Tuesday Opinion
Read Kathryn Jean Lopez, Ken Blackwell, Jeff Jacoby, Burt Prelutsky, James Shott and more.
Best of Right Opinion
- Kathryn Jean Lopez: Finding Hope for the New Year
- Ken Blackwell: Voices From the Grave Cry Out for Justice in Iran
- Jeff Jacoby: Voter Suppression? Alabama Election Exposed a Myth
- Burt Prelutsky: The Puppet Cuts His Strings
- James Shott: Democrats Distort Tax Bill for Political Purposes
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.
Opinion in Brief
Jeff Jacoby: “African-Americans constitute 26 percent of Alabama’s people, but they accounted for 29 percent of the voters in last month’s special election for the U.S. Senate. Whites make up 69 percent of the state’s population, yet they were only 66 percent of those who voted. Black voters, in other words, punched above their weight on Election Day, turning up at the polls at a rate that exceeded their share of the general public. Whites, by contrast, underperformed. But surely that’s impossible! Haven’t we been told time and again that Deep Red states like Alabama engage in voter suppression, cynically disenfranchising minorities through outrageous election rules that, as Jay Michaelson wrote in The Daily Beast, ‘just coincidentally happen to disproportionately hit communities of color’? Weren’t we reminded in the weeks leading up to the election that Alabama’s rules amount to ‘a naked attempt to suppress the voting rights of people of color’ and that black electoral clout is undermined by all the hurdles the state’s Republican politicians have devised to deter minorities from casting ballots? … Elections come down to voters, who have minds of their own and routinely upset the experts’ calculations. Alabama is only the latest reminder that when elections are free and fair, outcomes aren’t guaranteed. In the Heart of Dixie, as in the rest of 21st century America, voter suppression is a thing of the past.”