This, in Texas, is against the law – and punishable by severe punishment, at least for those who “knowingly” violate this election law. Rogers claims he didn’t knowingly do it, but that doesn’t matter: he’s a black man with a criminal background, a perfect bogeyman, and scapegoat to help illustrate a virtually non-existent problem. electoral fraud.

On Wednesday, the day before the Texas Legislature in Special Session called by the governor to pass a draconian voter suppression bill that Democrats blocked in the regular session by leaving, authorities in Texas caused a sensation by arresting Rogers. Last week, The New York Times interviewed one of Rogers’ attorneys, Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, and reported that Rogers “could face more than 40 years in prison – 20 years on each charge, according to Mr Buser-Clancy, who added that Mr Rogers’ criminal record meant the sentence could be even heavier.

This whole business is an abomination. Rogers became the straw man for their special session.

But the history of prosecuting blacks for electoral fraud is long. It is a form of terror as a deterrent. It is a scare tactic aimed at blacks who intend to vote and for the benefit of the white electorate worried that their electoral power and supremacy are in decline. According to their logic, the determining white vote and the white voice are in danger not because of changes in values ​​and demographics, but because of deception and bickering. As such, they must pass laws to crack down and ensure the purity of the vote. They do not want to strengthen the vote, but to whitewash it.

This is not the first time that Texas has targeted a black person for electoral fraud.

As the Times reported in April:

On Election Day 2016, Crystal Mason went to vote after her mother insisted she make her voice heard in the presidential election. When her name did not appear on the official voters lists at her polling station in Tarrant County, Texas, she filled out a provisional ballot, without thinking about it.

Ms Mason’s ballot was never officially counted or counted because she was not eligible to vote: she was on probation after serving five years for tax evasion. Nonetheless, the ballot dragged her into a lengthy appeal process after a state district court sentenced her to five years in prison for illegal voting because she was a criminal on probation when she was sentenced. vote.

Black voting is being targeted for removal in all kinds of ways: demanding identification that black voters are less likely to have, restricting the times and places where ballots can be cast, purging the voters lists and prevent those convicted of crimes from voting.

As NPR reported on FridayThese critics also say that these laws also have a disproportionate impact on people of color. There were nearly 160,000 people in Texas jails in 2016, according to research from the Sentencing Project, a justice reform group. More than 490,000 Texans were on probation or parole in 2017, and black Texans were four times more likely to be incarcerated than white Texans, the group said.