One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson

John Merrill and other Republican lawmakers claimed that they simply did not see the problem. The issue of access to the ballot box had nothing to do with Alabama rejecting government-issued public housing ID, closing the DMVs in the Black Belt counties, curtailing the hours at the courthouses, placing broken links and misleading and inconsistent information on the state’s website, offering the mirage of online registration for people without even the basic fiber optics (much less computers) in their rural areas, suggesting that Alabamians could ride nonexistent public transportation to other counties, or touting a mobile voter-ID-card unit that provided only 2 percent of the cards needed. The problem, John Merrill said, was the people. “If you’re too sorry or lazy to get up off of your rear and to go register to vote, or to register electronically, and then to go vote, then you don’t deserve that privilege,” he said, as he twisted not only state-constructed barriers into personal failings but also the Fifteenth Amendment into a “privilege” and not a right.