Civil Rights Goup Condemns Voting Literacy Tests

NASHVILLE, February 12, 2010 - The opening speaker at the first National Tea Party Convention called President Obama a "committed Socialist ideologue" who was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote."

"You have launched the counter-revolution," the speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), told 600 or so delegates of the grassroots movement assembled at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville last Wednesday night. "It is our nation.”

Tancredo also insisted on using Obama's middle name, Hussein, and said he was thankful Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona lost the 2008 presidential election because Obama has mobilized an uprising.

"People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House," he said.

Tancredo, a failed 2008 presidential candidate, made his reputation as a rabid foe of illegal immigrants. The literacy tests he pined for were once used in the South to keep blacks from voting.

According to CBS News, members of the Tea Party Movement are more than 95% White and 62 percent Republican. The others identify themselves as Independent and most are middle aged.

Today, CAIR condemned Tancredo's call for Voting Literacy Tests, saying, tests would 'turn back the clock on the civil rights movement.'

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned Tancredo for claiming that President Obama is a "Socialist ideologue" who was elected only because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote."

Jim Crow-era literacy tests were once used to keep African-Americans from voting in Southern elections. In 2007, Tancredo advocated threatening to bomb the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina as part of his proposed anti-terror policy.

Tancredo made those remarks at the recent National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tenn. Another convention speaker questioned whether President Obama was born in Hawaii and cast doubt on whether the president was legitimately elected.

"Mr. Tancredo's offensive remarks are an insult to all those who fought, and sometimes died, to ensure that Americans of all races could exercise their right to vote," said CAIR National Board Chairman State Senator Larry Shaw (NC). "To re-impose such discriminatory tests would turn back the clock on the civil rights movement."

Sen. Shaw called on elected officials in both major parties to repudiate Tancredo's remarks. He also urged National Tea Party Convention organizers to distance themselves from the racist and extremist views expressed by Tancredo and other speakers at the Tea Party Convention.