Sen. Benjamin Cardin and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., during the early morning press conference. (Courtesy Photo)
The Maryland Democratic Party on Oct. 22 launched its Voter Protection initiative to ensure the rights of the state’s voters are upheld during this year’s General Election.
“We are fortunate here in Maryland, in that, we’re different than some states that have been trying to shrink the right to vote; we have beenexpanding it,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., during the early morning press conference. “But we still have issues we need to deal with.”
Sen. Benjamin Cardin, who has been an avid supporter of voting rights on Capitol Hill, said there are increasingly “innovative” approaches, particularly in minority communities, to suppress voter participation. Both Cardin and Cummings cited the use of misleading campaign literature to redirect voter support to a particular candidate and the infamous “robocalls,” engineered by political operative Julius Henson on behalf of the Bob Ehrlich campaign in 2010, which advised 112,000 Black voters in Baltimore and Prince George’s County to stay home because the Democratic incumbent Gov. Martin O’Malley had already won.
“We think it’s outrageous when a political strategy is developed to suppress the votes of people who may be for the other candidate, and we see that over and over again,” Cardin said, adding in emphatic tones, “We’re here today to say we will not tolerate that in our state and we should not tolerate it in any state in our nation.”
Cardin said they hoped things would go smoothly and that there wouldn’t be any “shenanigans,” but they wanted to be prepared—just in case. “The concern is that we don’t know what’s going to happen in this election cycle and that’s why we’re here today so that voters know we will not tolerate any type of effort to suppress the vote in our state.”
Amanda LaForge, counsel for the Maryland Democratic Party, said they have a hotline, 1-888-678-VOTE, which will be staffed by lawyers who could provide information or other assistance to voters in need. Voters can call to get information on early voting sites, to identify their polling places, verify registration and voting hours, among other services. And, they can also use the hotline to report problems, such as long lines, machines that aren’t working, polling places that aren’t operating efficiently, literature that looks fraudulent, etc.
Speaking about the importance of the vote, and why he was devoted to battling voter suppression, Cummings told the story of his then-88-year-old mother, a Pentecostal preacher, who shocked him by saying she was afraid to die. “She said I do not want to die believing that my people are losing their right to vote. And I want to fight until I know that it’s going to be OK,” recalled the congressman.
His mother, who had less than a sixth-grade education, also discussed how voting proved instrumental the fulfillment of her children’s, and their children’s American dreams. “The vote is the fundamental block of our democracy,” Cummings said. “And when you take away the right to vote you take away that right to vote, you take away a piece of this democracy.”