Dr. Martin Luther King – Sandy Rosenberg

Protecting Our Precious Right To Vote

January 16, 2023 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

I was struck by what Martin Luther King III said today on Morning Joe: His daughter now has fewer voting rights and personal rights regarding her body than when she was born.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, “Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justice and love mercy.”

President Johnson worked with Dr. King and other civil rights leaders to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson felt that when people’s voices are “translated into ballots…many other breakthroughs would follow.”

Voting rights were seen as a major bipartisan priority.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

Last month, President Biden signed into law the marriage equality bill. On another front, the public outcry over the Supreme Court’s abortion decision was felt nationwide, even in deep red states like Kansas.

No such success or fervor met voting rights legislation. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act was defeated by a filibuster.

In Maryland, we have set an example for Congress and other states to follow regarding voting rights.

For example, it is against the law in Maryland to “willfully and knowingly…influence or attempt to influence a voter’s decision whether to go to the polls to cast a vote through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery reward, or offer of reward.”

I sponsored the bill which made this our law.

People responsible for the robo calls urging people not to vote during the final hours of an election were convicted under this law.

This session I will be introducing legislation to extend this prohibition to actions seeking to influence a voter’s decision to vote by any lawful means, including mail-in ballots.

Everyone’s right to vote is precious. It must be protected.

Decisions and Consequences

January 18, 2021 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

“With Black ministers leading the way, Kennedy won an estimated 68 percent of the Black vote on Election Day, 7 percent higher than Adlai Stevenson’s showing in 1956.”

What did then Senator Kennedy do to earn those votes?

After a sit in at a department store in Atlanta, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was sentenced to serve his sentence in a prison in rural Georgia,

Coretta King feared for her husband’s life.

Both the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns were asked to intervene on Dr. King’s behalf.

Senator Kenned did. Vice President Nixon did not.

That act was crucial to the Kennedy margin of victory in the Black community, as described in a review of a new book about the nine days between King’s sentence and Election Day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/books/review/nine-days-martin-luther-king-jr-stephen-kendrick-paul-kendrick.html

Black support for Stevenson in 1956 was less than it was in 1952.

I know this because that’s how Robert Caro begins his account of Lyndon Johnson’s role in the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

If the Southern Democrats again filibustered to death a civil rights bill, the Black vote for the Republican nominee was expected to grow again.

But Majority Leader Johnson used his legislative skills to pass a bill, the first civil rights legislation enacted since Reconstruction.

It set the stage for Kennedy’s intervention on behalf of Dr. King.

In both instances, elected officials made decisions.

Their decisions had consequences.

First Bill, Long Arc

January 21, 2013 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I introduced my first bill of the session.

House Bill 217 would extend early voting to the Sunday before Election Day and double the number of early voting locations in every jurisdiction before the general election.

Baltimore City, for example, would have ten, instead of five.

For the bill hearing later this session, I hope to have data that compare the turnout and the time voters spent waiting in line in the states that have voting on that last Sunday (mostly blue) and those that don’t (mostly red).

We will also need to address the concerns raised by our State Board of Elections that there would not be enough time to prepare for Election Day after Sunday voting.

I’m also looking for a Senator to sponsor this legislation.

The prospects for my bill will be better in the Senate if its provisions have had a full hearing, instead of the brief review that a House bill often gets in the last two weeks of the session.

When I testify on HB 217 in the House (and hopefully, the Senate), I will quote from President Barack Obama’s Inaugural address:

“Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.”

However, this portion of his speech moved me the most:

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.”

At those locations, historic events took place in the history of women’s rights, voting rights, and gay rights, respectively.

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “but it bends toward justice.”