Ada Fisher in a column published Wednesday asserted voting rights are already guaranteed. She is a Republican, and they overlook the extreme damage that is being done to voting rights.

The Voting Rights Act was originally enacted in 1965 after years of Jim Crow laws and slavery kept Black Americans from exercising their right to vote. The Voting Rights Act expanded the 14th and 15th amendments by banning racial discrimination in voting practices to overcome legal barriers at the state and local level.

The hard-fought act came under attack from right-wing Republicans, and in 2013 the Shelby Co. v Holder decision by SCOTUS gutted a major part of the Act. Thus began measures in states to limit voter access, such as excessive gerrymandering and voter suppression, and now at least 19 states have passed such extreme laws that will give them the right to change votes to steal future elections. These moves curtail the voting power of people of color and persons the Republicans deem would not vote for them.

Voting rights may be guaranteed, but if people are unfairly blocked from free and fair voting, the guarantee is pointless. With all that is taking place today to prevent the free and fair exercise of voting rights, can the U.S. form of democracy that is a constitutional republic stand. Indeed, the Jan. 6 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol and its inhabitants and the police protecting them was an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power after a free and fair election, and U.S. democracy would have ended. No voting rights are not guaranteed, putting the U.S. democracy in peril.

— Pat Bullard

China Grove