The big picture, when you stop and think about it, is sort of breath-taking. Here we have South Carolina, birthplace of the Confederate rebellion and full not so long ago of Lost Cause red-hots. Here we have the state capital, Columbia, where heaven and earth had to be moved before they'd haul down the Confederate flag flying atop the statehouse.
And here we have an African-American U.S. attorney general, serving under an African-American president, using an event in Columbia in memory of our greatest civil rights hero to warn that minority voting rights are being systematically threatened. Again.
The sweep of history makes it indisputably clear that black voters in the United States are profoundly better off than they were in the days of poll taxes, literacy tests and sheer physical danger encountered by those brave enough to try to register or cast a ballot.
It's no doubt fair to say that even in the Deep South, where a prospective black voter used to risk a beating or worse, someone who meets the requirements to vote in the elections this fall will be able to do so without being hassled by racist goons. And those requirements will not explicitly discriminate against blacks.
Still, partisan motives, if not racial ones, are behind a disturbing pattern of election law changes that could suppress the number of votes cast by African-Americans. That's what Attorney General Eric Holder was talking about when he spoke in a Columbia appearance on the Martin Luther King holiday.
For reasons that hearken back to the Republicans' "Southern strategy," developed under Richard Nixon and designed to lure white conservatives, black voters in the U.S. collectively lean Democratic. So Republicans attempting to lay a favorable groundwork for the coming elections look to changes in voter eligibility and registration rules as a way to trim blacks' vote totals. Most conspicuously, they've moved to impose photo ID requirements. The professed aim has been to prevent fraud.
No level of vote fraud is acceptable, and so the ID rule has intuitive appeal. But as Holder and other voting rights advocates have warned, such a rule is likely to have its greatest effect not on cheaters, of whom there are in reality very few, but on citizens who don't already have an ID such as a drivers license and who might not easily be able to go through the hassle of getting one.
That hassle would be a small matter for someone strongly motivated to vote, but there would likely be some falloff in voter participation around the edges, so to speak. Poor people and elderly people would be the most likely to wind up being deterred, and African-Americans are overrepresented among the poor.
Holder's Justice Department rejected a South Carolina voter ID law as discriminatory. In North Carolina, Gov. Beverly Perdue's veto of a bill approved by the Republican-controlled legislature has saved Justice the trouble - so far, as override efforts fortunately have fallen short.
Holder's message in Columbia - affirming the ideal of equality at the polls - was indeed squarely in the spirit of MLK and the rights championed by the man whom the nation honored on Monday. Democrats may have their own partisan reasons for wanting to encourage voting by blacks. But they also defend the high ground where election rules apply equally, both in their intent and their effect, regardless of race.
