Protecting voters

John Sweeney - October 28, 2004

(SH) - With a new outbreak of massive voter challenges being reported and just a few days left until Nov. 2, we must renew our efforts to come together and work urgently for a free and fair election.

It seems like a funny thing to demand, after so much blood has already been shed to guarantee the right to vote for all Americans.

Almost 40 years ago, John Lewis, now a U.S. congressman from Georgia, and 600 others were attacked by state troopers as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. Their bloodshed paved the way for the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Decades before, Alice Paul was imprisoned in her quest for women's suffrage, a right that was finally granted in 1920.

In 2004, our voting rights are firmly set - on paper. What is happening is a different story.

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