Tag: voting rights

From Selma to Annapolis

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2015 Legislative Diary | No Comments

In the opening scene of “Selma,” Oprah Winfrey’s character seeks to register to vote.

Asked to recite the preamble to the US Constitution, she knows it.

How many trial judges in Alabama?  Without hesitation, the correct number.

Name them, says the clerk.  Silence.

Application denied.

The end result of the civil disobedience and violence that follow is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

That law gives the Attorney General of the United States the authority to go to court when there is reasonable grounds to believe that an election law violation is imminent.

My legislation to give that same power to the Attorney General of Maryland passed the House of Delegates in 2013, 91-45.  Forty two of the “no” votes were cast by Republicans.

My desire to pass the bill has intensified after seeing “Selma.”

Advisers but no consultant

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I have political advisers, but I don’t have a media consultant.

He who represents himself has a fool for a client. I learned that in law school.

Even if you have a good political (or legislative) gut, you should bounce your ideas off of someone whose judgment you trust.

But after we decided to do a mailer emphasizing my civil rights record, I had to draft the text.

Fair Elections. Workplace Discrimination. Religious Freedom. Death Penalty. Holocaust Responsibility.

Sandy Rosenberg was the lead sponsor of major laws that protect our civil rights.

 The Voters Rights Protection Act makes it a crime to 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. The Election Day robo calls violated this law. HB5/SB287, 2005

 The Lilly Ledbetter Civil Rights Restoration Act of 2009 gives workers the opportunity to file a claim for unequal pay, reversing a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court. HB 288, 2009

A business owned by an Orthodox Jewish family was provided an exception to the Sunday blue laws because they could not work on Saturday, their Sabbath. HB 624, 2011

Capital punishment is costly, is not administered fairly, burdens victims’ families, and does not deter murderers. We are a better state for ending the death penalty. SB 276, 2013

The French national railroad company made public its records transporting Jews and others to Nazi concentration camps. HB 520, 2011

 

I also drafted statements for other elected officials to make on my behalf.   How do I compose something that sounds like them?

Google “the office holder and the issue.”

Mitt Romney is not the problem

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The Republican nominee is being thrown under the bus for saying that he lost the election because, in part, free contraceptives were among the gifts President Obama gave to Democratic constituencies.

However, Mr. Romney is not outside the mainstream of today’s Republican party, as the following examples demonstrate.

When the Maryland General Assembly adopted the marriage equality bill, only one Republican senator and two Republican delegates voted yes.

Twenty years ago, when the legislature enacted the law protecting a woman’s right to choose,  three GOP senators and ten delegates voted yes.

Three years ago, I successfully introduced a bill dealing with the removal of human remains from a burial site.  Among the people who can arrange for the reinterment is a domestic partner of the decedent.  For that reason, 28 Republican delegates and all but one of the GOP senators voted no.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  That provision applies to states and localties with a documented history of discrimination in their election laws.

Consequently, they must obtain approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before making any changes to their laws.  This past month, several states were prevented from implementing voter-identification laws or changes in early voting.

If the Court rules that this requirement is unconstitutional, the Obama administration would introduce legislation to protect voting rights.  When President Johnson sought Republican votes for civil rights legislation, he appealed to their membership in the “party of Lincoln.”

Absent a major reversal, such a plea today would fall on deaf ears.

The secret word is suppression

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2012 Legislative Diary | No Comments

The first grade classrooms at Cross Elementary School haven’t moved.

I returned to my alma mater to sit in on the class of Aaron Sohaski, a Teach For America corps member whom  I’m sponsoring.

It was at the far end of the first floor corridor, just like 55 years ago.

One of the students guessed my age, but no one could do the math to figure out what year I was in first grade.

Turning from math to English, Aaron taught the difference between grouch, grouchy, grouchier, and grouchiest.

I doubt if I knew who Groucho Marx was when I was these kids’ age.  So, like Harpo, I said nothing.

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Voter suppression – requiring voters to have a government-issued ID or making misleading robo calls the afternoon of Election Day, is an issue I’ve worked on for several years.

During the Great Depression, “paper exclusion” laws were used to deny the vote to people on relief, I learned from an op-ed in today’s New York Times.

When my niece and nephew, Rachel and Elliot, were in the first grade, we tried to coax them into eating mashed potatoes by saying they were French fries’ cousin.

Today’s voter ID requirements are the cousin of denying the vote to the unemployed.

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