or ensuring reasonable access to the ballot?
In Hawaii, there is no such fight. Access to the ballot did improve when the state authorized full mail-in voting, along with ballot drop boxes, well ahead of the pandemic upheaval of an election year.
While still an ongoing challenge, voter turnout improved in the 50th State, and with ballot signature checks in place, that happened without any significant loss of ballot integrity.
In other states, where vote-by-mail was expanded quickly as a critical, election-year adaptation to COVID-19 restrictions, the change was viewed in a political frame. And various other approaches for making voting accessible — extended early voting, for example — were seen as partisan advantages.
Some of these changes were truly enabled much more hurriedly than in Hawaii, so there was less time to test ballot security measures. But it is unfortunate — and unfair — that easier ballot access itself became viewed as untrustworthy.
With the proper safeguards in place, encouraging people to vote by making it an easier fit in their busy daily schedules is a good thing for a thriving democracy.
This was not the case some 60 years ago in some states, when the Rev. King was leading the charge for civil rights. The obstruction of African Americans from the ballot box was one of the drivers of the famous Selma-to-Montgomery marches. Historically, poll taxes, literacy tests and other means were employed to deny voters suffrage.
King had been directing a movement to increase Black voter registration, but it was proceeding at a snail’s pace. Legislation in various states was aimed at frustrating the effort, despite advances in federal civil rights protections.
That interference on March 7 precipitated “Bloody Sunday,” the famous march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. Activists included the late John Lewis, years before he became the congressman whose name is on a voting-rights bill in 2022. The young Lewis was one of many beaten by law enforcement as the marchers tried to cross the bridge.
That seminal moment was a pivot point in the voting-rights campaign. Witnessing that violence, Congress was moved, finally, to pass the Voting Rights Act.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively disabled a section of the law affecting jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression. That provision had required nine states and a host of counties to get court clearance before making any voting changes.
Since then the issue of voting has become increasingly contentious in Congress, and now takes centerstage in a fight over the filibuster. That Senate rule essentially requires 60 votes to get most bills to a floor vote — in theory, to encourage bipartisanship, which currently is on life support on Capitol Hill.
That is shameful, all the more so on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Hawaii has improved both ballot access and security. It should be possible in the People’s House at least to defend a principle as important to people, as foundational to democracy, as voting.
