Voter suppression and attempts at voter suppression, however, are still very real, just more sophisticated than before Jim Crow.
“Voter ID”
“Voter ID” laws allow people to vote only if they provide certain forms of government-issued ID, usually with picture identification. Voter ID laws discourage classes of people from voting, especially people of color and the poor. These laws (and, especially, legislative attempts to create these laws) have become increasingly common over the past several years, predominantly in the states where the legislature and/or the governor are Republican. (Wikipedia has a comprehensive [although I think somewhat confusing] entry on voter ID laws from which much of the following is taken.)
The stated rationale for voter ID laws) is to prevent voter-impersonation fraud, ie, people voting twice, undocumented immigrants voting, and people voting for another person. (Even citizen-immigrants can be scared off for fear of attracting law-enforcement attention.) Not surprisingly, these methods disproportionately target groups that mostly vote for Democrats:
- the poor,
- the less educated,
- immigrants,
- the elderly,
- those with prison records,
- non-car-owners,
- and those who find it more difficult or less necessary to acquire such identification.
- Cost can be a significant barrier: a Harvard study determined that the expenses for documentation, travel, and waiting time for obtaining voter identification cards typically range from $75-$175. When legal fees are added in, the costs range as high as $1500, a not insignificant sum for low-income voters or some in minority groups.
It must be stated clearly that in the United States there is absolutely no evidence for significant voter impersonation fraud (the only type of fraud that a picture ID would prevent); it is extraordinarily rare, never coming close to being an actual problem in an election, certainly not one that would influence the results of a real-world election. As The Washington Post found in a study of one billion ballots (local, state and federal elections), there were only 31 credible (not proven) claims of individual voter fraud (considerably less than the chance of being hit by lightning.) There are multiple such studies with then same results. Anyone who looks at the data can see that voter ID laws do far more damage to the electoral system by suppressing votes than good by preventing the minuscule number of fraudulent votes.
Other forms of suppression
Other states have laws that appear bipartisan and fair but actually affect primarily the poor and minorities. States have
- drastically limited early voting and voting by mail;
- disseminated misinformation about voting, especially in poor or minority areas; and
- reduced voting resources (such as polling booths) in certain areas.
- After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, over 850 voting centers closed, especially in the South, mostly in immigrant, minority, and other poor counties, leading to long voting lines and voters dropping out.
- In Arizona the legislature prohibited people and organizations (like the League of Women Voters) from collecting other people’s ballots and handing them in. This made it more difficult for people without transportation to vote. The courts let the law stand.
- In the 2000 election, the state of Florida purged from their voting list all felons since they were not eligible to vote. Unfortunately, their information was incomplete, so they also purged thousands of people with no criminal record based solely on things like having the same name as another person who was a felon or a similar address. Since convicted felons are disproportionately people of color and poor, the improper purging removed thousands of voters who would have had been much more likely to vote Democratic. Bush won Florida (and thus the US presidential election) by less than 600 votes; without the purging, Gore would have been elected president.
- Other disincentives to voting include having voting day on a weekday and
- during business hours,
- not allowing automatic voter registration upon getting an official ID or
- refusing to allow same-day registration.
- Across the United State voting always takes place on a single day in the middle of the work day, mostly during workhours when blue- and pink-collar works are less able get time to vote.
We have become used to most of these tactics. But we should remember that they are yet another piece of a movement to prevent millions of people—most of whom are poor, minorities, or legal immigrants—from participating in our country’s selection of leaders, another direct attack on democracy in America.
