Ever since Southerners and Yankees began bumping into each other a couple centuries ago on the ever-shifting American frontier, people from our part of the country have had the reputation of being conniving and a bit cocky. At least that's what you hear from folks in the Deep South.
In fact, partisans of the old Confederacy might suggest that's why Congress never passed a law requiring the federal government to oversee how all New Yorkers vote. We've always been able to manipulate the electorate in ways so sly as to avoid Washington's scrutiny.
Our lawmakers can fine-tune legislative and congressional district boundaries so precisely as to stack just the right number of the right kind of voters wherever they're needed to keep themselves in office. They can invoke arcane petitioning rules to block pesky opponents from the ballot. State senators can even create extra districts — yes, we need more senators! — if they see the numbers lining up against them with the status quo.
Actually, three boroughs of New York City — Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx — exhibited such questionable behavior in assuring voters' rights in past decades that they fell under the sections of the Voting Rights Act that were gutted this week by the Supreme Court. Like Southern states, changes affecting voting there have required pre-approval from the U.S. Justice Department.
So why haven't you heard both outrage and cheers about those areas being removed from federal oversight, as you did about Dixie?
Two reasons, I'd say. One is specific to the geography and the other is both broader and should be of greater concern.
First, the voter disenfranchisement that went on in New York City wasn't a legacy of the sort of virulent racism that until modern times permeated the South. In New York, the effort to suppress certain votes was more subtle. When officials wanted to move a polling place in Manhattan's Chinatown, for example, the city published notices only in English-language papers. Justice, viewing that as potentially disenfranchising some non-English-reading voters, blocked the shift before it could occur.
That's quite different from Southern plans to impose statewide requirements for an official voter identification card, to restrict voter registration drives and to limit early voting. All those steps are expected to push down the percentage of poor and working-class voters going to the polls.
But the second factor that distinguishes the reaction here from that in the South is that the partisan tide that Southern officials are trying to hold back already has swept through here.
New York is dominated by Democrats; it's been more than a decade since a Republican won statewide. The growth of the minority electorate that threatens Republican control of the South is likely to only strengthen the Democratic hold here.
While 71 percent of American voters are white, the percentage of minority voters is growing rapidly, and they're overwhelmingly Democrats. Worse for Republicans, those minority voters are showing up enthusiastically at the polls: Last year, for the first time in a presidential race, a higher percentage of eligible African-American voters cast ballots than white voters.
The change in the Voting Rights Act wrought by the Supreme Court doesn't mean the federal government can't step in to protect the voting rights of all Americans, but it does mean voter suppression efforts will be harder to block before they occur and the remedy contingent upon the luck of which federal judge might hear a discrimination case.
Whether you're pleased or disappointed by the court ruling, though, what should frustrate you is that the nation is plunged back once again to arguing about voting and race. A half-century after the Voting Rights Act passed Congress, we ought to be able to move on to other issues.
Like, say, low voter turnout. Overall, 58 percent of eligible voters came to the polls last year, compared to 62 percent in 2008. In other wealthy nations, turnout is often one-third higher. The last presidential election with 80 percent of eligible American voting was 1876.
One explanation: Most countries don't require advance voter registration, which keeps a lot of adult Americans home on Election Day. Don't hold your breath awaiting same-day voter registration around the country.
But here's something of even greater concern: Young voters — those below age 29 — turned out last year at a rate 22 percent lower than other voters. As they move into their 30s and 40s, will they vote in greater numbers? Or is the sluggish enthusiasm of young voters another mark of declining civic engagement, one that will follow their cohort as they age and come to characterize the typical American?
If the answer to that is yes, it ought to send a chill up your spine. We can argue about voter suppression in one area of the country or another, but know this: Voter apathy is a true threat to democracy everywhere.