Howard Simon, ACLU executive director, says Florida voting changes are racist and wrong

Editor's Note: The following is a guest-post by Chuck Strouse, editor-in-chief of Westword's sister paper, the Miami New Times. It's video side-bar to Strouse's piece that ran in Westword this week, "Welcome back, Jim Crow: A tradition of keeping African-Americans voters from the polls."As I show in my column this...

By Chuck Strouse

June 7, 2012

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Editor's Note: The following is a guest-post by Chuck Strouse, editor-in-chief of Westword's sister paper, the Miami New Times. It's video side-bar to Strouse's piece that ran in Westword this week, "Welcome back, Jim Crow: A tradition of keeping African-Americans voters from the polls."

As I show in my column this week, 41 states have pushed forward with voting restrictions that will primarily affect minorities.

Mostly Republican legislators, who flooded into office after the 2010 election, have shortened registration periods, required photo IDs at the polls and cut Sunday voting.

These Republicans have alleged the changes were meant to keep the voting process honest. They have lied.

What they are really doing is trying to make it harder for President Obama to win reelection. To do so, they are screwing primarily blacks and Hispanics, who are more strongly affected by these measures.

In the below video, Florida ACLU director Howard Simon, who made the Selma to Montgomery march back in 1965 that sparked passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, discusses the racist nature of the voting changes.

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