Fannie Lou Hamer would have turned 109 last week. Born Oct. 6, 1917, in the Mississippi Delta, she walked into the Sunflower County courthouse in 1962 to register to vote. She failed a rigged literacy test, was thrown off the plantation where she had worked for 18 years, and was later beaten nearly to death in a Winona jail.
However, she kept going back. Once she registered, she spent the rest of her life getting others on the rolls, through Freedom Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
Her lesson is plain: people who want a smaller electorate are counting on the rest of us to give up.
The Trump administration is testing that bet again. Last month the Census Bureau proposed counting only citizens and green-card holders toward each state’s share of House seats, and dropping questions about race and ethnicity from the census form. The 14th Amendment requires counting “the whole number of persons in each State.” Change who is counted and you change who is represented, and where federal dollars go. Public comments closed Oct. 13.
The census is one front in a greater effort. Trump’s first election order tried to require documentary proof of citizenship to register and to reject mail ballots arriving after Election Day, even when postmarked on time. A federal judge permanently blocked most of it in June. A second order seeks a national voter list and limits on mail voting. The Justice Department has sued 30 states and D.C. over unredacted voter rolls and keeps losing; one judge appointed by George W. Bush openly questioned the department’s real aim.
We know what these schemes do. Kansas’s proof-of-citizenship law blocked the registration of more than 31,000 eligible Americans. The goal isn’t stopping fraud, which is vanishingly rare. It’s adding friction until enough people stay home.
Courts have slowed much of this. Courts cannot finish the job. Only voters can.
On Nov. 3, Democrats can win back the House, the Senate, or both, and with them the power to investigate, to control spending, and to say no. But majorities aren’t inherited. They’re built one registration at a time.
So check your registration today; many states’ deadlines fall this month. Help a neighbor, a coworker, or a first-time voter check theirs. Plan to vote early or on Election Day, and if you vote by mail, send it back early.
Hamer said she was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Then she went back to that courthouse. We owe her the same persistence.
