蜜桃传媒

By the time the Alabama Supreme Court issued that in 1884, Florida had already beaten it to the punch. Florida outlawed voting for anyone convicted of a felony in 1868, at the very same time that it began to convict more black people of felonies.

Exactly 150 years later, Florida voters finally overturned that discriminatory policy, re-enfranchising 1.4聽million people in a single stroke on Tuesday. The news that Florida had passed Amendment 4, giving as many as , was cause for celebration around the country and certainly here at the 蜜桃传媒, where we invested heavily to support its passage.

But the picture that emerged out of Florida on Tuesday wasn鈥檛 just one of voting rights upheld. It was also of voting rights potentially denied.聽聽

Rumors of , for example, began to circulate when more than 24,000 people were discovered to have voted for a gubernatorial candidate without recording a vote for a senatorial one.

That鈥檚 鈥渆xtremely unusual,鈥� said one official, and perhaps the result of a 鈥渕achine [that] couldn鈥檛 pick it up.鈥�

Meanwhile, in central Florida, in lines that extended out of polling places and into parking lots, down sidewalks and around buildings. Some lauded those long lines as evidence of civic engagement. But long lines can also be a sign of too few voting machines 鈥� also a form of voter suppression 鈥� as was illustrated by the many people whose work forced them to leave the line without casting their ballots.

鈥淚t felt like a type of disenfranchisement, even though there wasn鈥檛 any violation of voting rights,鈥� Melanie Taylor told Isaac Arnsdorf for ProPublica. 鈥淭he wait has been 鈥� three hours or more, which is ridiculous.鈥�

But Taylor wasn鈥檛 voting in Florida. She cast her ballot in Charleston, South Carolina, which saw . So did Atlanta, where people waited for hours to cast ballots in a downtown precinct that had just three voting machines for more than 3,000 registered voters. In the suburbs nearby, voters waited more than four hours only to discover their voting machines weren鈥檛 working at all.

There鈥檚 little good data on by malfunctions and long lines. But the number of people denied the vote is staggering when we include state laws that eliminate voters ahead of Election Day.

In Georgia, for example, a new program called 鈥渆xact match,鈥� which a , was in full effect this year, requiring information on a person鈥檚 voter registration card to match information at the state鈥檚 Social Security office exactly.

鈥淎n accent or hyphen in one,鈥� wrote Carol Anderson for The New York Times, 鈥渂etter be there in the other.鈥�

The impact of 鈥渆xact match?鈥� The program deemed ; 70 percent of them belonged to African Americans. And that鈥檚 just a drop in the bucket compared to the since 2012, according to WAMU, nearly 670,000 of which it canceled just last year.聽

鈥淭hose Neo-Jim Crow barriers were rising up from Georgia鈥檚 Confederate soil like ghosts,鈥� wrote Anderson.

Voter suppression, it鈥檚 clear, is alive and well in 2018.

The problem goes well beyond the Deep South. In Texas, reports emerged of with them into voting booths. In North Dakota, , which most reservations don鈥檛 have.

But the South鈥檚 history, of 鈥渢he 150 years of valiant struggles by African American voters, [of] slaveholders severely limit[ing] suffrage in the region, [and of] disenfranchising non-slaveholders in an effort to preserve slavery,鈥� as Keri Leigh Merrit wrote for The Bitter Southerner before Tuesday鈥檚 election, means that . She continues:

With the complete gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, white Republicans holding public offices in the Deep South immediately reverted back to many of the same tactics that their Confederate forbearers had mastered.

Now, as we stumble toward an uncertain future, we must look to our past to better understand the unjust designs and careful calculations of the people in power. We must reveal their corruption and expose the extent to which they win elections by force and by fraud 鈥� carrying on the Confederacy鈥檚 legacies 鈥� birthed in oligarchy, and ultimately dedicated to preserving white supremacy at any cost.

We couldn鈥檛 agree more. We鈥檙e working in and discriminatory voting practices. Our victory in Florida 鈥� the passage of Amendment 4 鈥� is worth celebrating, but our democracy itself depends on our ability to protect voters everywhere.

The Editors

P.S. Here are some other pieces that we think are valuable this week:

• by Michael Miller for The Washington Post
• by Art Cullen for The Guardian
• by Hafizah Geter for Longreads
• by Terrence McCoy for The Washington Post

蜜桃传媒鈥檚 Weekend Read聽is聽a weekly summary of the most important news reporting and commentary from around the country on civil rights, economic and racial inequality, and hate and extremism.聽Sign up to receive the Weekend Read聽every Saturday morning.

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