Mississippi SOS Wants to Purge Voting Rolls - Big Time

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Burning Voters in Mississippi

By: Rebecca Wakefield Project Vote- February 26, 2008

Not since the civil rights era have minorities and young adults exercised their right to vote in the numbers seen thus far in the presidential primary season. But the battle for enfranchisement never ends. Currently, the voting rights of vulnerable groups are under attack in Mississippi, in a faint echo of the Jim Crow era.

A new Secretary of State, Delbert Hosemann, is championing a bill (SB 2910) in the state legislature that, if passed, would likely strip thousands of poor, elderly, and minority voters from the voting rolls, simply for missing this year’s federal election.

Whether or not that was not the intended effect of the legislation, the threat was real enough that Project Vote wrote Senator Terry C. Burton, the bill’s sponsor, a letter pointing out the bill’s flaws and its contradiction of a federal voting rights law, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Touted as a package of generally positive election reforms, the bill includes a provision that would throw citizens off the voter rolls if they do not cast a ballot between Nov. 3, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009. Purged Mississippians would then have to re-register to vote. Not only would this disproportionately affect minority, young and low-income voters, it also runs counter to the NVRA. And because of the wording of the bill, it is possible that even absentee voters, who are primarily elderly or disabled, could be kicked off the rolls.

read more at the link

[ingac70]

1. Typical Mississippi shenanigans. n/t

[mod mom]

2. Poor minority voters-now who would purging them benefit?

[Liberal Dose]

3. Ahh yes, an election year. Time for the Harris purge. nt

[L. Coyote]

4. We need permanent NATIONAL voter registration without barriers.

Once a person is a legal voter, they should have the right to vote in every election
in their jurisdiction of residence, without needing to register anew.

We need a system that encourages voting, not a system focused on preventing voting!

This is a Constitutional issue and voting restrictions should be challenged in courts, including voter registration restrictions of every kind.

Liberate Democracy! Make every citizen a voter for life.