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Why US voter suppression has increased since 2013
Civil rights experts point to the long waiting times to vote as a sign of growing electoral repression in the United States. Here’s what to expect in the 2020 elections.
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After a turbulent election season, fueled by unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, Republican lawmakers are working to rewrite voting laws to restrict access to the ballot box. Although House Democrats passed a voting rights bill on Wednesday that would make voting more accessible, critics fear that the Republican Party’s tactics may suppress voting in a way that refers to Reconstruction.
“On the one hand, you have concerns about fraud leading to voting restrictions, and on the other hand, you have concerns about participation, which leads to a focus on greater access to polls,” said Rebecca Green, a law professor and co-director of the William and Mary Law School Electoral Law Program.
Since the beginning of the year, Republican-controlled legislatures have introduced a cascade of restrictive voting measures:
• A Republican legislator from Arizona introduced a bill on February 2 that would require everyone to vote in person and be physically capable and drastically reduce the number of polling centers in some counties.
• A New Hampshire bill introduced on January 18 would allow election officials to remove voters from lists based on data provided by other states, a practice that federal courts have found to violate the National Voter Registration Act.
• A Mississippi bill would eliminate voters from the lists if they did not respond to a notice within 30 days with proof of citizenship.
• In Georgia, a former Republican stronghold that turned blue in the November presidential election, House representatives passed a comprehensive measure on Monday that would restrict the use of ballot boxes, make identification requirements for absentee votes more stringent and prohibit voting. distribution of food and water to people waiting in line to vote.
The bill, which goes to the state Senate, aims to limit early voting on weekends, which would stifle “Souls to the Polls”, a widespread campaign to mobilize voters among the state’s black churches.
State Representative Barry Fleming, who sponsored the project, said his goal is to ensure that someone’s vote is not stolen. “It is our due diligence in this legislature to constantly update our laws to try to protect the sanctity of the vote,” said the Republican. during a meeting on electoral integrity last month.
For critics, the flood of legislation dates back to the post-Reconstruction era, when white lawmakers, threatened by a change in political power, tried to prevent black voting with new laws designed to restrict access to the ballot box.
“When you have a big turnout, as we did in the last election, the question is how to suppress that turnout,” said Marion Orr, professor of public policy at Brown University.
The language in these new electoral laws does not openly target a specific group of people, but the implications of the laws disproportionately affect people of color, Orr said.
Georgians protest against Republican Party bill that limits access to voting
Republican Party lawmakers in Georgia are promoting a bill that would reduce access to voting, despite objections from civil rights groups meeting on Capitol Hill, after record attendance led to Democratic victories in the presidential election and second round in the US Senate. USA. (March 1st)
AP
Voter suppression after reconstruction
After the Civil War, black men emerged from shackles and slavery with an unprecedented amount of political freedom.
The approval of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which gave black men the right to vote, started a wave of black politicians. In the next two decades, about 20 black men served in the United States Congress – all in southern states.
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This foray into national politics came at a high price. White supremacist groups responded with violence and intimidation to keep blacks out of the polls.
This newfound political participation and activism sparked a series of laws that deprived African Americans from voting in the coming decades. “They saw all of these black politicians and acted quickly to suppress this new voting power,” said Orr.
During his opening speech at the Mississippi state convention of 1890, where restrictions on black voting rights were discussed for the first time, President Solomon S. Calhoun did not meditate on the purpose of the meeting.
“We came here to exclude the Negro,” he said. “Nothing short of that will answer.”
Mississippi passed laws that required a mandatory poll tax and literacy tests. The strategy of suppressing voters in the state became the primer for other southern states. Arkansas, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and others followed suit.
Several states have instituted a grandfather clause as a loophole for white men who could not pay the poll tax or pass a literacy test. According to this clause, men whose parents or grandparents were allowed to vote before the Civil War were exempt from the stricter voting requirements. These new voting requirements made it almost impossible for black lawmakers to be elected, even in southern states with dense African-American populations.
George White of North Carolina, the last black congressman at that time, saw the writing on the wall before leaving office in 1901.
“That, Mr. President, may be the blacks’ temporary farewell to the US Congress, but let me say, like a phoenix, he will rise up one day and return,” White said in his final months in Congress. “These words of farewell are in the name of an indignant people, with a broken heart, wounded and bleeding, but fearing God, a faithful, hardworking and loyal people – a people on the rise, full of potential strength.”
After White left, it was almost 30 years before another black congressman stepped onto the United States Capitol. And 70 years before a black congressman from a southern state was elected.
These new laws almost eradicated the black politician, deprived black citizens and demanded a federal electoral law in 1965 to deal with rampant racism and electoral repression.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests and provided federal oversight of the electoral register in areas where less than 50% of non-whites were registered to vote. The attack on protesters for voting rights marching over the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, was a factor in the approval of the act.
Election experts claim that a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, destroyed the law by freeing states and municipalities with a history of racial discrimination from the need to seek federal government approval to change their voting laws.
The reaction of this Supreme Court the decision was immediate and predictable, said Bobby Hoffman, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s democracy division.
States quickly tightened voter identification requirements, reduced early voting, purged voters from voting lists, and closed hundreds of polling stations.
Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas introduced stricter voter identification requirements. Florida and Virginia tried to wipe out thousands of people from their electoral roll.
A few hours after the Shelby v decision. Holder, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who was the state attorney general at the time, announced stricter voting requirements.
“With today’s decision, the state voter identification law will go into effect immediately,” Abbott said in a statement. “The redistricting maps approved by the Legislature can also go into effect without the approval of the federal government.”
Abbott’s actions and the wave of proposed voting laws are a concern for lawmakers like Congressman Colin Allred, D-Texas, a member of Congressional Black Caucus.
“I think what we are seeing is the most serious attempt across the country to restrict the rights of certain Americans to vote since the days of Jim Crow,” said Allred.
Talk to Javonte Anderson at [email protected]. Twitter: @JavonteA