Modern
Voter Suppression
By
Joshua Sager
One of the guiding principles of the United States
of America is that the government is elected for the people, by the people. According
to our stated ideals, every American citizen, regardless of social station,
education, or means, gets one vote with which to weigh into the political
process. Politicians are elected to serve the good of the people that they
represent and they are held accountable through elections. Because voting is
such a vital component of our democracy, no group would ever attempt to
intentionally corrupt the process for their own gain, right? Wrong, throughout
US history there have been those who want to limit the voting franchise in
order to push an agenda or discriminate against a less powerful group.
Historically, the United States has not always
practiced a system of equality in voting. Women, Native Americans and African
Americans were unable to vote under the law for most of the early years of our
country. Not until the 1920 were women allowed to vote in federal elections
(state election laws were decided on an individual basis). Even after the civil
war and the passing of the 15th Amendment, states would discriminate
against African Americans through “poll taxes” or “literacy tests” as a method
of keeping them from affecting society. What most of us would like to think is
that today, we have evolved past such discriminatory and immoral means of
operating our elections, but recent events have shed doubt on this hope.
Unfortunately, recent years have seen a massive
resurgence in the effort to limit voting privileges on both the state and
federal levels. There are several major types of voter disenfranchisement laws
that have gained prevalence in this new round of voter suppression: “Voter I.D.”
laws target the poor and students because they are less likely to have the
proper types of I.D.; banning convicted felons from voting harms minorities,
who are imprisoned at a disproportionately higher rate than Caucasians;
shutting down voting locations in demographically poor or minority locations limits
the numbers of people who can vote in those places; the reduction of early
voting and absentee voting opportunities targets the elderly and disabled, who
are often unable to wait in line at the voting booths. There are dozens of ways
that interested parties have been attempting to limit certain demographic
groups from voting in coming elections. The real question here is “Who benefits
from reducing the number of minority, student, disabled and poor voters come
election time?”
Even if somebody today were immoral enough to try to
corrupt the vote, it would never be the right wing GOP who so love the
constitution (or so their constant espousing of their patriotic and
constitutional superiority leads some to believe). I mean come on, they run geniuses
such as Bachmann, Palin, Santorum, and Trump, and their messages are
so uncontroversial as to be universally loved. Their messages of
inclusion, progress and tolerance only reject small portions of the population
such as the poor, Hispanics, Blacks, young people, gays, Muslims, the unemployed,
the sick, and those without lobbying groups in Washington. With such small
holes in their support base, what reason could the GOP have to suppress these
people’ right to vote?
Voter disenfranchisement today is simply the
Republican Party’s attempts to suppress the voter turnout and eligibility of
certain types of people who tend not to vote for them or their allies. In
modern times, the Democratic Party has virtually no history of voter
suppression, in fact the higher the total numbers of voters, the better chance
Democrats have to be elected. Groups which
vote disproportionately democratic are: Students/the young, first
time voters, the poor, union workers, and minorities. All of these groups are
in some way harmed by the recent voter suppression bills that have been enacted
in the states recently. The two most common voter suppression tactics are
decreasing the number of voting places to increase waiting times and increasing
the ID requirements to vote.
By increasing the time required to vote, the poor
are less able to vote because they cannot spare as much time as the wealthy. Those
who are unable to take a day off of work in order to vote are either docked pay
for the day or risk more severe consequences. This economic type of voter
disenfranchisement is simply the new incarnation of the old poll taxes; those
with money or access are able to vote more easily and cheaply than those who do
not.
Increasing I.D. requirements by requiring a picture
I.D. in order to vote, disproportionately harms students, minorities and
the poor because they are less likely to have such I.D. types. Minorities and
the poor, particularly those who live in large cities, are far less likely to
have driver’s licenses or other picture identification than other demographic
groups. Even if a student has a university granted picture I.D. some states
will refuse to take them, thus students are also harmed by the I.D.
requirements to vote.
In concert with the new government regulations, partisan
groups have been working to suppress voter turnout without changing the laws;
they do so by using a multitude of dirty tricks. These groups are essentially
always right wing corporate groups that pretend to by grassroots populist organizations.
Dirty tricks are varied but often involve giving misinformation to voters to
make them be unable to vote on time.
1) Sending out
disinformation to targeted groups that give the wrong time and place to vote.
(Wisconsin/ Michigan)
2) Spreading lies that
imply legal consequences to voters who are suspected of fraud, particularly
those with family member who are not legal citizens. (Florida)
3) Challenging voters
at the polls as to their residency or ability to vote. Gee, I wonder how these
people recognize those that they should challenge; it can't be something about
skin color, can it?
5) Forming groups that
overtly ask people of a single race not to vote ("Hispanic" group in
Arizona)
The right wing knows that they cannot win national
elections anymore without resorting to voter suppression. Their ideology
supports unpopular actions such as endless wars, attacking unions, defunding social
programs, and cutting education, thus they have found reducing the number of
opposition voters to be the most effective way to win elections. By limiting
the ability of those who statistically disagree with you to vote, it is
possible to win election, but is it really American?
I want to live in a society where we govern
democratically, not through tricks and voter disenfranchisement. I don’t care
which party attempts it, voter suppression is immoral and directly at odds with
our values as a modern America. Any step backwards, towards the days of the poll
taxes, is unacceptable no matter the origin.
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