
          Games Registrars Play
          By Suitts, SteveSteve Suitts
          Vol. 7, No. 2, 1985, pp. 1-2
          
          Two decades after the passage of the Voting_Rights_Act, no one
really knows how many black citizens are registered to vote in the
South today. While no better basic standard exists by which to measure
an open democracy, the level of voter_registration is unknown in the
region because many local white officials, especially in rural areas,
continue to keep meaningless information and thereby promote unfair
political practices.
          In the 1940s, the Southern_Regional_Council began estimating the
levels of black registration in the South because most Southern
officials refused to keep or distribute information about the race of
registered voters. Without official numbers verifying the
insignificant size of registered black_voters, white politicians in
those days maintained that they were color blind while using all-white
primaries, literacy tests, and poll taxes to keep blacks off the
voting rolls and out of the ballot box.
          Today the practices of non-information continue in the South. In
Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia--five of the
eleven Southern_states--officials in charge of voter_registration
cannot tell how many blacks are registered to vote. In these states
the best source of information is sample surveys of the US Census
Bureau carried out only at the state level every four years.
          Records of registration kept by white registrars in predominantly
black populated counties in the rural South are unbelievably bad. In
Mississippi in 1980-the latest date for a count of the voting age
population of counties- rural, predominantly black Coahoma County had
23,246 people of voting age (eighteen years or older). Yet, according
to the Mississippi Secretary of State who keeps registration data,
24,273 people were registered to vote there. In Yazoo County,
Mississippi there were less than eighteen-thousand citizens of voting
age population in 1980 while more than 

18,500 people were registered to vote.
          In fact, in the Second Congressional District of Mississippi, the
state's only district with a majority black_population, one-half of
its twenty counties have more registered voters on the rolls than
people of voting age.
          Mississippi is not the exception. In Wilcox County, Alabama,
eighty-five percent of the total population was registered to vote in
1980, according to the reports of the county's board of registrars;
however, only sixty-two percent of the county was old enough to vote
that year. In predominantly black Lowndes County, where whites also
control the registration board, eighty-two percent of the total
population of the county was registered to vote in 1980, although only
sixty percent of the population was of voting age.
          In other Southern counties where registration rolls are better
kept, some local officials know more than they are telling. In
Alabama, the Secretary of State's office says that most counties do
not keep voter_registration data by race. Yet, in Sumter County, local
white registrars--appointed by the governor of Alabama--have the
information. They just don't distribute it. Less than two years ago,
an SRC representative discovered on his third visit to that
registrar's office that registration data was being kept for each
precinct, by race on computer. White officials simply did not wish to
distribute the information and had denied its existence until it was
inadvertently seen.
          These inaccuracies and duplicities retard local efforts to increase
real voter_registration and turn-out; they hide local officials'
caprice and hostility to black_voters; and, too often, they permit
former residents of a county and current residents of the local
cemetery to vote.
          Proposals for reform offered by registration boards and their
political allies would often have the same effect as the problems they
are supposed to correct. In southwest Alabama, for example, recent
proposals of reform would have' wiped away all names from the voting
rolls and required all citizens to re-register to vote within a few
months. Opportunities for registration in most of these counties are
restricted to less than ten days a month and usually only from nine to
five (and closed at lunch time). Most registration can only occur at
the local courthouse.
          While farmers doing seasonal work might once have been able to
re-register under these conditions, the fact is that most blacks in
these rural areas now work regular shifts and must get the permission
of white employers and miss a day's work to register. And for a large
part of the elderly blacks who have no transportation, this type of
reregistration would mean no registration.
          In effect, these reforms would eliminate in two months a level of
black registration that has required twenty years to build. Thus,
blacks in these counties have been offered a political Hobson's
choice: useless registration data or crippled black registration. Most
blacks have chosen to block the devastating reforms and live without
hard, accurate registration data which could often help them target
registration drives.
          Thirty-five years ago, V. O. Key stated in his authoritative study,
Southern Politics, that "every local registration
officer is a law unto himself ...." In different circumstances today,
the same conclusion applies to much of the South's Black
Belt. Southern local and state governments must begin to collect
accurate information on registration by race and to implement
procedures that help--not hinder--people to register. Until we know how
many blacks and whites are registered to vote in the South's
precincts, we should assume that officials continue to hide
mischievous practices which prompted the passage of the Voting Rights
Act twenty years ago.
          
            Steve Suitts is executive director of the Southern
Regional Council.
          
        
