NAACP vows to fight vote suppression

“This is a war, friends, and we are on the front lines,” Bond told delegates in his July 16 keynote. “Their weapons this year are discouraging and criminalizing registration drives, purging eligible voters and imposing unreasonable identification requirements.” Bond charged that African Americans are specifically denied the right to vote under the cover of “anti-fraud measures.”

The theme of this year’s convention, held at the District of Columbia Convention Center, was “Voting Our Values, Valuing Our Votes.”

A veteran civil rights and antiwar leader who served in the Georgia Legislature, Bond galvanized the crowd with his scathing indictment of Bush and the Republican ultra-right. He demanded that the Senate quit stalling and approve the House-passed bill extending the Voting Right Act without weakening amendments. The convention recessed July 19 to rally on Capitol Hill to demand that the Senate approve the extension now.

Justice Department lawyer Hans von Spakovsky played a key role in giving “pre-clearance” to Georgia’s law requiring every voter to have a state-issued photo ID card, Bond charged. A federal court has overturned the law. Spakovsky “was the impetus behind the notorious 2000 purge of Florida voters, many of them Black,” Bond said. Bush rewarded him by assigning him to the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section and has now named him to the Federal Election Commission.

“So the campaign to suppress the minority vote continues in places high and low, federal and state,” Bond said. “As we approach this year’s midterm elections, these efforts are again rampant. If they are afraid of our votes, those votes must be really valuable to someone. We vow to protect this precious power.”

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