Fight voter suppression.
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Happy Wednesday, everyone!
I've been working on a series of emails about voter suppression for a while, but the recent news in Kentucky – paired with the anniversary of Shelby County v. Holder, encouraged me to publish the first today. As the election gets closer, we'll continue to analyze how white supremacy and systemic oppression has influenced our collective right to vote.
There's been so many questions coming through that I'll dedicate each Saturday's email to answering each of them! If you haven't already, submit your questions by replying to this email. I'll do my best to answer them, and save the rest for following weeks.
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- Nicole
TAKE ACTION
DO THIS NOW (U.S. READERS)
Contact your state senators to encourage them to pass The Voting Rights Advancement Act.
INTERNATIONAL READERS
Consider how voter suppression may be protected – or barred – from your government. Are there disproportionate groups of people that have had difficulty participating in your most recent election?
GET EDUCATED
Accusations of voter suppression ring this morning after yesterday's state primaries – particularly in Kentucky. After delaying the vote from May until yesterday because of COVID-19, the state slashed the number of polling locations from 3,700 in a normal election year to less than 200. In Jefferson County – home to the state's largest Black population – there was just one in-person voting location in Louisville for the nearly 617,000 registered voters. Videos from yesterday show frustrated voters locked out after polls closed.
Louisville, Kentucky is where Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was killed by police in her home for no reason. And over three months later, none of the officers involved in the shooting have been arrested. For a state that's been at the center of the recent protests unfolding across the country, many people feel the moves were deliberate, especially because the winner from this election will take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November. Results are being updated here >
COVID-19 complicates the issue of voter suppression today. States have to take necessary precautions to prevent the spread of the virus, so reducing the number of polling states and encouraging absentee ballots makes sense. But we do know that this country has a long history of voter suppression, particularly against Black people, and there is more work to be done until everyone can exercise their constitutional right.
An overview of voter suppression.
Voter suppression, by definition, is when state or federal government intentionally make it difficult for people to exercise their right to vote. The Fair Fight PAC breaks down three fundamental stages of voting: voter registration, access to polls, and ballot counting. Voter suppression can happen at any stage of this process. Although voter suppression affects everyone from having a fair and democratic election, it usually directly impacts communities of color, the elderly, people with disabilities and others systemically marginalized in our country.
You can read about common examples of disenfranchisement here.
Voter suppression for Black people has been around since the beginning. Although the 15th Amendment made it unconstitutional to deny any man the right to vote based "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," Black men were often barred from the polls, particularly in the South, through state-wide rules and regulations that limited their rights. States implemented polling taxes – which made it to expensive for any poor person to vote – and literacy tests to thwart Black people, newly freed and often undereducated. Some states implemented grandfather clauses, which required voters to have parents or grandparents registered to vote, impossible for newly freed Black people.
In Mississippi in 1890, the state went so far to also require voters to read and interpret a section of the state constitution chosen by a local official. Over the next few years, every state followed suit, eliminating Black voters from the conversation. By 1906, more than 90 percent of African-American voters in the South had been disfranchised. Read in-depth about this process here >
The poll tax won’t keep ’em from voting. What keeps ’em from voting is section 244 of the constitution of 1890 that Senator George wrote. It says that for a man to register, he must be able to read and explain the constitution … and then Senator George wrote a constitution that damn few white men and no niggers at all can explain.
– Democrat Senator Theodore Bilbo during his campaign re-election in 1946
It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the federal government finally eradicated these voting laws, but seven years ago the Supreme Court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act. In its June 25, 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court rejected a provision of the Voting Rights Act that determined which jurisdictions with a history of discrimination had to “pre-clear” changes to their election rules with the federal government prior to implementing them. This gave states a free pass to make whichever rules they see fit without oversight.
Since then, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting. Alabama now requires a photo ID to cast a ballot. Other states such as Ohio and Georgia have enacted "use it or lose it" laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a prescribed period of time. In 2018, voter purges and delayed voter registrations affecting mainly Black voters plagued the Georgia governor race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. Only 40% of polling places fully accommodate people with disabilities. And across the country, counties with larger minority populations have fewer polling sites and poll workers per voter.
The Voting Rights Advancement Act aims to counter these statewide initiatives with some standard for a coverage formula, giving the federal government more oversight to ensure all people can vote.
As concerns of voter suppression loomed early this week, Trump took to Twitter to warn that foreign countries will rig the upcoming elections by using mail-in ballots. Regardless of which stance you take, one thing is clear – we need a better solution to ensure all voices are heard this fall, especially in the midst of a global pandemic.
Note: A major part of voter suppression is felony disenfranchisement, which will be discussed in full in another newsletter in early July. Here's an overview if you're curious now.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Voter suppression is a persistent part of our nation's history
COVID-19 complicates providing a fair and just voting process
Black people have systemically been deprived of their right to vote
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