I'm frustrated by the way Republican successes at the state level in 2010 have allowed them to pursue their long-term policy goal of making it harder for Democratic-leaning constituencies to vote, but I really think the comparisons to Jim Crow are an example of hyperbole that distracts from the issue rather than adds to it.
Here's Steve Benen making the case, in reaction to Bill Clinton's recent remarks on the subject:
Yes, raising the specter of “Jim Crow” adds a racial/segregationist element to the debate, which the right obviously finds offensive. But it's not unreasonable to consider these recent efforts Jim Crow-style tactics for the 21st century. The point of both is identical — identifying those the right doesn't want to vote and passing laws that put barriers between them and the ballot box. The goal here is voter suppression, plain and simple.
I agree, the goal is voter suppression, plain and simple. Republicans are passing laws that make it harder for Democratic-leaning constituencies to vote and in some cases, easier for Republican-leaning constituencies to vote. Thirty-two states are considering or have passed voter-ID laws that will make it harder for poorer Americans to vote premised on making elections more secure from voter fraud. Five years of the most politicized Justice Department ever under Bush produced a few scarce glimpses of the voter-fraud white whale, a problem so rare that according to the Brennan Center, you're more likely to be struck by lightning. Other states like Florida are curtailing early voting, I guess because people who don't have the luxury of spending hours in line to cast a ballot don't deserve a a say in government. In New Hampshire, the Republican state house speaker frankly said a bill preventing college students from voting was necessary because they "vote as liberal."
But the problem with the "Jim Crow" tactics comparison is that it ignores a central feature of "Jim Crow" tactics, which involved not just erecting cumbersome and arbitrary bureaucratic obstacles to voting in the name but the actual violence or the implied threat of same, which isn't present in modern Republican voter-suppression efforts. The GOP's voter-ID laws restrict the franchise, but not quite in the same way as lynching people who register blacks to vote.
For what it's worth, I think Clinton's actual remarks aren't quite as strident as Benen and others have suggested:
“I can't help thinking since we just celebrated the Fourth of July and we're supposed to be a country dedicated to liberty that one of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time,” Clinton said at Campus Progress's annual conference in Washington.
“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” Clinton added.
Note that Clinton didn't actually say that these were "Jim Crow tactics." He said it was the most determined effort since Jim Crow to limit the franchise. That's subjective, but it has a basis in fact. The problem is that the Jim Crow line allows Republicans to change the conversation from their cynical efforts to restrict the franchise to a rhetorical battlefield on which they feel most comfortable these days: How accusing white people of racism is a form of oppression.
