CommentsBCK FILE--Since his election in 2016, Donald J. Trump has been alleging massive voter fraud by millions of votes in California and other blue states, baseless allegations meant to cause mistrust in our electoral process.
While investigations have turned up no evidence of voter fraud, voter suppression has been on the rise. Voter suppression is defined as a strategy of discouraging or even preventing targeted groups of people from voting to influence election outcome.
Voter Suppression in Georgia
Last week, Georgia’s NAACP joined a coalition of civil rights groups in suing Republican gubernatorial candidate and Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp to block the state from enforcing its “exact match” policy. According to the Associated Press, at least 53,000 voter applications for the upcoming midterm election have been put on hold because of this policy -- and 70% of the voters are African American.
Kemp, whose is the highest-level election official in the state, as well as GOP candidate, is running against Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the state’s house of representatives and the first black female major party candidate for governor. Current polls place the match at a dead heat.
Under the state’s policy, a voter registration and driver’s license, social security, or state ID cards must be an exact match. Typos or misspellings are sufficient reason for a voter to be flagged.
Abrams said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday that the GOP efforts were also intended to incite fear and dissuade voter turnout and she has called for Kemp to resign as secretary of state.
Kemp denies these allegations. Prior to this cycle, Kemp’s office had used exact match but put the policy on hold following a lawsuit until the state legislature passed a law to restore the system.
Voter Suppression in Texas
Also last week, the field director for Democratic Congressional candidate Mike Siegel was arrested in Waller County, Texas while delivering a written demand to update the voter registration status of students at Prairie View A&M University. Jacob Aronowitz was released after a few hours but charged with a misdemeanor of failing to identify himself. His cell phone, eventually returned, had been confiscated.
Texas has one of the toughest voter ID laws in the country, upheld by a federal appeals court in the Fifth Circuit in April where a three-judge panel overturned a lower court ruling that had struck down the law, citing the law did not discriminate against black or Hispanic voters.
The Texas voter ID law requires the address on the ID must match voter registration. Prairie View does not have student mailboxes on campus so students were told by the school to register with a University Drive address. But before the March 2018 primaries, election officials noted the University Drive addresses were not within the voting precinct. The students were permitted to vote in the primaries but were told they would have to fill out change of address forms using their dorm address before Election Day.
The letter delivered by Aronowitz and signed by Siegel, as well as Waller County Democratic Club president and chair, requested that the county take the responsibility of updating the students’ registrations to match the precinct instead of requiring the students to do so. The county maintains that the students may vote if they fill out the change of address forms.
North Dakota
In North Dakota, Native Americans are being targeted in voter suppression efforts. Just weeks before Election Day, the Supreme Court has declined to overturn the state’s voter ID law that required a current street address on voters’ ID. Since many reservations do not use a physical street address, many Native Americans living on reservations or who are homeless use a post office box, which the North Dakota law states is not accepted for voter ID.
Voter ID
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, after the 2010 election, hundreds of measures were introduced in state legislatures throughout the country that placed barriers to voting, from strict photo ID requirements to early voting cutbacks and registration restrictions.
Just under half of US states have voting restrictions. Thirteen states have made their voting ID laws more restrictive. Eleven states have passed laws making it more difficult to register. Six states have cut back on early voting days or hours and three states have made it more challenging to restore voting rights of people with prior convictions.
Fourteen states passed voter restrictions for the first time in 2016 before the presidential election. (Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin).
Last year, Arkansas and North Dakota legislatures both passed voter ID bills signed by the governor of each state and Missouri passed a restrictive law by ballot initiative in 2016. Additional states (Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, and New Hampshire) have added more voting restrictions.
Trump Administration and Voter Suppression
The Trump Justice Department has issued subpoenas demanding millions of individual voting records in North Carolina. Following a backlash, the US Attorney’s office postponed the subpoena deadline to January but requests such as this intimidate and dissuade voters from showing up at the polls.
Shelby County v. Holder
A landmark Supreme Court case in 2013, Shelby v. Holder, paved the way for strict voting restrictions. The Court ruled two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were unconstitutional; Section 5, which required certain states and local governments to get federal preclearance before they could implement any changes in voting laws or practices and Section 4, which determined which jurisdictions would need preclearance, based on history of voting discrimination. Section 5 was not struck own but without Section 4, no jurisdiction would require preclearance.
Since the ruling, almost 1,000 polling places have been closed, in what seems to be targeted to areas with predominantly African American voters.
What’s Ahead?
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are fighting voter suppression efforts in numerous states. While California does not have voter ID laws, it’s crucial for friends and families in states with laws to check for ID and registration requirements, as well as to confirm their registrations are still active, as voter purging occurs in some states, especially if someone has been an inactive voter for several elections.
Beth Cone Kramer is a professional writer living in the Los Angeles area. She covers Resistance Watch and other major issues for CityWatch.)
-cw
