Voter suppression

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Background

Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization, activating otherwise inactive voters, or registering new supporters. Voter suppression, instead, attempts to reduce the number of voters who might vote against a candidate or proposition.

The tactics of voter suppression range from minor changes that make voting less convenient, to physically intimidating prospective voters and even physically attacking prospective voters, which is illegal. Voter suppression can be effective if a significant number of voters are intimidated or disenfranchised. In 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Shelby v. Holder that voting laws had resulted in voter suppression and voter discrimination.

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Voter Suppression in Canada

Shortly before the Canadian 2011 Federal Election, vote suppression tactics were exercised by issuing robocalls and live calls to falsely advise voters that their polling station had changed. The locations offered by these messages were intentionally false, often to lead voters several hours from the correct stations, and often identified themselves illegally as coming from Elections Canada.

In litigation brought by The Council of Canadians, a federal court found that such fraud had occurred and had probably been perpetrated by someone with access to the Conservative Party of Canada's voter database, including its information about voter preferences. The court stated that the evidence did not prove that the Conservative Party of Canada or its successful candidates were directly involved. It did, however, criticize the Conservative Party of Canada for making "little effort to assist with the investigation". The court did not annul the result in any of six electoral ridings where the electoral fraud had occurred, because it concluded that the number of votes affected had been too small to affect the outcome.

Voter suppression in the United States

In the United States, elections are administered locally, and forms of voter suppression vary among jurisdictions. At the founding of the United States, the right to vote in most states was limited to property-owning white males. Over time, the right to vote was formally granted to racial minorities, women, and youth. During the later 19th and early 20th centuries, Southern states  [Southern United States] passed Jim Crow laws to suppress poor and racial minority voters - such laws included poll taxes,   literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. Most of these voter suppression tactics were made illegal after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even after the repeal of the Jim Crow laws that were implemented by these statutes, there have been repetitive incidents of racial discrimination against voters in Southern States. Specifically, in 2018, 87,000 people in Georgia were unable to vote because of late registration. Many of the states with the strictest voting regulations are swing states, which have been enacted primarily by politicians who represent the Republican Party. According to AMP Reports, many people who were predicted to be in favor of voting for the Democratic Party had their ballot dismissed, as the study showed in an analysis that "A disproportionate number of those potential voters were people of color or young voters, groups that typically favor Democrats." The history of the previous Jim Crow regulations in the Southern states affects the voter suppression today because people that fall into the minority category often have their vote dismissed, due to manipulation of voting regulations.

In 2013, voter ID laws arose following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which some argue amounts to voter suppression against African-Americans.

In Texas, a voter ID law requiring a driver's license, passport, military identification, or gun permit, was repeatedly found to be intentionally discriminatory. Texas's election laws could be put back under the control of the U.S. Department of Justice  [United States Department of Justice]. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however, the U.S. Department of Justice has expressed support for Texas's ID law. Jeff Sessions was accused by Coretta Scott King in 1986 of trying to suppress the Black vote. A similar voter ID law in North Dakota, which would have disenfranchised large numbers of Native Americans, was also overturned.

In Wisconsin, a federal judge found that the state's restrictive voter ID law led to "real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities"; and, given that there was no evidence of widespread voter impersonation in Wisconsin, found that the law was "a cure worse than the disease." In addition to imposing strict voter ID requirements, the law cut back on early voting, required people to live in a ward for at least 28 days before voting, and prohibited emailing absentee ballots to voters.

Other controversial measures include shutting down Department of Motor Vehicles offices in minority neighborhoods, making it more difficult for residents to obtain voter IDs; shutting down polling places in minority neighborhoods; systematically depriving precincts in minority neighborhoods of the resources they need to operate efficiently, such as poll workers and voting machines; and purging voters from the voter rolls shortly before an election.

Often, voter fraud is cited as a justification for such laws even when the incidence of voter fraud is low. In Iowa, lawmakers passed a strict voter ID law with the potential to disenfranchise 260,000 voters. Out of 1.6 million votes cast in Iowa in 2016, there were only 10 allegations of voter fraud; none were cases of impersonation that a voter ID law could have prevented. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, the architect of the bill, admitted, "We've not experienced widespread voter fraud in Iowa."

In May 2017, President Donald Trump established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, for the purpose of preventing voter fraud. Critics have suggested its true purpose is voter suppression. Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a staunch advocate of strict voter ID laws and a proponent of the Crosscheck system  [Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program]. ne>Crosscheck< is a national database designed to check for voters who are registered in more than one state by comparing names and dates of birth. Researchers at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania,   Harvard University, and Microsoft found that for every legitimate instance of double registration it finds, Crosscheck's algorithm returns approximately 200 false positives. Kris Kobach has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas.

Social Media Impact on Voting Suppression

Social media platforms, specifically Facebook, contains 2.4 billion active users. The content in regards to election voting on social media includes misinformation and disinformation, which contributes to voter suppression. The Brennan Center for Justice identifies several kinds of "voter suppression messages" used by Russia-linked accounts in the 2016 United States presidential election: misinformation about the time or location for voting, promoting attacks against Clinton to discourage supporters, and urging voters to boycott the election or to cast a vote for a third-party candidate.

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Additional Reading

"The denial of this sacred right [to vote] is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition," Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1957. Now, on 2021-01-18 - one day after we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday  Martin Luther King Jr. Day, observed on the third Monday of January each year] and one year after a mob of right-wing   Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a free and fair election  [2021 United States Capitol attack, 2021-01-06] - the United States Senate is debating voting rights legislation aimed at stopping voter suppression. But the legislation appears doomed to failure.

The right to vote is "preservative of all rights," the Supreme Court of the United States said in 1886 in the case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins  [Wikipedia: Yick Wo v. Hopkins]. The Constitution of the United States mentions the right to vote in five separate places - the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments, each of which empowers the United States Congress to enact "appropriate legislation" to enforce the protected right. Yet right-wingers - enabled by congressional Republicans and reactionary members of the Supreme Court - are mounting a full-court press to prevent marginalized groups from voting.

During the Reconstruction era after the American Civil War, the 15th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution  [Wikipedia: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the federal government and the states from denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

As a result of the civil rights movement, Congress passed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce the 15th Amendment. The 15th Amendment links racial discrimination with the right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) forbids voting changes if their purpose or effect is to diminish the ability of citizens to vote on account of race, color or language minority status. "The right to vote was the crown jewel of the civil rights struggle," said Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Supreme Court Uses States' Rights Rationale to Usurp Congress' Power

Although Congress reauthorized the VRA four timeswith strong bipartisan majorities and each reauthorization was signed by a Republican president, the Roberts Court  [John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States] has now usurped the power of Congress and eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the 2013 case of Shelby County v. Holder  [Wikipedia: Shelby County v. Holder], a 5-4 right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) which required that jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination obtain a preclearance requirement from the Justice Department or a panel of three federal judges in the District of Columbia before making voting changes. [Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that covered jurisdictions receive federal approval, known as "reclearancep", before implementing changes to their election laws. A covered jurisdiction has the burden of proving that the change does not have the purpose or effect of discriminating on the basis of race or language minority status; if the jurisdiction fails to meet this burden, the federal government will deny preclearance and the jurisdiction's change will not go into effect.] Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of himself, Clarence Thomas,   Samuel Alito,   Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy.

The majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took a states' rights approach (citing "equal sovereignty") which will allow states to enact racist voting laws. They looked only to the end of discriminatory voting tests and the lack of disparity between whites and non-whites in voter registration and voter turnout since the enactment of the VRA of 1965. The U.S. Supreme Court then concluded that the formula set forth in Section 4 for requiring Section 5 preclearance need no longer be used.

At that time, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Sonia Sotomayor,   Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, filed a scathing dissent. "Hubris is a fit word for today's demolition of the VRA," Ginsburg wrote. "Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet," Ginsburg noted. Moreover, the dissent explained, "the VRA is grounded in Congress' recognition of the 'variety and persistence' of measures designed to impair minority voting rights."

The dissent said discrimination is "more subtle" today, citing "second generation barriers" to voting that reduce the impact of minority votes. Ginsburg mentioned racial gerrymandering and at-large voting  [multiple non-transferable vote] instead of district-by-district voting in cities with sizable Black populations. Ginsburg also listed vote dilution (vote splitting; drawing redistricting maps in a way that minimizes the voting strength of the non-white population), curtailment of early voting, moving polling places away from predominantly Black neighborhoods, and purging voter rolls of many Black voters.

After Shelby County v. Holder, state after state enacted - and continue to enact - voter suppression laws. They prevent easy access to polling places, provide for early closure of polls in Black and Brown communities, make it harder to receive mail ballots, reduce early voting, restrict voter registration, and prevent the accurate counting of votes. States including Georgia and Texas have drawn extreme gerrymandered maps which entrench the power of Republican politicians.

Using baseless and alarmist claims about "voter fraud" (which is virtually nonexistent) as a justification, states are passing voter identification laws that make it harder for marginalized communities to vote. GOP-led states insert Republicans into the election process and empower state legislatures to overturn presidential election results even after certification by election officials.

In 2020, the Supreme Court made it more difficult to mount legal challenges to voter suppression measures. The Supreme Court held 6-3, again along ideological lines, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee  [Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee], that two Arizona voter suppression laws (ballot harvesting [ballot collection] and out-of-precinct voting) did not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which forbids any voting procedure that "results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race."

Shelby Invited Congress to Draft Another Preclearance Formula for "Current Conditions"

"Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions," the Shelby County v. Holder majority stated. Two bills are pending in Congress to address the "current conditions" of voter suppression. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act  [Wikipedia: John Lewis Voting Rights Act] would establish new criteria for determining which states and political subdivisions must obtain preclearance requirement before changes to voting practices may take effect. States need preapproval based on the number of voting rights violations they have had in the past 25 years. After 10 years without violations, they no longer require preclearance.

The Freedom to Vote Act  [Wikipedia: Unsuccessful narrower proposal: Freedom to Vote Act] cracks down on voter suppression. It would facilitate early voting, allow same-day voting and online voter registration, protect voters from purges, ban partisan gerrymandering, mandate disclosure of major campaign donors, prevent state restrictions on mail-in voting, require the counting of votes that are postmarked on or before Election Day and arrive at polling places within a week, set uniform standards for voter ID, provide that no one has to wait longer than 30 minutes to vote, and require voter-verified paper records.

The United States House of Representatives has passed a voting rights bill that contains provisions of both the John Lewis Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. On 2022-01-18, the Democrats in the United States Senate started debate on the bill with a simple majority. Although there are enough votes to pass the bill with a simple majority, Democrats also need 50 votes to change Senate rules to allow cutting off debate and moving to a vote. The filibuster effectively requires 60 votes (including 10 Republicans) to advance legislation. Democrats do not have a majority to change the filibuster rules because Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) oppose overriding the filibuster for voting rights legislation.

Democrats are considering procedural maneuvers to allow the bill to pass with 51 votes without altering the filibuster rule. They would force Republicans to mount a talking filibuster to hold the Senate floor with procedural motions and speeches. It could go on for days or weeks, and Democrats hope that Republicans would tire of it and relent. But this strategy, which hasn't been used in decades, poses major challenges. It is, in effect, a Hail Mary pass. "I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting. They won't let the majority senators vote," Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1963.

As the Senate debates these voting rights bills, the American people will see for themselves how racist Republicans, aided and abetted by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are stonewalling legislation that would protect the sacred right of everyone to vote.

In 2021-04, as Republican-controlled states began passing bills that will restrict voting in upcoming elections, cable and media giant Comcast  [Comcast Corporation] put out a statement declaring its opposition to the measures. "We believe that all Americans should enjoy equitable access to secure elections and we have long supported and promoted voter education, registration and participation campaigns across the country to achieve that goal," Comcast said in a statement it provided to Deadline  [Deadline Hollywood, 2021-04-01: ViacomCBS Issues Statement Opposing Georgia Voting Bill; Comcast, AT&T Also Weigh In  |  local copy]. "Efforts to limit or impede access to this vital constitutional right for any citizen are not consistent with our values."

In the following months, however, Comcast and its political action committee (PAC) made donations to several Republican lawmakers who authored voter suppression bills that were signed into law last year [2021]. At least 19 states enacted 33 laws that further restrict access to voting in 2021, according to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan institute Brennan Center for Justice. On 2021-10-15, Comcast donated $1,000 to Florida Senator Dennis Baxley, the sole sponsor of Florida Senate Florida Senate Bill 90 (2021)  [Florida SB 90 (2021)  |  Wikipedia; Florida Senate Bill 90 (2021)], a 48-page bill that, among other measures, makes it a misdemeanor to give water - or anything else - to people waiting in line to vote in the sweltering Florida heat, similar to a restriction that first appeared in Georgia Republicans' suppression bill. Baxter's bill eliminates 24/7 ballot drop boxes and requires such boxes to be monitored at all times and only available during in-person voting hours. It also requires voters seeking an absentee ballot to submit a driver's license or Social Security number and requires voters to reapply for mail ballots more often, among its many other provisions that make voting more difficult.

The League of Women Voters of Florida,   Black Voters Matter Fund, and Florida voters have filed a lawsuit to stop Baxley's bill, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law in 2021-05. The lawsuit argues that the bill is designed to make it more difficult for seniors, minorities, and young people to vote and violates people's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Comcast made several other donations to voter suppression bill sponsors after it put out its statement, Sludge  [ReadSludge.com; no Wikipedia entry] found by reviewing donations to the sponsors of new restrictive voting laws identified by the Brennan Center. Comcast donated $1,000 in 2021-09 to Alabama Republican State Representative Alan Baker, the sponsor of a new law that shortens the window of time people have for requesting an absentee ballot. Comcast also made donations to the sponsors of new Brennan Center-identified voter suppression laws in Utah and Kansas.

Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co.  [disambiguation: Merck] signed a pro-voting rights statement that was published as an advertisement in The New York Times on 2021-05-14. "For American democracy to work for any of us, we must ensure the right to vote for all of us," the ad reads. "We call upon all Americans to join us in taking a nonpartisan stand for this most basic and fundamental right of all Americans." After signing the ad, Merck donated $1,000 in 2021-09 to Florida's Dennis Baxley and $1,000 in 2021-10 to Republican Texas State Senator Lois Kolkhorst, the primary sponsor of one of the state's two new voter suppression laws and a cosponsor of the other one.

Lois Kolkhorst's bill, Texas SB 1111 (2021)  [Texas Senate Bill 1111 (2021)], signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on 2021-06, limits the types of addresses people can use to register to vote in ways that could be difficult for people who move often or are homeless. The bill says that people can't use addresses where they do not live full time, and it allows voting officials to demand voters show documents to prove their place of residence. With few exceptions, Texans would not be able to use commercial post office boxes as their registration addresses, a practice that Democratic attorney Marc Elias says is often used by churches that help homeless people register to vote.

Lois Kolkhorst was also one of the 14 cosponsors of Texas Senate Bill 1 (2021) [SB 1 (2021)  |  LegiScan:  Texas Senate Bill 1 (2021)], an omnibus voter suppression law that bans drive-through voting and bans 24-hour voting locations, requires voters to provide driver's license or Social Security numbers to request absentee ballots, prohibits election officials from proactively mailing out ballots, says poll watchers can not be denied "free movement" in polling places, and more. The Brennan Center is suing Governor Greg Abbott in an attempt to stop the law, which it says is "a reaction to Texas's changing electorate, which is now more racially diverse and younger than ever before."

JPMorgan Chase also donated to a cosponsor of Texas SB 1, giving $1,000 from its political action committee (PAC) to Senator Dawn Buckingham in 2021-09. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon released a statement in 2021-03 saying that "as state capitals debate election laws, we believe voting must be accessible and equitable," and that "We regularly encourage our employees to exercise their fundamental right to vote, and we stand against efforts that may prevent them from being able to do so."

AT&T Inc. is another company whose political donations seem to contradict its public statements. "We believe the right to vote is sacred and we support voting laws that make it easier for more Americans to vote in free, fair and secure elections," reads an 2021-04 statement from AT&T CEO John Stankey. "We are working together with other businesses through groups like the Business Roundtable  [Wikipedia: Business Roundtable, a nonprofit lobbyist association based in Washington, D.C. whose members are chief executive officers of major United States companies] to support efforts to enhance every person's ability to vote."

In 2021-09, AT&T donated $1,000 to Alabama Republican Wes Allen, the chief sponsor of Alabama House Bill 285 (H.B. 285), a new state law that prohibits election officials from setting up curbside voting, ballot drop boxes, or putting voting machines outside of polling locations. AT&T's Oklahoma PAC also donated $2,500 that month to Oklahoma Senate Republican Majority Leader Kim David, the sponsor of a new state law that shortens the deadline for applying for a mail-in ballot from 7 days before an election to 15 days before the election, among other provisions. AT&T and its PACs also donated $500 to Florida's Dennis Baxley in 2021-03, after the senator had formally introduced his voter suppression bill, and made donations to sponsors of Brennan Center-identified restrictive voting laws in Utah and Kansas.

Other companies and organizations that donated to the sponsors of Brennan Center-identified state voter suppression measures after publicly denouncing them earlier this year include General Motors, and Planned Parenthood, whose PACs contributed to Democratic New York senators who cosponsored a bill that shortens the window for applying for a mail-in ballot, and Microsoft, which donated to a Kansas Republican representative who chairs the committee that sponsored a new law limiting mail-in voting.

AT&T, Merck, and Comcast did not respond to Sludge's requests for comment on how their donations to the sponsors of voter suppression bills relate to their public expressions in favor of voting rights. JPMorgan Chase declined to comment.

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