US senator defends proposal to ban voting on Sundays over religious reasons

US Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith has come under fire for stating that voting should not take place on Sunday because of the significance the day represents for Christians, an argument widely seen as an attempt to target the voting traditions of Black Christian Americans. 

Hyde-Smith, a Republican senator from Mississippi, was speaking Wednesday as the Senate debated a series of state-level bills that would limit voting opportunities. 

One such bill backed by Republicans in Georgia seeks to bar voting on Sunday, a day known among Black churchgoers as "Souls to the Polls". During the event, Black churches are known to gather parishioners and bus together to local polling stations as a way to keep the community democratically engaged. 

'Does she not realize that different religions have different days of sabbath or does she just not care?'

- Anna V Eskamani, Florida House representative 

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Jewish Democrat from New York, questioned Georgia Republicans' motives to end the Sunday voting tradition.

"Why did the Georgia legislature only pick Sundays to say there should be no early voting on Sunday?" Schumer said on Wednesday. "We know why. It's because that's the day African Americans vote in the 'Souls to the Poll' operation where they go from church to vote. It’s despicable."

Directing her remarks at Schumer, Senator Hyde-Smith responded, pointing out that while from Mississippi, the two southern states have much in common. 

"He was wondering why on Sundays Georgia would not participate in an electoral process of gathering signatures, registration and things on Sunday," she said. "Georgia's a southern state just like Mississippi. I cannot speak for Georgia but I can speak for Mississippi on why we would never do that on a Sunday or hold an election on a Sunday."

Holding up a dollar bill, the Senator pointed out the phrase "In God We Trust", seemingly as evidence of the US's Christian values. 

"This is our currency. This is a dollar bill. This says, ‘The United States of America In God We Trust'," she said. 

The phrase first appeared on America's paper currency in 1957 during the height of the anti-communist McCarthyist movement in the US. The United States does not have an official religion and the separation of church and state is a key tenet of its constitution.  

Senator Hyde-Smith then went on to cite a verse from the Hebrew Torah, widely known to Christians as the Old Testament. "In God's word, in Exodus 20:18, it says ‘Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy,’ so that is my response to Senator Schumer," she said. 

The actual quote from the Torah is "Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy", and refers to the Jewish holy day marked on Saturday, a fact Senator Schumer pointed out when addressing the chamber on Thursday.

"I'll start by reminding my colleague of the separation between church and state, and frankly, the Bible passage she talked about comes from the Old Testament when the Sabbath was on Saturday," Schumer said. 

'The days of Jim Crow'

During his remarks, Senator Schumer slammed a series of voting restrictions recently proposed by Republicans across the country. 

"In one state after another, new restrictions on the franchise [of voting] are taking aim at communities of color in ways we haven't seen since the days of Jim Crow," Schumer said, referring to racial segregation laws enacted in the South following the US Civil War. 

Responses to Senator Hyde-Smith's comments ranged from those outraged over her apparent attempt to mark the US as a Christian state to those, like Schumer, insisting that the stance specifically seeks to target Black voting traditions. 

"Does she not realize that different religions have different days of sabbath or does she just not care?" Florida House Representative Anna V Eskamani posted to Twitter. 

Representative Ilhan Omar, also on Twitter, shared a quote from Bishop Reginald T Jackson, the elected bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, highlighting Black voting traditions. 

"It's a very effective way the Black church has of getting out our vote...We gather in our churches on Sunday morning, you have morning worship and then after the service you get on the church buses, church vans, get in cars and people go to vote," the Jackson quote reads. 

Jen Perelman, a voting rights advocate and lawyer, slammed Senator Hyde-Smith for what she said was a veiled attempt at suppressing the Black vote. 

"Souls To The Polls is a community tradition of black churches since the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed," Perelman said.

"Senator Hyde-Smith knows that eliminating voting on Sundays is not about 'keeping the Sabbath'. It’s about suppressing the black vote," she continued. 

Georgia, where the legislation is being introduced, had voted Republican in US presidential elections for nearly two decades before flipping blue in 2020. This is largely attributed to Black voting rights advocate and former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams' effort to increase voting registration. 

Other new bills advanced in the Georgia state legislature by Republican lawmakers in early March would limit voter access by ending no-excuse absentee voting and automatic voter registration, limit early voting on weekends and shorten the time voters have to request absentee ballots.

When running for office in 2018, Hyde-Smith issued a public apology after a video of her saying: "If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row," was published online, during which she was referring to a local Mississippi cattle rancher who had just praised her.  

Her opponent at the time was a Black candidate. According to the NAACP, nearly one-eighth of the 4,743 lynchings documented between 1882 and 1968 in the US took place in Mississippi.