On Sept. 15, 1935, Hitler brought his new laws restricting the rights of Jews to a Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, Germany. These came to be known as the infamous Nuremberg laws. Amongst other deprivations, the laws took German citizenship from Jewish people, thus leaving them without the protection of the laws granted German citizens. We all know the ultimate result of that.
Now, in the United States of America, a large group of “red” states is issuing laws that will reduce the voting of citizens of those states. I will only mention in passing that the citizens most affected by such restrictions are Black and brown. I mention it in passing because restricting voting, or suppressing it, or simply making it more difficult is a problem for all citizens.
To restrict, suppress, or just make voting more difficult is to attempt to deprive citizens of the right to vote, the prime right that helps to make a country a democracy. These laws therefore are an attempt to deprive people of a key element of their citizenship and in doing so to put them in an inferior class. This is ordinarily an objective of fascists, not believers in democracy.
Given these laws are not as extreme as were those disseminated at Nuremberg, do they not deserve an infamy of their own? What shall we call such laws? Red state voting suppression laws? Red state anti-voting laws? When shall such laws be written in your state and begin to affect you and citizens of your state?
Matt Proser, Salt Lake City