Hey Everyone! :-)
I've got a little more from Alyce's adventures to share with you, today. Enjoy! :-)
Excerpt from sci-fi satire novel:
"First you have to register to vote, which is one place that those in power can put up obstacles. In the past they've had 'poll taxes,' which were fees you had to pay in order to register to vote. Now, that's illegal, but they have other tricks. Part of the Jim Crow laws I was telling you about earlier were things like 'reading tests' and 'civics tests' that people had to pass in order to vote. People would have to either read a passage or answer some basic questions about our government. It sounds good in theory, but the people who ran the registration offices would cheat to allow only the people they wanted to vote to register."
"People with lighter skin would be given simple, basic sentences to read or asked questions that were common knowledge, like who was the first President of our country. But people with darker colored skin would be given long, complicated things to read that were often in languages other than English. Or they'd be asked much harder, esoteric questions, like what do articles III and V of the Constitution of the United States establish? There's an answer, but unless someone is a Constitutional scholar, they probably won't know what that answer is. It was a sneaky way to prevent people with darker skin from being able to vote."
"Is this still going on?" asked Yax.
I wagged my hand back and forth. "Yes and no. It's not going on in that form, anymore, because those kinds of things have been made illegal. But there are other things that are happening that are done for the same reason and have the same effect. They're a bit more subtle, though."
"What things?" asked Squid-boy.
"Well, for one thing, there're voter ID laws. It varies from place to place, but some of the laws are just blatant attempts to keep people who are poor, who are often also people with darker skin, from voting."
"These laws require one to have identification in order to vote?" asked Squid-boy.
I nodded. "Yep. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?"
He blinked at me. "It does. But I have the feeling that something about these laws is not what it seems at first glance."
"Yep, you got that right, Squid-boy. First, the laws generally specify only certain IDs that will be accepted. Usually, they are things like a driver's license that most upper and middle-income people have. But people who are poor, especially if they live in an urban area with mass transportation systems, might not have that type of ID. Add to that the fact that the IDs are often expensive and can only be obtained at certain designated facilities, which are often not located in or near neighborhoods where poor people live, and you have a real barrier for people who don't have a lot of money. Also, the facilities where these IDs can be obtained are only open during the hours that most people work, so if someone needs one they generally have to take time away from their job to get it."
"Which means if a poor person from one of these neighborhoods wants to vote, they have to take time off work ̶ which might get them fired, travel on mass transit ̶ possibly for hours, stand in line ̶ possibly for hours, pay more money than they likely have, and then travel all the way back to their home. So, it's not really surprising that many of these people decide it's just easier not to vote, is it?"
Yax shook his head. "No, that's not surprising, at all. Inevitable, really."
