CONNOR HOFFMAN
Staff Writer
On Thursday, in the Williams Center S204, history professors Dr. Jennifer Hildebrand and Dr. Mary Beth Sievens held a roundtable discussion on the issue of voting rights, which gathered the opinions of professors of various disciplines on this subject.
The idea for this round table discussion came from the recent Civil War events the History Department has hosted. These events got them thinking about just what exactly the impact of the Civil War was.
“We wanted to look forward and sort of say, ‘What’s the heritage? What’s the legacy of the civil war?’ And so that got us focused on the issue of voting, voting rights and the way that the voting rights act was struck down by the Supreme Court not too long ago,” said Hildebrand. “We’re seeing a lot of different states struggling to come up with their own definition of what is proper ID for a citizen to use to vote.”
Hildebrand mentioned how she wanted to make sure that this discussion had multiple academic perspectives, and that’s the reason she chose such a diverse panel.
The panelists for this round table included Bruce Simon from the English Department, Jonathon Chausovsky from the Department of Politics and International Affairs, Randy Hohle from the Department of Criminal Justice and Director of the Center of Multicultural Affairs Jellema Stewart.
Simon went first and provided the insight of voting rights throughout history by looking at several novels. The novels he cited were Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Chiefly about War Matters,” Fredrick Douglass’ “The Heroic Slave” and Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno.”
He shared with the audience how literature could be a very interesting way into the history since the characters did live it. His portion of the discussion really focused on Douglass.
One of the prime examples he used was how, during Independence Day, everyone looks back at the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers and admires them even though Douglass didn’t believe these notions of freedom.
Simon brought up the dilemma that Douglass brought up.
“How do you represent — to the very people who are oppressing you — your rights to the very same kinds of things they have?” asked Simon.
In other words, how does Douglass get the hero of his book, Madison Washington, a black abolitionist, to be seen by whites as a hero?
Chausovsky next discussed the political history behind the voting rights act, and how it was recently overturned by the Supreme Court in Shelby v. Holder. This recent case has led to many states passing voter identification laws that are aimed at restricting voters.
Chausovsky explained how Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution gave the power to the states to determine who was eligible to vote. He then explained the history of how some states used to qualify what was necessary to be able to vote.
For example, in Massachusetts, voting was originally by town, and the way it evolved was as a property requirement to hold a townhouse. Chausovsky contrasted it to Virginia, stating that owning a townhouse would qualify one to vote in Massachusetts but not Virginia, where the requirement was owning a plantation, and one who owned multiple plantations would have multiple votes.
He then went on about how the civil rights movement gave us the Voting Rights Act that gave African Americans the right to vote. He then explained how this act made it so that states that had a history of voter discrimination had to pre-clear with a federal court any changes they were proposing for voter registration laws.
After the Supreme Court overruled the Voting Rights Act, it led to almost immediate changes in voter registration laws. Chausovsky mentioned how Texas even changed its voting laws the next day after the decision.
Hearing what Chausovsky had to say brought up one of the main points Hildebrand and Sievens were trying to get across, and that was how this case has brought back the question of just who has the right to vote.
“We’re still sort of trying to wrestle with this question of who gets to vote and who is a citizen and how do we define citizenship,” said Hildebrand.
Hohle had a very radical theory that the Voting Rights Act unintentionally has led to recent black incarcerations. He argued that with the civil rights movement, the racist white population had no idea what to do to try and deny African Americans the right to vote.
Hohle believes that a shift in the civil rights movement led to incarceration. He noted how in 1965, incarceration was very low, and, by 1977, tons of people were in jail and wondered just what led to this.
The three main changes he pointed out were a shift in the black rights movement to a more local movement, mechanization of the South, leading to unemployment, and the states trying to court businesses with tax credits. He believes that this led to suburbanization and concentration of poverty in the urban areas with black majorities. This led to power being transferred from the local level to the state, and these urban areas were not taken as seriously.
Hilbrand mentioned how she choose Stewart to represent the student perspective on this issue.
“That is why we wanted to make sure we had Jellema there to sort of try to represent the student perspective and talk about student activities in terms of whether it’s get out [to] vote or struggles to go home to vote; whatever issues students are dealing with, we want to try and have those represented,” said Hildebrand.
Stewart then spoke about how students’ voting rights have been threatened by these new attempts to require voter ID. She brought up how it raises questions as to what is an acceptable ID and what students should do if they can’t find a way to get to the government building to get ID.
She went over how 18 of the 50 states require or will be requiring photo ID to vote, and nine have strict requirements. This means they’re very specific regarding what the ID needs to be accepted.
Again, she raised the question of if voter ID laws deter people from voting and presented the various arguments for and against requiring voter ID.
The panelists then answered questions from the audience.