Washington Post’s exit poll results in the Alabama Senate race

plaidadder:

Some very interesting reading.

It has already become a cliche for white liberals to thank the Black voters of Alabama for keeping Roy Moore out of the U.S. Senate. I will become this cliche and thank the Black voters of Alabama for keeping Roy Moore out of the U.S. Senate. African-American turnout is definitely what made the difference. And unsurprisingly, again, according to these results, Black women rejected that five-alarm trash fire of a human being nearly unanimously, whereas white women went for Roy Moore by 29 points. I know you didn’t do it for me; there’s absolutely no reason that you should have done it for me; but thank you anyway, African-American voters and community leaders of Alabama, because my family and I cannot survive in Roy Moore’s America.

Imagine what this country could be like if all the African-Americans in the South who wanted to vote, could vote. 

This something people have to understand when you look at how small the margin of victory was (about 1.5%; compare that with the 1.7% write-in vote, which must have primarily been Republicans who didn’t want to vote for Moore). What we called “vote caging” back in the Bush era has been a key strategy for the Republican Party in the South for decades, and in some parts of the Midwest for at least the whole 21st century. This was true even before that Supreme Court decision essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act and voter ID laws sprang up like a rash all over the country. In addition to just normal turnout-depressing things like the fact that our elections always happen on a weekday which is not a national holiday, here are some things that routinely happen in states with Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures:

* The mass incarceration of African-Americans (felons are ineligible to vote in many states).

* Voter ID laws, which (because of the time, fees, and paperwork involved in obtaining government ID) are disproportionately harder on lower-income, working-class, and minority voters.

* Bogus “anti-fraud” initiatives like CrossCheck, which throw legitimate voters off the rolls.

* Obstruction of voter registration through the restriction of government services via budget cuts and other means. This is specifically relevant to Alabama, where after passing a voter ID law the state government then plotted to close down DMV offices in majority African-American districts. (Nobody admits that this was what was happening, BTW; but at least the publicity inspired the state government to establish other routes for getting a voter ID.)

* Refusing to update and repair voting machines in majority African-American districts. (Reports of voting machines breaking down on election day and causing multi-hour waits in urban districts have become increasingly common.)

Then we get into the REAL dirty tricks like deliberately misleading Black voters about where/when/how to vote (literally they will set up robo-calls telling people to turn out on the wrong day or in the wrong place, or threatening them with arrest if they don’t have all their paperwork in order). At any rate, my point is:

Democrats need to put voting rights front and center in 2018 and 2020. Apart from voting rights being something that you need for a freaking democracy and the right thing to do, equal access to the ballot for low-income and African-American voters is the only thing that can end this freaking nightmare.