Pretty clear from the year that the GOP's biggest fear is a Supreme Court that will make voting easy and fair.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) November 2, 2016
… doesn’t want to “cheapen the work of civil rights activists” by permitting automatic voting registration.
No, seriously:
Automatic voter registration has recently emerged a key tool in increasing the United States’ anemic voter turnout. The process is simple: Whenever an eligible citizen interacts with a government agency (typically the DMV), she is registered to vote unless she declines. Although automatic voter registration is a nonpartisan initiative, it tends to be favored by Democrats and opposed by Republicans, who believe they fare better in low-turnout races; two Republican governors have already vetoed Democrat-sponsored automatic voter registration bills in Illinois and New Jersey. Now Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, has joined the opposition. Asked a question about automatic voter registration, Merrill declared that the practice “cheapen[s] the work” of civil rights heroes and that “just because you turned 18 doesn’t give you the right” to vote….
These people fought—some of them were beaten, some of them were killed—because of their desire to ensure that everybody that wanted to had the right to register to vote and participate in the process. I’m not going to cheapen the work that they did. I’m not going to embarrass them by allowing somebody that’s too sorry to get up off of their rear end to go register to vote … because they think they deserve the right because they’ve turned 18.…
But they do have that right, Sec. Merrill — as enshrined in the Constitution, and further specified in its 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments. It’s not your “ball game,” not any more, and you don’t get to decree who’s entitled to “win a trophy”…
Open Thread: Revanchist Hero of the Day, Alabama Sec. of State John MerrillPost + Comments (217)