Voter suppression
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Voter suppression is a phrase used by critics to describe a given action as an undue limitation on the ability of citizens to cast countable ballots in an election. For example, some argue that laws requiring identification to cast a vote or maintenance of voting rolls before an election are forms of voter suppression, or attempts to make voting more difficult for citizens.[1] These same policies, however, are considered to be essential processes for ensuring fair elections by those who see identification laws or voter roll maintenance as methods for ensuring that only those legally allowed to vote cast ballots in a given election.[2]
This article describes usage and debate about the phrase voter suppression. On this page, you will find:
- A summary of how the phrase is used when discussing voter identification laws.
- A summary of how the phrase is used when discussing voter list maintenance.
- Background on and historical examples of voter suppression.
Usage case studies
The phrase voter suppression is most often used by those on the political left to refer to policies and activities that are likely to result in fewer people casting ballots in a given election. Many on the political right see election policies and activities—like voter identification laws—as reasonable measures to ensure election integrity.
The following section outlines some of the key instances in which the term is used and arguments from those who do not believe these instances are an accurate application of voter suppression.
Usage around voter identification laws
An example of this disagreement over the usage of voter suppression is interpretation of state laws requiring identification to vote. Voter identification laws require voters to present a form of identification to cast a ballot. Those who argue that voter identification laws constitute voter suppression cite claims that such laws disproportionately affect low-income, minority, and disabled populations who are less likely to have a form of identification that fits state requirements.[3] The ACLU defines voter suppression this way, stating that the term voter suppression encompasses “measures to make it harder for Americans—particularly black people, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities—to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot.”[4] According to the ACLU, voter identification laws have the effect of making certain these groups, on the whole, less likely to vote.[5]
Other organizations and individuals see voter identification laws as necessary for ensuring fair elections by preventing voter fraud. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative nonprofit think tank, states that voter identification laws are one method for guarding against voter fraud. "When someone commits voter fraud, the process is no longer fair, everyone’s vote gets diluted, and in some cases, election results are changed." They continue, “Since states control much of the electoral process, they must pass laws requiring government-issued IDs to vote. That ensures people aren’t stealing others’ identities and their right to vote."[2]
Usage around voter list maintenance
Changes to a jurisdiction’s voter rolls are processes by which names of voters are removed from a state’s list of eligible voters in a given election. This process is typically done to remove ineligible or duplicated voting records in an effort to ensure that only voters eligible in a state or district can cast a ballot in that state or district. Voter list maintenance is often done by consulting the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File or the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address Database.[6]
Voter rolls are also routinely maintained by removing inactive voters, a process that opponents of these methods for voter roll maintenance say takes away a voter’s legal right to cast a ballot.[7] Critics of the process, and those who consider it to be voter suppression, refer to it as a voter roll purge. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, voter roll maintenance is often inaccurate and inspires accusations of voter suppression. The organization writes, “Inevitably, however, dropping voters from the rolls inspires forceful political pushback, as many voting rights activists fear it is a form of voter suppression.”[8] Mother Jones, for instance, calls the practice one designed “to circumvent protections for voters of color, a growing part of the electorate that favored Democratic candidates.”[9]
According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, “Maintaining an accurate voting roll enfranchises voters because it lowers the likelihood of lines at the polls, reduces voter confusion and decreases the number of provisional ballots. Updated records also allow election administrators to plan, to better manage their budget and poll workers, and to improve voter experience.”[10] According to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative, free-market think tank, voter roll maintenance is “about accountability, the rule of law, and clean and fair elections.” The group also notes that maintaining voter rolls ensures fairness because governments have “an obvious interest in only counting the ballots of eligible voters.”[11]
Background
Shelby County v. Holder (2013)
- See also: Shelby County v. Holder
In the 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the United States Supreme Court declared Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional. The ruling focused on preclearance requirements, in which jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in elections had to get the Department of Justice’s approval for changes to election laws. These requirements were removed for all jurisdictions unless the preclearance formula of Section 4(b) was updated by Congress.[12]
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, whose website says the group works "to craft and advance reforms that will make American democracy work, for all," the ruling led to a series of policies that suppressed votes, including voter identification laws and voting law changes in a number of states that previously required preclearance with the Department of Justice. The nonprofit found that “states previously covered by the preclearance requirement have engaged in recent, significant efforts to disenfranchise voters.”[13]
Some argue that voting policies that have taken effect since 2013 have had a disproportionate effect on minority and low-income voters. Stacey Abrams, a former Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, made this claim in a New York Times opinion piece in 2019, writing, “Local and state officials across the country, emboldened by the Supreme Court effectively neutering the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, are shamelessly weakening voter registration, ballot access and ballot-counting procedures.”[14]
Others argue that no evidence justifies the amount of federal power that preclearance requirements demand. In its ruling, the court decided that this section of the Voting Rights Act could not stand without further Congressional action and that Congress had yet to “fashion a coverage formula [for preclearance requirements] grounded in current conditions.” The court ruled that Congress “re-enacted a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.”[15]
The Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative policy institute focused on race and ethnicity, notes that eliminating preclearance requirements correctly asks for proof of discrimination if it occurs. The organization noted in 2015, “The Supreme Court struck down only one provision in the Voting Rights Act, and there are plenty of other voting-rights laws available to ensure that the right to vote is not violated. Those laws require people who think there is discrimination to prove it in court before they can get relief, which is only fair and which is the way that every other civil-rights law works.”[16]
Historical examples
Literacy tests
- See also: Literacy as a requirement for voting
Literacy tests were part of an early twentieth-century system, which included poll taxes, to limit the ability of legal citizens to vote. A literacy test was typically administered to non-white citizens but not to white citizens. In 2005, then-Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) wrote of the effects literacy tests had on African American voting before 1965: “In Alabama, this was a sixty-eight-question survey about obscure aspects of state and federal regulation. Citizens might be asked to recite verbatim long portions of the U.S. Constitution. Some were even asked irrelevant questions such as the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. Black people with Ph.D. and M.A. degrees were routinely told they did not read well enough to pass the test.”[17]
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made a number of changes to voting laws across the country, including an end to the practice of literacy tests as preconditions to voting in an election.
Poll taxes
- See also: Poll tax
Poll taxes were fees levied as a precondition for casting a ballot in an election. Though poll taxes existed in the American colonies as a revenue-raising tax, the issue became linked to voter suppression after the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which gave all men the right to vote. After the amendment passed, 11 Southern states instituted poll taxes aimed at making it nearly impossible for some voters of color to cast a ballot.[18]
Poll taxes were outlawed as a precondition for voting in federal elections in 1964 with the passage of the 24th Amendment. In 1966, the Supreme Court’s decision in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections ruled that poll taxes violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.[18]
See also
- Voting policies in the United States
- Voting Policy
- Electoral fraud
- Arguments about voting policies
- Terms and definitions
Footnotes
- ↑ League of Women Voters, "Fighting Voter Suppression," accessed May 24, 2020
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 The Heritage Foundation, "Safeguarding the Electoral Process," August 19, 2019
- ↑ Brennan Center for Justice, "New Voting Restrictions in America," October 1, 2019
- ↑ American Civil Liberties Union, "Fighting Voter Suppression," accessed May 23, 2020
- ↑ American Civil Liberties Union, "Oppose Voter ID Legislation: Fact Sheet," May 2017
- ↑ U.S. Election Assistance Commission, "Fact Sheet: Voter Registration List Maintenance," March 10, 2017
- ↑ National Pubic Radio, "Are States Purging or Cleaning Voter Registration Rolls?" December 20, 2019
- ↑ The Pew Charitable Trusts, "Polling Places Remain a Target Ahead of November Elections," September 4, 2018
- ↑ Mother Jones, "Republicans Are Trying to Kick Thousands of Voters Off the Rolls During a Pandemic," April 14, 2020
- ↑ The Pew Charitable Trusts, "The Messy Politics of Voter Purges," October 25, 2019
- ↑ Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, "Will Sues Wisconsin Elections Commission," November 13, 2019
- ↑ United States Department of Justice, “Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act,” accessed May 25, 2020
- ↑ Brennan Center for Justice, "The Effects of Shelby County v. Holder," August 6, 2018
- ↑ The New York Times, "Stacey Abrams: We Cannot Resign Ourselves to Dismay and Disenfranchisement," May 15, 2019
- ↑ United States Supreme Court, "Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General, et al.," June 25, 2013
- ↑ Center for Equal Opportunity, "50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act," accessed May 28, 2020
- ↑ American Bar Association, "The Voting Rights Act: Ensuring Dignity and Democracy," April 1, 2005
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Forbes, "For Election Day, A History Of The Poll Tax In America," November 5, 2018
