Rev. Jackson revealed appalling statistics concerning voting and elections in Virginia--79,000 voters were eliminated through interstate crosscheck, for example, a fallacious process that matches up similar but non-identical names with those on registration rolls throughout the country and on that basis eliminates registered voters because they supposedly plan to vote in more than one location. Quoting Andrea Miller, he continued with these statistics:
African American Voters
There are 675,000 African American voters in Virginia.
Two weeks ago there were 172,000 unregistered voters; as of today there are 173,633, so you can see the number is going up and not down; and
There are 19,818 unregistered African American voters in the City of Richmond alone.
Of the 675,000 African American voters who will be able to vote in November 2017, 44,256 are flagged as inactive, meaning that if they do not vote in the 2017 election, they will be removed from the election rolls. 79,000 Virginia voters were removed by Crosscheck which targets Black, Latino and Asian voters looking across 29 states for people who have the same first and last name as the only search criteria.
Asian Voters
There are 146,180 Asian American voters in Virginia;
36,946 are unregistered; 5,192 will be purged if they do not vote in the 2017 election.
Hispanic Voters
There are 105,188 Hispanic voters in Virginia;
58,538 are unregistered; 5,443 will be purged if they do not vote in the 2017 election
Arnwine pointed out that a 65 percent turnout in a general election year is considered good in this country, while in others 80 to 90 percent turn out habitually; how can Trump's commission be working to diminish our numbers even more?
There are 99 pending laws in 31 states purposed to reduce the number of registered voters. More than 33 states require voter ID and half of these require strict ID--that is, government-issued, with expiration date and so on; regulations vary but all adversely affect people of color as well as poor whites. Moreover, in 2016 more than 3,000,000 disabled people were eliminated from the rolls.
According to Rev. Jackson, Asian Americans were never mentioned as "part of the mix" until the 1952 Asian Immigration and Nationality Act. Some could vote, some not. Assistance for those whose first language is not English is critical, he said. As a result of such intervention, the number of Vietnamese voters in Texas increased and one, Hubert Vo, was elected as a state representative in 2014. In San Diego the number of Vietnamese voters increased by 40 percent.
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