Where We Stand 3 — Voter Suppression

 David Hilfiker

Unable to win majorities in national elections and unwilling to change its policies to attract more voters in a country where demographics challenge its future, the Republican Party has turned to voter suppression as a primary tool for maintaining power.  When voter suppression determines political power, however, the United States is no longer a democracy.  When the Supreme Court refuses to move against voter suppression decisively and when the population is apathetic and uncertain of the value of a democracy, it is not at all clear how we can restore what has been lost.  

Americans tend to believe that wide-spread voter suppression died with Jim Crow.  In fact, it’s just become more subtle and in all of its manifestations remains a profoundly anti-democratic, usually racist, institution.  

Republican voter suppression has been much in the mainstream press recently, and I have written about it extensively (here, here, here, and other places).  I don’t want to be redundant in this post, but some points should be emphasized.  As is well known by now, there is no voter fraud in the United States except for the Republican effort to thwart the will of the majority.  Nevertheless, after four years of right-wing haranguing about “voter fraud,” a third of Americans (and two thirds of Republicans) cling to the belief that President Biden’s victory was not legitimate.  The Republican rationale now: to restore confidence in the electoral process … that they have themselves intentionally undermined.

Since the beginning of the year, Republican lawmakers, have introduced over 250 bills in 43 states* to limit  voter participation.  The Brennan Center for Justice reports the impact of some of these laws. 

1. Restrictions on Mail-In Voting: In  2020, vote-by-mail was responsible for a large increase in voter participation.  The following state, Republican-initiated bills would:

• limit vote-by-mail to those who can give a valid reason, eg members of the military,
• make it harder to obtain the mail-in ballot forms,
• increase barriers to returning a mail-in ballot, or
• require ballots to be mailed unnecessarily far in advance of the election.

2.  Stricter Voter ID laws for in-person voting by:

• requiring picture IDs (in more states),
  
• reducing the kinds of ID that are acceptable, eg prohibiting student IDs or out-of-state drivers’ licenses, or
• requiring proof of citizenship.
  

3. Slashing Voter Registration Opportunities:

• Not allowing mail-in registration,
• prohibiting same-day registration, and
• prohibiting online registration.

4. More Aggressive Voter Purging Practices — Using methods directly targeting the poor, persons of color, immigrants, the young and those who vote irregularly, states have purged voter rolls of people who have supposedly died, moved away or are no longer eligible to vote.  This is often-flawed process can incorrectly and permanently purge a person from the voter lists, often without even communicating the action to the purged voter.

The Supreme Court has, for the most part, been missing in action, allowing most voter-ID laws, most voter purges, and most instances of gerrymandering.  In 2013, the Supreme Court in Shelby County vs Holder effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had required nine states and other smaller jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression to seek pre-clearance for changes to its voting regulations.  According to the Brennan Center for Justice,

[w]ithin 24 hours of the ruling, Texas announced that it would implement a strict photo ID law. Two other states, Mississippi and Alabama, also began to enforce photo ID laws that had previously been barred because of federal preclearance.

Since then, these states have introduced “hundreds of harsh measures making it harder to vote.”

OTHER FORMS OF VOTER SUPPRESSION

• Disenfranchisement: Felon disenfranchisement is a straightforward attempt by states to limit or outright prohibit voting by felons, often regardless of whether they have served their sentences.  Over the past several years, there has been a flurry of legislation and pending bills about felony disenfranchisement, some relaxing the restrictions, some tightening them.
• Gerrymandering: We don’t usually think of gerrymandering as a form of voter suppression.  In redrawing voting districts so that one group receives fewer representatives than they otherwise would, however, gerrymandering effectively violates the voting rights of that group.  

The Supreme Court has ruled that gerrymandering on the basis of race is unconstitutional.  However, it has also ruled that partisan gerrymandering is constitutional, even if the results violate the Constitution.  This bizarre, self-contradictory decision (5 - 4 along strict conservative/liberal lines) is extraordinary.  Since today’s Supreme Court is even more conservative (6-3), it seems likely to give states even more leeway to suppress the vote.

AND STILL MORE TINKERING WITH THE VOTE

Other measures go well beyond the above, including:

• tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules for the benefit of Republicans,
• clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives, and
• outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections, which were crucial to the smooth November 2020 vote.

WHERE WE STAND

The practice of one-person-one-vote — sacred to our American values — now stands shredded and continually under even greater threat.  Not since Jim Crow have we seen such violation of our constitutional principles of equality before the law.  We have not arrived here by accident (here and here).  We watch as the leaders of the Republican Party progressively dismantle our democracy.

The Democrat House has passed HR1 into law and submitted an identical bill (S1) to the Senate that would significantly reverse the process.  Although many of its provisions have wide popular support, it is unlikely to pass the Senate where 60 votes will be required (unless the filibuster is removed).  

I will review HR1/S1 in the next post.

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* Conversely there have been 541 bills introduced to enhance voter participation.  These are qualitatively different from the restrictive laws, however, since they are only attempting to restore what has already been restricted.  The most representative democracy would be one in which 100% of voters participated.  The enhancement bills are simply attempts to move in that direction.