We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again:

The powers that be do NOT want you to vote!

A recent Slate article brings to light the continued campaign to suppress minority votes in the coming elections. The variety of new requirements for voting – which range from requring birth certificates and government-issued I.D to cutting early voting windows – disproportionately impact Black voters.

For example, while 12% of Americans do not have a government-issued I.D., that number soars to a whopping 25% amongst Black people.

These facts are not lost on the individuals behind this campaign. And it is unsettling (to say the least) how reminicent these efforts are to some of the more overt but no-less-calculated efforts at minority vote suppression that litter American history, and required the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Slate’s Risa L. Goluboff and Dahlia Lithwick explain:

“It’s true that the most egregious methods of minority vote suppression from the 19th century—the poll tax, the literacy test, the white primary—have disappeared. And we know (and can take some solace in the knowledge) that the worst of these indignities have not been recycled in the 21st century, in part because of the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But a look at the history of voting rights in this country shows that the current state efforts to suppress minority voting—from erecting barriers to registration and early voting to voter ID laws—look an awful lot like methods pioneered by the white supremacists from another era that achieved the similar results.”

This is unacceptable. We must inform our communities of this attack on our constitutional rights.

A major element of pushback against these nefarious efforts is going to be education. Pass this story and others like it along to your family and friends. Stay informed regarding efforts to institute  such policies in your district.

And for god’s sake, VOTE!