Fraudulent voting by imaginary voters, not racist obstacles to the ballot box, is the most disturbing and common form of voter suppression facing people of all races, says former Alabama congressman Artur Davis, an African-American Democrat.
“I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws — I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one — and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office,” Davis wrote in an October 17 op-ed published in the Montgomery Advertiser.
“The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.”
Davis had particular scorn for “voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function,” which he wrote “cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights.”
Davis’s surprising turn on the issue comes as the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress ramp up pressure on voter-identification laws. Several states have passed laws this year requiring voters to to show identification before casting their ballots. Those states include Alabama and Wisconsin, South Carolina, Texas and Kansas.
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