Voting. It's a seemingly simply act, and most Americans either take it for granted or are doubtful of its actual effect on our everyday lives. One vote being cast in a sea of millions may seem insignificant, but when we step back to look at the tumultuous history of voting rights in our country, the real-world effects of voting, and the current efforts to suppress certain groups of voters, it becomes clear that voting is a vital right and an act that intersects with every aspect of the issues we care about.
History of Voting Rights and Disenfranchisement in the U.S.
Voter suppression and disenfranchisement are nothing new in our country. After our country was founded and the Constitution was adopted in 1787, only white, male property owners (a mere 10 percent to 16 percent of the nation's population) had the right to vote. The act of voting was reserved for rich, white males, leaving out women, minorities, and poor people. Voting was slowly expanded throughout the 1800s to other groups of men, but ways to suppress the vote of non-white and non-wealthy citizens ran rampant throughout the country. Literacy tests and poll taxes, prerequisites for voting, had the effect of disenfranchising many people of color as well as poor whites. States even made up impossible hurdles for voting, like the "eight box law," whereby voters were required to place ballots in correct boxes, which were then shifted throughout the day. The battle for women's suffrage went on even longer. Voting rights for women were first proposed in July 1848, yet it took 72 years of protest and activism for the 19th Amendment to become law in 1920.
It wasn't until 1957 that the Civil Rights Act was passed, setting up the Civil Rights Commission, which has among its duties investigation into voter discrimination. Disenfranchising poll taxes were finally outlawed in 1964 with the adoption of the 24th Amendment. In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed to protect the rights of minority voters, eliminating voting barriers such as the literacy test.
With the often bloody and hard struggles to win and protect voting, it is amazing, yet perhaps not surprising, given our history, that a new move to roll back these hard-won rights is underway in many states around the country.
Current Voter Suppression and Disenfranchisement Efforts
It seems that many in our country haven't learned from this past and are doomed to repeat it.
In 2011 Republicans gained control of both chambers in 26 state legislatures, with 21 of those states also having GOP governors. Republican-controlled legislatures have passed a wide range of new bills that restrict, rather than broaden, access to the voting rights.
The numbers are staggering. At least 180 restrictive bills have been introduced in 41 states since the beginning of 2011. There are 27 restrictive bills currently pending in six states. Twenty-five laws and two executive actions have passed in 19 states since the beginning of 2011. Seventeen states have passed restrictive voting laws that have the potential to affect the 2012 election; these states account for 218 electoral votes, or nearly 80 percent of the total needed to win the presidency. These GOP-led efforts impose a series of new restrictions on voting: strict, new voter-ID laws, limits on voter-registration drives, and closing early-voting windows, which creates fewer voting precincts and longer lines.
Photo ID mandates are the most pervasive new restriction on the right to vote. In 2011 Republicans proposed in more than 30 states laws requiring Americans to possess and show unexpired, government-issued photo identification as a prerequisite to voting. The new requirements and costs associated with photo-ID laws are quite simply a new form of poll tax. And the the laws don't solve any problem with voter fraud. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare, saying:
Because voter fraud is essentially irrational, it is not surprising that no credible evidence suggests a voter fraud epidemic. There is no documented wave or trend of individuals voting multiple times, voting as someone else, or voting despite knowing that they are ineligible... Most allegations of voter fraud simply evaporate when more rigorous analysis is conducted.
This year the Department of Justice has struck down voter-ID laws in Texas, Florida, South Carolina, and Wisconsin under the Voting Rights Act, which mandates that states with a history of racially discriminatory voting procedures get their laws cleared by the DOJ. But many states either have tougher news laws that disenfranchise voters or are still in the middle of the judicial process that will decide if these laws stand. This uncertainty in the laws around voting rights and requirements creates confusion and doubt and further alienates voters in targeted groups.
Beyond Numbers: Voter Suppression's Impacts
Each tactic disproportionately burdens the same voters: youth, students, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, seniors, low-income voters, and Americans with disabilities. Voter-suppression efforts, like newly enacted photo-ID laws, will also have a disproportionately harmful impact on those who are transgender. According to a recent study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, over 25,000 otherwise eligible transgender voters could be turned away at their polling places come November due to the potential discrepancy between a voter's gender identity and his or her designated sex on state-issued identification. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) found over 40 percent of transgender men and women do not have an ID that accurately reflects their gender.
As a result of the impact on these various voting groups, the Brennan Center for Justice estimates that as many as 5 million voters could be disenfranchised in the 2012 election.
Removing these voters from the equation affects not only the presidential race (which could have dire consequences on many policies affecting the country) but down-ticket races for state legislature and judge seats (which could have a huge impact on issues like women's rights and LGBT equality). The removal of voters more likely to lean socially moderate or liberal also has a potentially outcome-altering impact on state ballot initiatives, like gay-marriage bans on the ballots in many states in 2012.
For example, almost all the Republican photo-ID mandates make it more difficult for students to vote. In Texas you can vote with a gun license but not a student ID. South Carolina and Tennessee expressly prohibit the use of student IDs, while Wisconsin allows student IDs but has strict qualifications that no university ID in the state currently meets. Suppressing young, progressive voters does more than just changing the outcome of one presidential election: It shapes social policy by removing their voices from the process and disenfranchising them for years to come. This would set progress on social issues back decades, from reproductive rights to minority issues to LGBT equality.
We have seen throughout our history how restricting voting rights doesn't strengthen us as a country; it muffles the voices of the very people who most need to be heard. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement is about fear of progress and change. Silencing swathes of the electorate for political gain may seem like a good idea in the short run, but it causes our country to stagnate. These laws prove some haven't learned from the mistakes and growth of those before us who fought and died for the right to cast that ballot on Election Day.
Voting can't be taken for granted, nor can its impact on us all.
Follow Waymon Hudson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/WaymonHudson
Elisabeth MacNamara: Volunteers Reach Out to Unregistered Voters on National Registration Day
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 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
This has not prevented the PA State Voting Commission from continuing to announce to the public by recorded telephone instructions that you cannot vote without a prescribed photo indentification. That is until they received a call from the office of TV host Rachel Maddow whereupon the tel recording was changed.
In addition the Maddow office discovered that a number of PA counties were continuing to advertize that this particular photo I.D. thing was mandatory.
Again upon receiving calls from the Maddow office, they apologized and claimed they were going to remedy this quickly in order to conform with the Court mandate.
The necessity of the Republican officials of the State of PA to called down in this fashion casts shame and appearances of corruption on the entire Republican party. Republicans better start recognizing that Americans as well as American courts view the right to vote as sacred.
Probably because memories are short and it was during the Democratic Primary elections in 2008 when both Hillary Clinton and Joe Bidden claimed voter fraud against the very person they are Secretary of State and Vice President to, respectively.
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/obama-voter-fraud/2008/10/27/id/326134
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151124705953221&set=a.161993023220.115962.86586603220&type=3&theater.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/sarah-silvermans-profane-new-psa (profanity warning!)
No, that's not the case. There is no state - with or without a voter ID law in place - that has been able to present to any statistically significant degree, if at all, instances of voter fraud that would be averted by ID laws. Which, of course, makes the above statement completely without basis.
Any resident non-citizen immigrant can get a drivers license but that doesn't mean they necessarily have the right to vote either.
The issue is that this prevents illegals from voting.
Another issue is poll workers could conceivably have more leeway contesting the eligibility of a vote when there is no ID present. For instance, if someone has no ID, the registered republican or registered democrat poll worker could contest your right to vote. They could do racial profiling and suspect that your illegal. They could also assume your poor, and that you'll vote for Obama, and prevent your right to vote.
You are confusing those opposed to voter-id because what you mention as a distinct possibility isn't covered by their talking points.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9TjVsQa57c
We dont have an open vote we make you pre-register and jump through hoops then demand you give all kinds of documentation when it is time for the vote. And when you vote they try to make lines in some areas so long you will stand waiting for hours while in others it is only minutes.
We keep telling THE WORLD they should be as democratic as THE UNITED STATES are then we prevent people from voting for political gain.
So, here is my challenge to those...just guarantee me that only US citizens vote. Make any structure you wish....just the vote are legal and correct. Show me what you would do?
When I get pulled over by a COP they have me show my ID because many unscrupulas people lie about who they are in that situation
In the last ten years of Federal voting there has been 81 cases of voter fraud substantuated that is less than 1 in 1000 cases of voter fraud you can win a horse race with far better odds.
People talk about government waist this is government waist and it also makes it harder to vote.
I thought we were trying to keep this a democracy well democracies have to have voters voting to work fairly.
Making it harder to vote brings us ever closer to a Dictatoryship. We talk about communist countries preventing their people from having a say in government then we try to restrict our own people from that voice.
In theory having a voter ID sounds like a great idea and if implemented properly it is a good idea. However in this situation, the cries of voter fraud are merely a rouse to explain what really is an attempt to elect as many republicans as possible.