If you live in Alabama and need to register to vote before the 2016 presidential election, it just got a little harder, especially if you live in any of the counties where black Americans make up more than 75% of the registered voting population.
Because due to "budget constraints" - 31 DMV offices are losing their driver's licenses examiners.
As John Archibald wrote in a column at AL.com, of the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters, 8 will lose their driver's license bureaus.
Of the 10 that voted in the highest percentages for Barack Obama, 8 of them had their offices closed.
And all five of the counties that voted most solidly democratic lost their driver license offices.
Which means that people within those majority-African American counties will need to travel to another county in order to get a driver's license, and that's a big problem for people who still need to register to vote.
Because the same Alabama Legislature that set up this voter suppression tactic also passed a bill in 2011 that requires all voters to have a photo ID.
This is almost certainly not a coincidence, it looks more like a concerted effort to suppress Black votes.
Alabama's Republican-controlled legislature is making it harder and harder for minorities and low-income people to get the type of photo ID that they will need in order to vote in the next elections.
But even if this isn't a targeted effort to suppress minority and low-income votes in the state, the end effect is that it fundamentally undermines our democracy by making it more difficult to register to vote in the counties that just lost their driver's license bureaus.
This bald-faced attempt to block minorities from voting should face a Justice Department investigation.
Thom Hartmann Program
Just ordered two copies of The Essential Bernie Sanders from Amazon. Plan to drop by my local B&N tomorrow to buy or order another copy of same. I will become a lending library for the time being. Hint-hint Bernie-ites! Go thou and do likewise. The unwashed masses need the word.