By Delaney Galvin

With the presidential election right around the corner and an insurgence of young people stepping up when it comes to social justice, a new topic has come to the forefront of the political conversation: Voter suppression.

Neither this term nor the practices that reinforce it are new, but with mail-in ballots gaining popularity this year due to COVID-19, the talk about voter suppression has largely increased. Voter suppression is a tool used by both sides of the political spectrum to influence the outcome of the election in their favor, and it can unfortunately be done legally in most cases. 

This election year, the talk of voter suppression is mostly focused on communities of color.

According to Five Thirty Eight, People of color tend to vote more liberally and therefore have a huge impact on swaying the election to the left. This is obviously a huge problem for the Republican administration and they have tried just about everything to keep these people and communities from voting and having their voices heard. A few familiar examples of this are redlining, gerrymandering, state ID requirements, and on the top of this year’s list is mail-in ballot requirements. During the presidential primaries this year, 550,000 absentee ballots were rejected compared to about 300,000 in the 2016 primaries. Voters of color are among the most likely to have their ballots rejected because of missing signatures, “incorrect” signatures, or late ballot arrival, says NPR. 

Voter suppression has a long history in our country.

Until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1960, only about 20% of African Americans were registered to vote compared to about 70% of white Americans. After the VRA the gap between white and black voters shrunk with about 60% of African Americans registered to vote. Although the VRA gave many protections to people of color, it hasn’t held up in recent years. The 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder deemed most of section 5 of the VRA unconstitutional. This section prohibited districts from changing their election laws without gaining official authorization first. Without this section, states were quick to put forth new requirements for voter IDs and restrictions for early voting. 

A main theme around suppressing voters of color is, well, racism. This seems obvious, but by undermining people of color and their voices, the government is able to instill in our society the idea that people of color don’t have anything meaningful to bring to the table. This is where issues such as redlining and felony disenfranchisement come into play. 

In the 1930’s banks used “residential security maps” to help them decide which areas were more secure for loans and real estate investments. These maps showed the lines between wealthy and poor neighborhoods, and in turn, banks wouldn’t give loans in areas that were deemed financially unsafe. This led into a loop of poverty for redlined neighborhoods because they didn’t see any investments in their infrastructure, and therefore, the neighborhoods became poorer and remained redlined, and so on and so forth. These neighborhoods were predominantly populated by people of color, which reinforced the idea of the tie between them and poverty, and between poverty and uselessness. By strengthening these ties, our government can essentially imply that voters of color are not worth being heard, which justifies other methods of voter suppression such as voter ID laws.

Felony disenfranchisement is one of the more overt of the voter suppression tactics because it very obviously takes away the right to vote from citizens of the United States. According to The Sentencing Project, black people are six times more likely to be imprisoned in their lifetime than white people, and felony disenfranchisement disproportionately affects the black community with 1 in every 13 African Americans losing their voting rights as compared to 1 in 51 non-black voters. Although felony disenfranchisement is rooted in racism, some states are making strides toward mending this issue. In September of 2020, a North Carolina court shot down a law that would disenfranchise ex-felons who still haven’t paid court fees or fines. This ruling could give thousands of North Carolinians back their right to vote; a small step, but an important one.

Voter suppression is a mean and racist force.

It has been going strong since the Jim Crow era, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. This election, make sure you have a plan to vote, whether it’s by mail-in ballot or (safely) in person. If you choose to mail in your ballot, make sure you don’t fall victim to the rules put in place to restrict your vote. These small errors are easy to miss, so it’s important to do your research and make sure all of your information is correct before sending in your ballot. 

That being said, there is something fundamentally wrong with our democratic system if we have to “victim-blame” voters for their rejected ballots. Voter suppression shouldn’t be happening in the first place, and we shouldn’t have to educate ourselves to the fullest extent in order to do what is our most fundamental American right.

Resources

Bonczar, T.P., Beck, A.J. (1997, March). Lifetime likelihood of going to state or federal prison. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/Llgsfp.pdf

Dornan, W. (2020, July, 9). Why a law responding to coronavirus could also help Republicans in a voter ID lawsuit. The News & Observer. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article244122227.html

Dornan, W. (2020, September, 4). Some, but not all, felons win back the right to vote in NC 2020 elections. The News & Observer. https://www.newsobserver.com/article245500600.html

Felony Disenfranchisement. (n.d). The Sentencing Project. https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/felony-disenfranchisement/

Fessler, P., Moore, E. (2020, August, 22). More than 550,000 primary absentee ballots rejected in 2020, far outpacing 2016. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/22/904693468/more-than-550-000-primary-absentee-ballots-rejected-in-2020-far-outpacing-2016

Laird, C., White, I. (2020, February, 26). Why so many black voters are Democrats, even when they aren’t liberal. Five Thirty Eight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-so-many-black-voters-are-democrats-even-when-they-arent-liberal/ 

Shelby County v. Holder. (n.d). Oyez. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96

Solomon, D., Maxwell, C., Castro, A. (2019, August, 7). Systematic inequality and American democracy. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/