BY STAN PAUL
UCLA Today
Although voting rights have been continually strengthened over
the years by lawmakers, the United States is still confronted
today with major voting problems, and the struggle to maintain
these rights remains constant, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles)
told an audience gathered at the School of Public Policy and
Social Research on Feb. 18.
Waters, who was invited by the school’s
Black Caucus to speak in honor of Black History Month, talked
about the social and political history of voting rights and
the issues facing African Americans in particular.
Waters gave a short history of voting rights
as they evolved in the United States since the Civil War. Despite
the passage of the 15th Amendment following the Civil War, African
Americans were, particularly in the South, excluded from voting
for nearly a century. And, despite the civil rights and voting
rights acts passed throughout the 1950s and ’60s up to
the present day, these laws have proved ineffective and continue
to be obstructed in a number of ways, Waters said.
“Just because we have laws on the books
doesn’t mean we have justice,” said Waters, who
called the 2000 presidential vote the most traumatizing election
in the history of the United States.
Following that election, the congresswoman was
appointed chair of the Democratic Caucus Special Committee on
Election Reform. Her committee traveled throughout the country
to better understand what people had encountered at polling
places. “We found that Florida was not the only problem,
but rather, it was one aspect of a national epidemic. We found
that voter intimidation was indeed common.” An estimated
500,000 to 1.2 million votes were lost in the 2000 election
due to faulty machines, confusing ballot design, alleged voter
intimidation and other human and mechanical impediments to the
voting process, she noted.
While the right to vote is constitutionally
guaranteed, lax enforcement of the law results in no real voting
power, she said, pointing out that “we certainly cannot
rest and think somehow we’ve done the work to get rid
of the problem.”
The congresswoman, a leader in the movement
to end apartheid and assure one-person, one-vote democracy in
South Africa, warned: “Do not allow resegregation. We
must remain vigilant in our efforts to ensure that everyone
has a right to vote and therefore a say in our government.”
Waters, who was elected to her sixth term in
the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000 with 87% of the vote,
discussed the role and importance of voting. “Voting is
central to our ability to determine what is public policy in
the United States and the world,” she said.
Waters urged the audience to be involved in
efforts to maintain the relevance and power of voting and to
take opportunities to create public policy, noting that effective
voting requires education, information-sharing and access.
“You have a wonderful opportunity to change
this society,” Waters said.
