If you are a minority, the Republican Party would really rather you didn’t vote. Last week, Don Yelton, precinct chair in the Buncombe County, North Carolina Republican Party revealed on the Daily Show that voter suppression laws are meant to “kick the Democrats in the butt.” Said Yelton, “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything, so be it.”
My painting “Voter Fraud” — a 40″ x 30″ oil painting depicting a sign painter finishing up a sign reading “Whites Only!” hanging over an e-voting machine — reflects the hard hitting reality that in the guise of protecting against non-existent voter fraud, Republican-run states are enacting voting restrictions designed specifically to suppress the minority vote.
I am, in effect, calling out the Supreme Court, who struck down the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing states with a history of racial discrimination to once again create barriers aimed at minority voters. The painting is a sardonic characterization of the growing number of Republican-run states who have since imposed new voting restrictions that were previously blocked by the Federal government under the Civil Rights Act. It is sad that after many years of sacrifice and progress, we, as a country are in some ways regressing back to the dark days in our history of racial discrimination.
