Protect Detroit Voting Rights!

We keep hearing that Republicans are out to disenfranchise black voters this year. Observers are being dispatched to protect African-Americans from nefarious GOP vote suppression plots.

Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley suggests that maybe someone needs to go observe in Detroit. But despite the foot-in-mouth comments by one GOP official, it isn't the Republicans who need watching.

Michigan runs clean, efficient elections; there's no recent history of voter disenfranchisement in the state.

Except in Detroit. Under City Clerk Jackie Curry, Detroit elections are always an adventure. The city has more spoiled ballots, longer lines at precincts, far more misdirected voters than any other state community.

Curry, a black Democrat, has disenfranchised more African-American voters than the worst of the Jim Crow poll thugs.

If state Democrats truly wanted to protect the voting rights of blacks, they'd dispatch their entire poll-watching army to spend Election Day patrolling Curry's office.