Video: VA NAACP President Rips “egregious action from the Supreme Court” and by Youngkin to Suppress the Vote of People of Color

Yesterday, the NAACP and the NAACP Virginia State Conference “held a press conference in the wake of today’s Supreme Court decision in Beals v. Virginia Coalition of Immigrant Rights…The press conference included: Rev. Cozy Bailey, President NAACP Virginia State Conference; Stephen MillerPitts, NAACP Virginia Campaigns Consultant Campaigns; Stephanie Owens, NAACP National Grassroots Election Protection Sr. Advisor; Anthony Ashton, NAACP Senior Associate General Counsel; Stephanie Jones, NAACP Voter Protection Legal Consultant.” See below for video and a few highlights.

• “This emergency action of the Supreme Court continues to sow huge confusion for the Virginia electorate, but not just Virginia, for states across the nation who have their eyes on these actions. These ongoing voter suppression lawsuits create confusion, especially with these last-minute changes to voting laws. And they… more often than not impact marginalized groups like African-Americans and Hispanics, even people with disabilities who struggle to meet many of these new requirements…These shifts put strains on local election offices, causing delays and mistakes and reduced services”
• “As we consider this egregious action from the Supreme Court that was actually instigated by the egregious actions of our governor here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we recognize that what is happening is that… they are using old tools in a new environment. And what I mean by that, is that for the hundred years between the end of the Civil War, 1865, and the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, those who would attempt to keep people of color, specifically Black people, from voting, used a variety of tools to keep us from exercising that precious right. They started with keeping us from registering the vote. After we figured out working within the system how to do that, they began a series of suppression activities that continues until today. And that’s how we got here today. It makes me even more conscious that the Civil Rights era is not a historical event, it is a continuous event. What has occurred in the Commonwealth of Virginia over the past few years, just walking through the history, we began to note about two years ago of a series of activities that were taking place that were absolutely intended to suppress people’s ability to vote…Here recently, we’ve actually had one of our localities have two of the members of the Board of Elections, preeminently, before we even had the completion of our election period, state that they would not certify the voting results in their particular county, based upon baseless conspiracy theories. And then of course we have executive order 5 issued by our governor…not coincidentally just before the 90-day quiet period that is federally mandated.”