Jim Crow, Where America's Day Begins...

Posted by Jerry Bader on

That would be Guam, Where Attorney General Eric Holder is visiting, but is "too busy" to hold a news conference. As John Fund points out, this is real voter supression, not the fabricated kind Holder's been carping about:

 

The Chamorro-native-controlled government of Guam is actively excluding the non-Chamorro U.S. citizens on the island from voting in an upcoming referendum on the island’s future. Non-native citizens — Filipinos, other Asians, whites, and blacks — are even prohibited from registering to vote for the election, although they make up 63 percent of the island’s 155,000 residents. The intent is to guarantee that only natives will decide whether they wish to sever ties with the U.S. and seek independence for Guam, keep its status as a territory, or move toward statehood. The territory’s Chamorro governor and the Guam Election Commission can call the vote on this matter anytime they wish.

The restriction is defended by Guam as being non-racial because it restricts the vote to “native inhabitants” who lived in Guam in 1950 and their direct descendants. But the Supreme Court has frequently struck down such sly attempts to restrict voting rights. In Guinn v. United States (1915), the Court rejected Oklahoma’s attempt to close voter-registration rolls by saying that the Fifteenth Amendment nullifies “sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination.” In 2000, in Rice v. Cayetano, the Supreme Court struck down a law that allowed only native Hawaiians to vote on who should run the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The court opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy stated: “Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are, by their very nature, odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.” The Voting Rights Act of 1965, barring discrimination in voting, is also in full effect in Guam.

 

This policy disenfranchies 63% of the Island's population. Holder suggests that common sense photo ID laws are Jim Crow and ignores this. The arrogance is stunning.

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