JACKSON, Miss.–Voter ID will hurt your vote if you’re a minority in the state, is the message in a new article on the Mississippi NAACP website. The article was particularly critical of Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann, who decided to move forward with voter ID last year, as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “preclearance” measure.
The measure took power away from the U.S. Dept. of Justice. They had previously had the right to determine if a state’s voter ID law was aimed at unfairly restricting minority voting rights.
The article said Hosemann “bleated joyfully” when deciding to move forward with voter ID last year.
Here are some excerpts from the article:
Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann can’t contain his glee these days, now that voters will have to start showing photo ID at the polls in June during party primaries for U.S. House and Senate races.
“We are pleased our Circuit Clerks were prepared to get an early start issuing free Mississippi Voter ID cards,” Hosemann announced to the press in January. “This shows our outreach to educate Mississippians on the new requirement is reaching the public.”
A large percentage of white Mississippians approved a voter ID constitutional amendment in 2011, and mostly white legislators put the mandate into law in 2012. But even though a majority of Mississippi voters approved the 2011 ballot initiative, more than 75-percent of the state’s minority population voted to reject the measure, according to a study by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR). The LCCR analysis went on to reveal that 83-percent of those who favored the bill were white—in a state that is only 59-percent white.
LINK: NAACP Article: http://naacpms.org/voter-id-out-to-hurt-your-vote-in-2014/
News Mississippi put in several phone calls to the NAACP office and, as of Wednesday morning, they had not been returned.
