RUTH SCHERR

Writer // Editor // Dramaturg

rhscherr@gmail.com // rhscherr.weebly.com

VOTER SUPPRESSION REMAINS PROMINENT IN U.S. ELECTIONS

The Tartan, Nov. 7 2016

Title 18, section 594 of the United States Code, the consolidation and codification of the
general and permanent laws of the U.S., specifically states that voter intimidation at any
election in which a federal position is being determined is punishable by fine, jail, or both.
This is why different groups of states have banned firearms, prohibited partisan advocacy,
and, in Montana, banned the offering of alcohol or tobacco near or inside a polling place. This
is also why the Democratic parties of Arizona, Ohio, Nevada, and Pennsylvania can sue the
Trump campaign for advocating for voter intimidation it is unequivocally illegal.

Voter intimidation is a relatively easy to identify example of voter suppression. There are
many other methods of voter suppression, however, and the majority of them are much less
clear-cut and much more unfortunately legal.

Legal voter suppression is, of course, something of an American tradition. The Constitution
may have been written for, by and of the people, but let us not forget that until 1870 the
people was more or less synonymous to white men. Eventually, of course, the 15 and 19
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amendments give the constitutional right to vote to women and people of color. There,
everything fixed. Democracy prevails once again.

Not exactly.

A year after enfranchising black men, in the midst of reconstruction, Congress passed the Klu
Klux Klan Act of 1871, a law over 100 years old and still terrifyingly relevant. The Colfax
Massacre, where the Klu Klux Klan attacked and killed up to 153 lawmakers and freed
African-Americans at a courthouse, sparked the bill, which authorized the prosecution of the
KKK and anyone else who violated the 15 amendment. Unfortunately, these prosecutions
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dropped significantly as federal troops drew out of the south at the end of Reconstruction.
Voters of color continued to be subject to suppression in the form of the poll tax, the literacy
test, and the danger threatened and realized against them and their families. This, along with
the continued effort of the civil rights movement, lead to the passing of the Voting Rights Act
of 1964. Finally, everything was set right. Women and people of color could vote just as easily
as white men. (Able-bodied white men, at least.)

You really havent been paying attention, have you?

Despite how much lawmakers like to fellatiate the constitution, they seem to have something
against letting the constitutional right to enfranchisement to be a simple issue, especially for
people of color.
At least twenty states have passed legislation that enable voting restrictions. Fourteen of these
states have passed stricter legislation since the 2012 election. This summer, Arizona passed a
bill restricting mail-in ballot collection. The argument that accompanies these laws is almost
always that they are there to stop the epidemic of voter fraud. (The republican nominees
recent call to arms also follows this argument.)

A study affiliated with Arizona State University found that, between 200 and 2012 there were
only 500 cases of in-person or absentee voter impersonation, or 1 in 300,000. Applied to the
146,311,000 American registered to vote in this election, that is a possibility of 487 instances of
voter fraud, or 0.003 percent. The largest example of voter fraud in recent history was the
purging of 12,000 names, 44 percent of which were African-American, from Floridian voter
rolls due to the fact that the named matched listed felons in other states. The year was 2000.
George W. Bush won the presidency by 537 Floridian votes.

It is effectively impossible to rig the U.S. Presidential election, no matter how much voter
fraud is committed. This is not due to restrictive laws, but to the fact that the election is
actually, between all 50 states, their multitude of counties, and the District of Columbia, a few
thousand elections. These laws have no significant effect on voter fraud, but they do have an
important effect on voting. Restrictive laws calling for stricter voter identification
requirement, early voting cutback, and registration restricting overwhelmingly affect voters
of color.

After the 2008 election, which had unprecedented turnout from people of color, the country
saw the rise of the voter suppression laws. A University of Massachusetts study found that
the great the rise in minority and low-income voter turnout, the more likely a state was to
pass restrictive laws. The Brennan Center for Justice found that seven of the eleven states with
the highest African-American turn out and nine of the twelve states with the largest Hispanic
population growth established new restriction to voting by 2014.

This disparity of impact is important because of what happens when people vote politicians
actually pay attention to them. This works even if you assume all politicians are lying she-
devils who only want more power. Politicians pay attention to who votes because they want
to stay in power, and catering to the people who have shown that actually vote gives them
that power. Take, for example, the years following the Voting Rights Act. Unprecedented
numbers of African-Americans voted and, as a result, politicians noticed. African-American
communities got public funding for their roads to be paved and their stoplights to be fixed.

The United States likes to pride itself in the pure-hearted nobility of its democratic process.
This year, however, the republican nominee has spent a lot of energy claiming that the
election is rigged, and has made a number of comments calling for voter intimidation and
suppression. This is an uncomfortably close parallel to the acts of discrimination and injustice
mentioned earlier. Pennsylvania, as one of the states the republican nominee singled out in
his calls to watch your polling booths, will has already seen and will undoubtedly see more
voter intimidation until tomorrow is over.

After tomorrow, assuming the world hasnt ended, remember that there are people out there
who didnt vote. Not necessarily because they didnt want to, but because they couldnt. The
people in communities targeted by voter suppression deserve the right to vote just as much as
any other American citizen. Every time you vote for tomorrow onwards, remember that
voting is not only a right it is also a privilege.