Death and other rumors

Whenever I think about making a major purchase – anything that might require a credit check, I brace myself for responding to rumors that I am dead.

Eleven years ago after my sister Ellen-Marie died, I wrote letters to all of her creditors informing them of the sad news. Things seemed to be going smoothly until I got a very sympathetic note from American Express expressing their condolences that Elaine Ray had died.

No, no, no, no, I wrote them back. I am very much alive. Although my own card, and card activity, have ever lapsed, I am periodically asked to prove that I indeed am still among the living.

It’s a good thing I don’t live in Texas.

Two weeks ago a federal court struck down a law requiring voters in Texas to have a government issued ID in order to vote.  Texas was among several states, including my home state of Pennsylvania, that have passed voter ID laws in the name of stamping out fraud, even though they have come up short when it comes to providing data that significant voter fraud exists.

The real reason for these laws is as cynical as the Jim Crow era tests that required blacks who dared to show up at the polls to “count” the jelly beans in a jar before they could vote. It’s about power. Power in the hands of black people, Latinos, young people — anyone likely to vote to reelect President Barack Obama.

Pennsylvania’s Republican House majority leader said it best when he ran down a list of his party’s accomplishments: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to Win the state of Pennsylvania. Done.”

But back to dead people. Texas’ voter ID law may have been struck down, but its efforts to suppress the vote appear alive and well. With just weeks before the presidential election, they are purging their rolls of dead voters. No problem with that, except that many of the people who’ve been purged are not dead.

Terry Collins, a high school nurse in Houston, told National Public Radio that she received a letter indicating that she was dead and noted that other blacks she knew who also weren’t dead had received letters too. When she tried for three days to call to correct the information, she was left on hold for an hour each time.

“We’re required by law to maintain a clean and accurate voter registration list, and we’re attempting to comply with that mandate,” Rich Parsons, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, told NPR. He added that people who got the letter who are not dead should just show up at the polls and they will be allowed to vote.

If you believe that, I have a jar of jelly beans that will test your math skills.

Still, we didn’t let the forces of disenfranchisement win then, and we can’t let them win now.

I’ve seen this before, I’ve lived this before. Too many people struggled, suffered and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote,” Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) said at the Democratic National Convention. “And we have come too far together to ever turn back. We must march to the polls like never ever before.”

Tags: Jim Crow, voter suppression