詹妮弗·k·森田著

2022年9月30日

With the issue of voter rights under a spotlight in the U.S., California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber told students they need to vote – and bring along family, friends, and neighbors to the polls.

“The act of voting is a powerful act,” Weber said. “It is the only real power that you have to change the system and it’s equalizing. 每个人都有一票。

“The expression of your opinion is powerful, and you should never give up your power.”

Weber’s comments came 在9月28日亨德礼堂的市政厅讨论中 that included 萨克拉门托 State Political Science and Ethnic Studies professors Christopher Towler, Rose Soza War Soldier, and Tim Fong. 校园社区成员提出问题供小组审议。

小组成员解释了代表性不足的少数群体在获得投票权很久之后如何不得不与投票障碍作斗争，比如吉姆·克劳法。

It wasn’t until 1965, when the Civil Rights movement led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, that voter suppression laws were abolished.

The fight to protect voter rights isn’t over, though.

“Right now, we are without the Voting Rights Act,” said Weber, referring to U.S. Supreme Court rulings critics say chip away at the law’s guarantees. She said those rulings are “why (states) have passed over 300 pieces of legislation geared towards limiting people’s rights to vote.

“These new Jim Crow laws have come into effect because we don’t have the federal government to protect us.”

Weber, who is California’s first Black secretary of state, is the daughter of Arkansas sharecroppers who could not vote because of Jim Crow laws. 他们搬到洛杉矶后做的第一件事就是登记投票。

“My father taught us to make sure you vote, because when you don’t vote, whatever you’ve acquired in life, they can take it away,” Weber said. “Your land, your dignity, your resources, your business, because you don’t have a voice in determining your future.”

小组成员警告说，选民自1965年以来所取得的成果面临风险。

"(Voters) have a responsibility to not only exercise our own vote, but encourage others who have the ability to vote to do so as well.” -- Christopher Towler, associate professor of Political Science 

除了限制投票箱的数量外，支持更严格投票限制的人还采用了其他策略，包括不公正地划分选区，不允许等待的选民在排长队时吃饭或喝水，以及在周日中午关闭投票站，以防止人们在教堂礼拜后投票。

“It’s a dangerous time,” said Towler, a Political Science professor. “It’s taken us 200 years-plus to get to this point where we actually look like the democracy that our founders said we should be, where we are one person, one vote, founded on the ideas that all men are created equal.

“But it can very quickly be undone, and we could very quickly get pushed back to a time when our democracy looks far more limited, as it did in the early 1900s or the times prior.”

美国原住民研究教授索萨·瓦尔德（Soza War Soldier）说，亚利桑那州是通过了选民身份识别法的几个州之一，这些法律规定了更严格的投票要求。亚利桑那州的原住民约占人口的6%，保留区面积几乎占全州的三分之一。

为了获得选民身份证并登记投票，亚利桑那州的居民必须提供水、电、财产税账单或汽车登记等文件。 Low-income Native Americans living in remote, rural areas don’t necessarily have the required documents.

“Because of the way land is held in trust by the federal government for Native people, they don’t hold private property on reservations, so they don’t have property taxes,” Soza War Soldier said. “So, all the qualifiers in the state of Arizona actually exclude Native people. It makes it very difficult for Native people to register to vote.”

最近，亚裔美国人在德克萨斯州、佐治亚州、弗吉尼亚州和内华达州等多个地区成为了摇摆选民。

“And they are predominantly, not exclusively, Democratic, so you can actually see why some populations are targeted,” he said. “Clearly, suppression is racialized.”

小组成员告诉学生们要充分利用加州强大的投票权。

“We have to continue to push back and exercise our right to vote with the understanding that we may not have it,” Towler said. “If we don’t fight for it, the fight to get it back is going to be much, much harder.”

He said that voters “have a responsibility to not only exercise our own vote, but encourage others who have the ability to vote to do so as well.”