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Expect other GOP run states to use Tennessee as a role model to strip millions of the right to vote.
For these racist officials in racist states (also FL), the Civil War is never over.
Deplorable (just like she said).
How else can Marsha Blackburn stay in office?
In reading this article, someone needs to explain to me the difference between those not convicted of a felony and those who are not paying child support.
That is, from the article:
“Republican Cameron Sexton, speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, said people convicted of felonies should have to pay court costs and child support before voting.”
Why would a requirement to pay child support to have the right to vote only apply to people convicted of a felony. The same could also be asked about court cost, is not paying a parking ticket any different from not paying court costs?
Is this just what we come to accept as Republican hypocrisy.
Don’t people, that is all of us including convicted felons, pay court costs, you know the cost of keeping the courts operating, when we pay taxes?
I think that would be an interesting subject to study. If a state levies fines and fees as the way the majority of court system is financed, then do those states run more people through the system than states that fund their court system through regular taxes?
I was thinking the same thing, If these requirements only apply to those convicted of felonies, it seems that there’s an “equal protection” and/or voting rights case waiting to be made.
Did some post graduate work at Vanderbilt back in the late 60s; loved Nashville and the beauty of the state. But decided not to raise our children there when the cop who lived across the street burned a cross on the lawn of a Black American medical student I knew. More or less the last straw for me; the hospital where I worked still had not painted over the spaces above drinking fountains that, earlier, had read “Colored.”
I had a good dose of Confederate “culture” when I was stationed in NC some years ago.
It was an eye opener I would not trade for anything. I learned that culturally, the Civil War had not ended.
Section 5 of the 14th amendment, as well as Supreme Court precedent stretching back to the 19th century would seem to authorize Federal legislation to define the terms of disenfranchisement permitted (acknowledged, really) under section 2.
I agree, it’s totally ridiculous, and before the radical right took over the Supreme Court, SCOTUS would never have allowed it. This is a poll tax by any other name.
I’d love to know the whole number, and percentage of otherwise eligible voters in Tennessee affected by these requirements. I can only imagine that ANYONE affected by this, or who has a story of attempting to clear the hurdles, would be fuming inside.
All you would really have to do would be to change the burden of proof so that the state had to prove conclusively that someone had not paid all costs and fees, rather than making them go jurisdiction by jurisdiction to prove that they had – which might be impossible even if they did have all the notarized receipts (which of course you keep, because it’s not like the court keeps reliable records of anything…)
They already have. Notice anything about the states with higher felony disenfranchisement rates?
