07 Jun 2011 Despite Congressional Leader’s Claim, Requiring an ID to Vote is Nothing Like Forced Segregation

America Remembers Jim Crow, and Ballot Security is No Jim Crow

Washington, D.C. – Efforts to protect voting integrity are not “literally” equivalent to Jim Crow segregation laws, and claims that they are by a member of the Congressional leadership is disgraceful, divisive, historically-ignorant fearmongering, say members of the black leadership group Project 21.

On the June 5 “Washington Watch with Roland Martin” on TV One, host Martin asked Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) about ballot security legislation requiring photo identification at polling places. Schultz unloaded with divisive racial rhetoric, claiming: “…now you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally — and very transparently — block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. It’s nothing short of that blatant [emphasis added].”

Project 21’s Joe Hicks, the host of PJTV.com’s “The Hicks File,” responds, “As someone who grew up during the last years of Jim Crow discrimination laws and who later headed the western regional office of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, my remembrance of that awful era tells me that the new chair of the DNC is a woman who is historically ignorant, racially insulting, and incredibly arrogant. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has chosen to act as the attack dog for Barack Obama, and it appears that crass race-baiting will play a large role in the strategy to keep blacks chained deep inside the Democrat’s racial reservation. Less than two months on the job, this foolish DNC head has shown herself to be more gaffe-prone than Joe Biden and as quick to play the race card as the worst of the race-hustlers like Cornell West and Jesse Jackson.”

Born in 1966, Wasserman Schultz is too young to remember Jim Crow.

Project 21’s Jerome Hudson notes: “Representative Wasserman Schultz’s remarks are disgraceful, overtly divisive and awfully disappointing. Her statements are another example of liberals turning their backs on the very calls for ‘civility’ that they ask others to live up to. Comments such as these are likely why a recent Rasmussen Reports poll found just nine percent those surveyed think that members of Congress such as her are doing a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ job. She and her colleagues should be focused on fixing the economy instead of trying to score political points at the expense of dividing the country.”

“Progressives such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz are in full panic mode as more and more Americans sour on their brand of politics. The fact of the matter is that the progressive brand failed because the poor and working class as well as the minorities that progressives claim to empower are bearing the brunt of their failed policies,” said Project 21’s Kevin Martin. “So now they are using fear to gain appeal by saying that asking for identification at a polling place is somehow racist. That’s ridiculous. To enter a government building to apply for unemployment benefits, to take one example, one needs to show identification. Progressive fearmongering will only make it easier to steal identities and taint the electoral process.”

“If Wasserman Schultz seriously thinks there is nothing wrong with counting all votes as is — whether legal, legitimate, from American citizens or illegal immigrants or even the dead — perhaps we should just all vote ‘American Idol’ style and phone in votes as many times as we can,” said Project 21’s Lisa Fritsch. “Jim Crow laws were not about equality — our voting laws are. Without ballot integrity, why have any voting regulations at all?”

Wasserman Schultz is vice-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and has served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee since April.

Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives since 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (https://nationalcenter.org).

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