Blatant voter bias in the US

THE EDITOR: Most of the countries in North, Central and South America have been hugely impacted by the transatlantic slave trade. None more so than the US where this ultra-violent, heinous, wicked and totally dehumanising institution was finally abolished in 1865, after a civil war over the matter, where the southern states were on the side of keeping slavery alive.

That’s hard to imagine today, as the British Government had first of all outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and then the practice of slavery in 1834. Yet 31 years later 400,000 Americans lost their lives over the southern states’ determination to keep human chattel slavery alive.

Of course, the declaration of freedom for former slaves in the US did not bring about swift changes in their living conditions, as for the next hundred years they were subject to every kind of discrimination possible, including the right to vote.

Alert to this great injustice, president LB Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in August1965, in an effort to stop various measures being employed by many states to stop or limit black people from voting.

These voter suppression tactics have played out in so many ways right up to today, where the current Republican governor of Texas has mandated that there is to be only one drop box for voters’ ballots in Harris County, Texas, during the presidential election.

The problem here is that Harris County, which includes the city of Houston, has a population of nearly five million people and is 1,700 square miles in size, which makes it only ten per cent smaller than Trinidad.

In this regard, I heard one voter say in a news report that he had just driven 50 miles to drop off his ballot. Now how could this sort of blatant discrimination take place in a modern US metropolis of nearly five million people in 2020, 55 years after the passing of the Voting Rights Act?

GREGORY WIGHT

Maraval