I love my Indiana home, but dear God, do I despise the detestable few who turn us into a punchline. A few weeks back, I wrote about how the Indiana House was considering a bill to bring back the company store. The crazy train is still rolling.
Today, one of my FB friends posted another story from the General Assembly. About how the Indiana Senate is now considering a bill that would effectively introduce a literacy test for absentee voters in the latest front they've opened in their war on voting:
Senate Bill 535 (SB535) targets those who vote by absentee ballot, which disproportionately affects the elderly, handicapped, disabled. SB 535, written by State Senator Michael Young who wrote the bill that stripped Indianapolis residents from having four at large City-County Councillors and took rights and authority away from the Council to give to the Mayor. Sen. Young’s bill would require that anyone applying for an absentee ballot to enter their “Voter Identification Number” on their absentee application. This Voter ID Number is a number provided a registered voter by their County Clerk’s Office, but is not a number the voter if familiar with or even knows where they can find it. Sen. Young has provided no explanation or rational for this change. But the effect would be to dramatically reduce persons voting absentee, which would keep the elderly, those living in nursing homes or rehab facilities, or those homebound because of injury or illness from voting.
Before you shrug this off, that's just Indiana, you should know that it was in Indiana that the photo voter ID laws got their start before ALEC helped spread them around the country. Are literacy tests coming soon to a state near you?
Based on a comment below, I'm updating this diary with a little bit more information about literacy tests. Hopefully, this makes clear why SB 535 bears a striking resemblance to those of the Jim Crow South.
What is a literacy test?
The simple passage of time, means that many lack an understanding of what literacy tests were, and consequently what a latter day attempt to resurrect these would look like.
First. A literacy test, is not a test of literacy, it is an administrative attempt to disenfranchise with the pretense of impartiality. Take for example, this 1964 literacy test from Louisiana.
A literacy test is merely a purposeful effort to make the process of voting so hard that it disenfranchises voters. As stated in Section 4 of the 1965 VRA:
SEC. 4. (a) To assure that the right of citizens of the United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of race or color, no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to comply with any test or device in any State ... The phrase “test or device” shall mean any requirement that a person as a prerequisite for voting or registration for voting (1) demonstrates the ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter, (2) demonstrates any educational achievement of his knowledge of any particular subject, (3) possess good moral character, or (4) prove his qualification by the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class.