U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland denounced state attempts to impose voter ID laws on Sunday in Selma, Alabama, calling them “discriminatory, onerous, and needless.”
Garland gave a speech at a celebration held at the Tabernacle Baptist Church to mark the 59th anniversary of the attack on civil rights protestors by Selma police officers.
“In America, there are a lot of things that are up for dispute,” said Garland. “The right of all eligible individuals to vote and have their ballot counted is one item that should not be up for discussion.”
Garland did not clarify his definition of “eligible.”
He asserted, “Court rulings in recent years have substantially eroded the safeguards of the Voting Rights Act that the people on the Edmund Pettus Bridge fought for 59 years,” after referencing the history of black people being denied the right to vote. Subsequent to such rulings, there has been a sharp rise in legislative initiatives that impede the ability of millions of eligible voters to cast ballots and choose the representatives of their choosing.
He said, “The freedom to vote is still under siege.” And for that reason, the Department of Justice is retaliating. Because of this, one of my first actions as Attorney General was to quadruple the number of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section.
He said, “That is why we are opposing efforts by states and jurisdictions to impose discriminatory, onerous, and needless limitations on the ability to cast a ballot, including those pertaining to voter ID laws, drop box usage, and mail-in voting.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “36 state statutes request or require voters to present some kind of identification at the polls.” “Voting at the polls does not require any documentation in fourteen states or Washington, D.C.”
Voters of all stripes favor voter ID legislation by almost 80% in almost all surveys. According to a poll by the Honest Elections Project, 64% of black voters, 77% of Hispanic voters, and 76% of low-income voters support voter ID legislation. This usually includes more than 60% of Democrats, as the Heritage Foundation notes.
