voter suppression – UAB Institute for Human Rights Blog

The Right to Vote And The 2022 Midterms

Though the right to vote was codified as a fundamental human right in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 20th century, voting has been a cornerstone of American democracy since the nation’s founding in 1776 (though it took a while to realize this right for everyone). In order to call itself a representative democracy, the United States must represent its citizens through laws and elected officials, which is executed through free and fair elections with equal access to participating in the voting process. In this article, we will be covering the importance of ensuring voter accessibility, some upcoming voter issues from a human rights standpoint, and, of course, how your vote matters!

Please scroll to the end of this article for information on voter registration, aid in accessing the polls, remote voting options, and how to find your local candidates and docket items.

What are Midterms?

Midterm elections are held in the middle of Presidential terms. In midterm elections, eligible citizens vote for the House and Senate candidates that, if elected, shape national laws and policies. The 2022 midterm elections take place this year on Tuesday, November 8, 2022, and will have a major impact on citizens’ rights on both the state and national level. These elections determine which political party will hold the majority in the houses of Congress for the next two years, which can affect everything from the federal budget to national and international policy. Check the current midterms forecast here to see how the House, Senate, and your state elections are predicted to go.

Each Vote Matters

The most common response I receive when asking why my peers choose not to vote is the thought that, “one vote cannot make a difference”. History disagrees. The 2020 presidential election saw a record voter turnout, with nearly two thirds of all eligible voters (158.4 million people) showing up to the polls. However, midterm elections historically have 10-20% lower voter turnout than presidential elections. For example, the 2018 midterm elections only saw 113 million votes, which is roughly 53% of the eligible voter population; and that was still the highest voter turnout for a midterm election in four decades with a historic average of roughly 40%. That means the elected officials who vote on crucial national policies like minimum wage, education, housing and healthcare are only representative of less than half of Americas eligible voters.

In addition, following the Supreme Court’s decision of Dobbs vs Jackson in June 2022, we have seen a large change in voter demographics as historically conservative states like Kansas, Ohio and Alaska observe spikes in young, female voters and Democrat registrations. On September 13, 2022, Democrat Mary Peltola was sworn in as the first Alaskan Native to be elected as an Alaskan representative in Congress. States that have been dependably Republican for decades are now facing a new population of politically active citizens flocking to all forms of civil engagement in order to change their states, for the present and the future.

The Voter Issues

As we get closer to the midterm elections, it is important that we recognize both the dangers and the potential solutions that could be determined by the vote this upcoming November. Below you will find some of the largest human rights realms that will be affected by the outcome of the midterms.

Voter Issue: Abortion Rights

In the wake of Dobbs v Jackson, the right to elective abortions has become a prioritized and contentious voting issue for the 2022 midterms. Currently, 26 states are likely, planning to, or have already restricted access to elective abortions following Dobbs. The Pew Charitable Trusts used recent data to create the map below:

For the first time in five decades, local and state representatives will now determine whether women and people who can get pregnant in your state will have access to what was considered a nationally protected right under Roe v Wade. Beyond the simple matter of legal access, those elected to your state governments have the ability to further restrict or protect the right to abortion in your state. On the national level, those elected to Congress this November will be voting on policies like the Women’s Health Protection Act; a piece of federal legislature that would protect abortion access nationwide.

While we are still two months away from elections, there are many signals that abortion will be one of the largest voter issues this election season. The very demographic of voter registrations has shifted following the Dobbs decision in June, with a rise in female, young, and Democrat voter registrations nationwide. In Kansas, a state with a long history of voting red (56% of Kansas voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2020), an anti-abortion referendum was struck down by 59% of votes. This is the first time since Dobbs was decided that restrictive abortion legislation was struck down by voters. It was also a clear display of voter participation shifting the partisan norm as a deeply conservative state was met at the polls by voters, impassioned with protecting reproductive rights.

Source: “Vote Earth Tree” by Earth Hour Global is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Voter Issue: Climate Change

The United Nations passed a resolution in July of 2022 that declares a clean, healthy environment is a universal human right. In addition, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act plans to tackle both economic and environmental issues by majorly investing in clean energy production and creating jobs in the industry. Unsurprisingly, the Pew Research Center found that energy policy and climate change are two predominant issues voters will consider when casting their votes in November.

Source: Valeriya via Getty Images/iStockphoto

Voter Issue: Healthcare

The right to health is an inclusive right, defined by the United Nations as encompassing accessibility, quality, and availability amongst other qualities. While the aforementioned Inflation Reduction Act plans to lower drug costs for Medicare recipients, America still stands alone as the only developed nation in the world that does not have Universal Healthcare.

With chronic, severe or uncommon conditions, constant full-time employment may be the only way to gain affordable insurance that provides access to vital drugs and treatments. Insulin and Epi-Pens are two life-saving essential drugs that American citizens experience being denied access to because they cannot afford out of pocket costs. A simple ambulance ride can cost upwards of $1,200, an amount many Americans could not pay without incurring debt. With bankruptcy and extreme medical woes being legitimate fears for American citizens without health insurance, it is easy to see why 60% of voters say that healthcare policy is very important to their vote in the midterm elections.

Voter Accessibility And Suppression

Voter suppression, whether passive or active, is a real issue in 2022. It is crucial that we recognize the ways in which voter accessibility is inhibited, especially in the discussion of voter turnout and how that affects who is truly represented in the US Government. Lack of accessibility and excessive voter registration requirements are detrimental to our voter turnout, and contribute to feelings of helplessness and voter apathy.

One of the largest inhibitors of active voters is pure accessibility. The US Justice Department states that, “Title II of the ADA requires state and local governments… ensure that people with disabilities have a full and equal opportunity to vote. The ADA’s provisions apply to all aspects of voting”. While some cite mail-in voting as a solution to physically inaccessible polling locations, the DOJ continues to specify that, “Any alternative method of voting must offer voters with disabilities an equally effective opportunity to cast their votes in person,” meaning that simply offering a mail-in vote option is not just insufficient; it is illegal. Despite this, the American Bar Association has found that “persons with disabilities made up one-sixth of eligible voters in the 2016 election, yet only 40 percent of polling places were accessible.” Both persons with disabilities and the older population are greatly impacted by this lack of accessibility.

While accessibility at physical voting locations is a major issue, the voter process begins with voter registration; a procedure that can be incredibly inhibiting. Voter ID requirements are one of the primary obstructions across the board when citizens attempt to register to vote. Burdensome voter identification restrictions are explained as necessary security measures, but their policy outcome is that citizens who are eligible to vote are unable to due to the expensive and time-consuming process necessary to obtain government IDs. While the average percent of eligible voters who lack a government-issued photo ID is roughly 11% per the Brennan Center’s research, that amount is significantly higher amongst minority groups, low-income people (15%), young voters 18-24 (18%) and old voters 64 or above (18%). The highest category though is African-American citizens, who reported a staggering 25% of voting-age citizens without eligible IDs. In a nation with a history of civil rights abuses, institutional racism and voter suppression, modern voter ID laws must be re-evaluated in order to uphold the integrity of the electoral system in America.

Additional voter restriction issues include lack of public transportation to polling sites, deceptive practices, racial and partisan gerrymandering, employers not providing time off, long lines, prolific jailed, previously jailed and ex-felon disenfranchisement. A representative democracy must represent its people, and to do that its people must be able to vote.

Resources:

Please click HERE to register to vote. If you are interested in absentee or mail in voting options, please check out this page where you can speak to an agent if you have any additional questions!
VoteRiders is an amazing nonprofit that helps voters to obtain their necessary documentations, and can help provide rides to the DMV to obtain photo IDs and rides to the polls through their volunteer service! Their organization will also cover any fees necessary in the ID process, so please check them out if their resources would be helpful to you or if you are interested in volunteering with them! You can also reach their help line at 888-338-8743
Rock the Vote provides helpful information on voting in your state, walks you through the registration process and provides helpful reminders for upcoming voter deadlines!
To learn more about voter suppression or to join the fight against voter ID restrictions and voter suppression nationwide, please check out the ACLU and the Brennan Center today!
Find the forecast for your State’s midterm election results here

Voter Fraud and Voter Suppression: America’s Legacy of Eliminating the Right to Vote

vote 1 — Polling Station. Source: Pete. Creative Commons.

Ever since Joe Biden secured enough electoral college votes to be considered the President-Elect, the word “fraud” has been used in many capacities. Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans have been calling for recounts of the votes in many states, due to claims of voter fraud. The New York Times published an article where top election officials in all 50 states reported if they saw any evidence of fraud and none of them were able to report an issue. The only one that did not respond at all was Texas, where the Lieutenant Governor offered a $1 million reward for any form of evidence of fraud. In the 2016 election, Trump also claimed fraud occurred, even going so far as to appointing a commission for the 2016 election. This commission was unable to find any credible evidence for fraud. There have been instances throughout history of individual level voter fraud. There are even some cases of more organized instances of voter fraud such as in Chicago in 1982 and in Brooklyn in 1984. However, these cases were never to the extent that could swing a presidential election and since then jurisdictions have tightened their laws and technology surrounding voting has evolved.

With this have come many claims that mail in ballots could be the source of any possible voting fraud. While mail in ballots have always been used (think absentee ballots), there was a significant increase of usage this year due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the last two federal presidential elections, nearly one in four Americans voted by using the mail in ballot system. There have been increases in voting by mail in ballots over the years and even with these increases, fraud rates have remained very, very small. There are many tools to address some very valid security concerns when it comes to mail in ballots. The primary method for determining and preventing mail in voter fraud is identity verification. Each voter is required to include personal identifying information such as their address, driver’s license number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. This information is used to match the mail in ballot with the information stored on voter registration rolls. The signature on every ballot is matched with the corresponding signature on the voter registration record. Bar codes are also utilized to track ballot processing and help voters understand where their ballot is in the process. The bar codes are also used to help states identify any possible duplicate ballots. Similarly, ballot tracking programs allow the United States Postal Service to track a ballot from drop off to delivery. Anyone who commits voter fraud by using mail in ballots is considered a felon and could receive $10,000 in fines.

vote 2 — Vote by Mail. Source: outtacontext. Creative Commons.

This current focus on alleged voter fraud completely disregards the systemic disenfranchisement of people of color within the United States, especially in regards to their right to vote. Despite non-Hispanic white people being a shrinking percentage of the United States, they have held tightly onto their political power through discriminatory practices that go back many centuries. In the 2020 election, this power was very clearly shrinking and more desperate attempts to hold on to it were made. These included slowing down the mail by taking away funding from the United States Postal Service, hurriedly appointing a Supreme Court justice, shutting down polling places in Black communities, refusing to count people of color in the 2020 census, calling for the election to be over before all of the ballots have been counted, and not allowing public schools and government agencies to discuss the long American history of disenfranchising non-white voters. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in the Shelby County v. Holder decision to remove the “preclearance” requirement. The preclearance requirement required states with a history of discrimination against non-white voters to get federal authorization for any changes they make to voting laws and rules. After the removal of this requirement, discrimination against BIPOC communities has persisted in many states, if not all.

One such state where we can clearly see the effects of the Shelby County v. Holder case is Georgia. In Georgia, the demographics have been rapidly changing and it has become a battleground state in elections over the past few years. Brian Kemp, the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia, worked hard to close polling places in Black communities, eliminate resources for election officials in Black communities, and removing people of color from voting lists. In Georgia counties like Fulton and Cobb that are becoming more and more diverse by the year, the wait time for voting was over 6 hours. The consolidation of polling locations due to the pandemic did contribute to the extended wait time. In some areas, Georgians waited for 11 hours to vote. In others, people waited in line and voted, all within 10 minutes. An analysis from Propublica found that within Georgia, predominately black precincts were more likely to have the longest wait times for voting even though those were the areas where a majority of new voter registrations occurred. It was largely due to these tactics that Stacy Abrams narrowly lost the Georgia governor race to Kemp. Since then, Abrams has been a champion for Black voters, pulling together one of the biggest voter registration campaigns in Georgia and in the United States. It is thanks to her hard work that Georgia flipped blue during the 2020 presidential race.

vote 3 — Voting Lines. Source: bunnicula. Creative Commons.

In 2018, Stacy Abrams began a large voter registration project in Georgia and it is to her effort that Biden owes his victory in Georgia. In the 2016 election, 500,000 black Americans voted in Georgia. In 2020, more than twice this number voted, making 1.2 million black voters in Georgia this year. Of all of the new voters in Georgia, registered after November 2018, half are black and 45% are under 30, two demographics that tend to vote bluer. Many other black women worked with Abrams to ensure this victory. Such advocates include Nsé Ufot, Helen Butler, Deborah Scott, and Tamieka Atkins. This is a long and mostly overlooked tradition of black women leading the charge for voting rights

Despite the adamant refusal to acknowledge the history of oppression of people of color by white people, these 2020 voter suppression tactics are reminiscent of the voter suppression measures used during the Jim Crow era. During this era, poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation factors were used to keep Black and low income populations from voting. Now, officials in Florida require people convicted of a felony, primarily black men due to over policing, to pay all of their court fines and fees before allowing them to vote. Some states, including Texas, have determined that officials do not have to notify voters if their absentee ballot was rejected. Fake poll watchers are encouraged by the sitting President to intimidate voters. The claims of voter fraud largely aimed at black and Latino communities have not changed in the years between the Jim Crow era and 2020.This is not just a problem within the southern states, as it is often believed. Proof of voter oppression is found in New York, Connecticut, and New Hampshire along with many other states. When discussing voter fraud, it is important to discuss all of the injustices voters have faced this election cycle. The refusal to change current discriminatory policies and the persistent continuation of new voter suppression tactics show an inherent disregard for the rights of many communities. It is clear that no election changing voter fraud has occurred this election cycle, however the conversation remains centered around this subject instead of addressing the number of people of color who were unable to vote due to purposeful legislation created by largely white lawmakers.