How to Fight Voter Suppression in 2018

How to Fight Voter Suppression in 2018

The Republican right has developed a playbook for suppressing the votes of the young, the poor, and people of color. Here are some of the most common tactics, and how to fight back.

Recent elections at the state level have yielded some hard-earned wins for progressives. Candidates like Stacey Abrams, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the four Democratic Socialists of America–backed candidates who won state legislative primary races in Pennsylvania represent a new generation of leaders who will shape politics on the left in the next decade. But these candidates and mainstream Democrats alike will face an uphill challenge in November, as they did in 2016, due to persistent, effective Republican-led efforts to suppress voter turnout among the poor, people of color, and younger voters.

Two recent events reveal the extent to which the playing field is being tilted—and how hard it will be to reverse this process. On June 11, in Husted v. Randolph Institute, the Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s mass purges of what it casually and sweepingly defines as “inactive” voters. The decision was in keeping with the courts’ tendency to view registration and voting as an individual burden rather than a public good, and therefore came as little surprise. But this does not make it any less damaging to U.S. democracy.

While that case received ample attention, few noticed that a “random printing error” left 118,000 legally registered voters unregistered for the June 5 primary in Los Angeles County. Perhaps the error truly was random, as the county claimed. Regardless, its effect was the same as an intentional purge: people who had taken the proper and increasingly onerous steps to register were treated as unregistered, and many left their polling places without being able to vote.

The right has succeeded in forcing candidates in the center and left to devote considerable time and resources simply to ensuring that their supporters will be allowed to vote. By necessity, Democratic campaigning is now at least as much about the practicalities of voting—how to register, how to request absentee ballots, how to find polling places, how to confirm the validity of an existing registration, how to help a disenfranchised ex-felon apply for reinstatement, and so on—as it is about the candidate and ideas they’re running on.

Republicans believe unconditionally that higher turnout among the young, the poor, and people of color is damaging to their efforts to stay in power. They’re right, and their campaign to keep these voters away from the polls is not new—it just involves new methods. Ways to keep the poor, African Americans, Latinos, and other “undesirables” from the polls have gotten more sophisticated, more disingenuous, and harder to combat.

In the short term, progressives and liberals have little hope of overturning these measures wholesale. The social and economic inequalities that make them possible are simply too entrenched. But there are a number of important steps we can take to mitigate them, while hopefully paving the way toward a broader restoration of voting rights—namely, by electing people at the state and local levels who reject policies clearly aimed at disenfranchising specific demographic groups.

To that end, the following is an overview of the many manifestations of voter suppression we are likely to see as the 2018 election cycle begins in earnest, along with potential means of fighting back.

Ways to suppress the vote are legion. This is intended only as an overview of some common methods, which include:

1.   Voter ID Requirements
2.   Reduction in State Services
3.   Selective Access to Early Voting
4.   Reduced Early Voting
5.   Cumbersome Information and Access
6.   Purging Inactive Voter Registrations
7.   Unreasonably Strict Matching Requirements
8.   Insufficient, Closed, or Underequipped Polling Stations
9.   Moving Polling Locations
10.   Deadlines for Registration or Absentee Ballot Requests
11.   Felon Disenfranchisement
12.   Debt

Again, there are many more. Structural changes like race-based gerrymandering or imposing at-large elections to deny local representation to minority neighborhoods have the practical impact of suppressing the vote. Those topics, especially gerrymandering (on which the Supreme Court issued two more decisions on Monday), can fill volumes.

One could list many more, nonpartisan structural factors depressing participation in U.S. elections as well. Elections are on a weekday, not a weekend. Elections are frequent and sometimes irregular. Registration is overwhelmingly the burden of the citizen, not the state. The number of viable candidates in any race is often minimal, partly as a result of the limitations imposed by first-past-the-post rules in a two-party system. Convenience voting methods like mail-in balloting and early voting vary in availability by location. Americans are exhorted to vote from the earliest ages, as a vital civic duty, yet nothing about the way voting is done suggests that the rhetoric is sincere.

For brevity, I have limited the current summary to methods specifically dealing with access to and the mechanics of voting. Let’s dive in.

Voter ID Requirements are the most visible and widespread form of voter suppression we have witnessed in the past decade. They have been passed in many states in response to the nonexistent problem of in-person voter impersonation or double-voting. Numerous studies have demonstrated that Voter ID requirements suppress black and Latino votes (see for example Hajnal et al 2017), and courts have tended to agree.

It is important to note that although voter ID laws are now common, most state laws do not have strict requirements. Nine states—Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, and Arizona—will not allow an individual to vote without an approved ID. In every other state, a voter may establish their identity with something other than a government Photo ID; an affidavit of identity is often sufficient. Be ready to provide citizens with information on acceptable forms of ID as well as alternatives if no ID is obtained. If resources permit, organize vanpools to take voters to state offices where ID can be obtained; African-American churches and community groups are already doing this. Anyone with a car can be a part of the solution.

Additionally, absentee voting can be done in some states without showing identification. This is an appealing alternative to election-day polling places for voters already registered.

Indianapolis, with most of the area’s black and Latino voters, is at the center in Marion County, with just one early voting site. No complex analysis is necessary to understand the pattern or intent here—early voting is less available where African-Americans, Latinos, and “blue” voters in general are found. In suburban, largely white-collar counties, there was no difficulty in offering a number of early voting locations in 2016. Happily, activists and concerned state and local elected officials succeeded in affecting a change in Indiana’s policies to ensure broader distribution of early voting centers. Less happily, those changes will not be fully implemented until 2019.

Early voting is an especially convenient alternative for hourly workers with inflexible schedules or people without regular transportation. Where it is limited, seek alternatives like requesting an absentee ballot. As explained below, even many states that impose restrictions on requesting absentee ballots have reasonable workarounds.

Purging is a ham-fisted means of throwing registered voters off the books. There can be legitimate reasons for purging, but in practice it is used to de-register large portions of the electorate. A recent study demonstrates that millions of registrations at risk of being purged are of active, properly registered voters. People with common names or similar names and the same date of birth are often flagged as double registrants. The measure that the Supreme Court recently approved in Ohio—striking voters who fail to vote in consecutive elections, even if properly registered—is even more extreme.

The effort to purge voters is ongoing, widespread, and aggressive. In the short term, there is no good solution. Candidates relying on support from younger, less affluent, mobile populations will simply have to redouble their already disproportionate efforts to register and inform voters.

If time permits, consider volunteering as a poll worker. Encourage voters not to leave a polling place without having cast a ballot unless ordered to do so by a uniformed law enforcement officer and, whenever possible, to demand backup paper ballots in jurisdictions with broken or insufficient electronic equipment. (If any voter is removed from a polling place, document the removal with video as long as it is safe to do so.)

The fight for the restoration of voting rights for felons must be at the top of social and economic justice movements’ agenda in the near future. When engaging in voter registration activities, always carry paperwork and information for the process of restoring post-conviction voting rights in your state. Never give summary information and assume the voter will follow up later.

At a broader level, look into what campaigns exist in your area to restore voting rights to felons. If possible, coordinate with the local ACLU or other criminal justice advocates to determine if a state or local ballot initiative could work in your community.

In the short term, there is no solution to the underlying problems that cause voter suppression. There are no realistic proposals on the table for overcoming deeply ingrained institutional and popular racism, the amorality of win-at-any-cost partisan lawmaking, and the basic inevitability of ballot access being unequal in an unequal society. Readers already know that wresting control of state legislatures from Republicans and their enablers is an important step in restoring some minimal semblance of fairness to registering, voting, and counting ballots.

I believe that one of the best weapons against the logistical tricks designed to make voting less convenient, more confusing, and more time-consuming is often available but underutilized: the absentee ballot. This is no panacea. However, it offers immediate relief against some of the forces being brought to bear against communities of color and the poor.

When making face-to-face contact with voters, if they are already registered, suggest that they make an absentee ballot request. If you have access to a phone or tablet for this purpose, it can be done in barely a minute in some states. Alternately, carry paper forms and show the voter how to fill them out on the spot.

Requesting a ballot by mail eliminates a number of the issues raised here: understaffed or insufficient polling locations, polling location changes, limited access to early voting, and more. If you can register a voter, you can also request an absentee ballot for him or her in most jurisdictions. Twenty-seven states, as well as D.C., offer no-questions-asked absentee ballots to any registered voter. In many of the remaining states, the list of acceptable reasons for requesting a ballot by mail is long. Indiana, for example, offers eleven reasons, including inability to get transportation to the polls and being scheduled for work during polling hours.

Information feels like a weak weapon in the face of a concerted political effort to disenfranchise voters based on their race. And it is. The political forces behind the regime of voter suppression under the guise of preventing “fraud” have the upper hand. Republicans control the majority of state legislatures, many governors’ mansions, and many state court systems.

Nothing less than a total commitment to registering voters, disseminating information about circumventing and defeating suppressive policies, and skinning one’s knuckles knocking on doors will be enough. We cannot tweet this problem away—only time, sweat, and in-person activism will work. But anyone can contribute positively, even if time and resources are limited. Consider #PostcardsToVoters, which can be done by individuals in just a few minutes at a time or, better yet, as an organized social activity. Personalized appeals have a strong positive impact; research shows that one-on-one contact, rather than by broad junk-mail appeals to Everyone, effectively boosts turnout.

Looking further into the future, progressives need a broad strategy to restore and expand voting rights for all Americans, in addition to the immediate practical measures listed here. Of course, any strategy to boost turnout will ultimately have to address much more than the mechanics of voting. It’s not just lack of efficacy but a broader sense of disenfranchisement that keeps many citizens away from the voting booth; on average, at least a quarter of all potential voters decline to vote even if access is not a barrier. A smart Democratic party might spend less time trying to win converts from the GOP and instead doing more to address the issues of economic, social, and racial inequality that many potential voters on the left feel are not addressed—adequately, or at all—by the candidates on offer.

Still, removing institutional and legal hurdles is an important step. If Democrats retake Congress and/or the presidency in the coming years, there are a several measures they could take to advance this goal.

The first would be to make election day a federal holiday. Curiously absent from the thousands of words published on voting access in recent years is the abandonment of election day as a de facto holiday in the United States. Until the practice tapered off in the 1980s, public institutions like schools and banks closed and employers granted half or full-day leave to employees. (Today, a few still do.) The purpose was not only to encourage voting but also to enable other forms of participation in the election process like serving as election judges, poll watchers, or ground volunteers for their local party or candidate. Now, time off on election day is just one more “luxury” the American worker no longer enjoys.

Automatic voter registration, already being implemented in a small but growing number of places, is another positive measure. This and other technocratic solutions, though, still miss vulnerable populations that move frequently, do not have fixed addresses, or are reluctant to interact with state and local government for fear of repercussions. Election-day registration (EDR), now available in more than one-third of states, makes more sense. By eliminating registration as a process separate from voting, EDR has been demonstrated in several studies to boost turnout by around 5 percent.

It’s important to remember that the current wave of voter-suppression tactics, which began with the emergence of Voter ID laws during the George W. Bush years, is only the most recent failing of the idea of one person, one vote in the United States. The history of disenfranchisement based on gender, race, religion, wealth and more would require the length of several books to cover with justice. But the basic lesson is that there simply is no tradition in the United States of opening wide the door to the voting booth; structurally, nothing about the way American elections are carried out is conducive to maximizing participation. Over time, every effort to make voting more accessible has been contested, and often defeated, by the dominant political faction that felt threatened by the expanded franchise.

It is not a fair fight. Motivated state legislators can throw obstacles at voters faster than activists can respond. And yet, for all the system’s intransigence, for every moment of backlash, history shows that the franchise can continue to be expanded—and must. Every campaign, every community group, every lone activist, can make a difference. It begins with recognizing that the threat to voting rights today is real. State by state, Republicans have been alarmingly effective over the past decade at suppressing voter turnout among the poor, the young, and people of color. But with dedication, these modern modes of voter suppression, too, can be overcome.

Edward Burmila is an assistant professor at Bradley University. He lives in Chicago and blogs politics at Gin and Tacos.