(ThyBlackMan.com) One Hundred and forty two years ago, The 15th Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870. This amendment established “The right of U.S. citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” However, there were some groups who found the means to deny the vote to many blacks, through violence, intimidation, and Jim Crow laws. During the next 38 years 10 States wrote new constitutions which included poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses that permitted other disqualified voters to vote, whose grandfathers voted, thus allowing some white illiterates to vote.
It took another 94 years for the Government to provide for any real enforcement of the 15th Amendment, when Lyndon 
B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. It has been a 140 year fight to have the right to vote and it is clear to me, why so many of our seniors cherish that right.
Paul Weyrich may not be a name that many of us recognize, but his work as a conservative activist and strategist, has influenced the conservative game plan for the 2012 elections. While speaking to a gathering of evangelical leaders Weyrich said, “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Simply said, the lower the number of voters, the better chance the conservative candidates have to win. A group founded by Weyrich and funded by David and Charles Koch of tea party fame and others, called the American Legislative Exchange Council, has made efforts to disrupt voting rights and has been as effective as ever. 38 states have introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step in the electoral process. All 38 of these states happen to be under a Republican governor.
President Bill Clinton told a group of student activists this year. “Why is all this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate” —a referencing of the dominance of the Tea Party last year, compared to the millions of students and minorities who turned out for Obama in 2008. “There has never 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.” Everyone will not survive the traps set to suppress the voters, so that will not be the time to stay at home.
On Election Day 2012, there won’t be a single fiasco in Florida; there will be dozens of fiascos among those 38 states that happen to have a Republican governor, as voters find themselves barred from the polls. See what is being done in South Carolina today click on to the youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHhpTyDYXfM (——
