COVID-19, Protests & Voter Suppression

The protests over racial injustice put pressure on those exercising their First Amendment rights to follow through at the ballot box in November. Knowing that the probability of a widely deployed vaccine against the coronavirus by that election is zero, the ability to shift to a wider use of vote-by-mail is beyond obvious. And anything that makes voting difficult, particularly for those minorities and their supporters who are seeking change in the system through lawful means, is fundamentally un-American and violative of the due process/equal protection clauses (5^th and 14^th Amendments) to the US Constitution. Excluding voters is an ugly part of our history. Remember that women were not allowed to vote in federal elections until 1920 (the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution).

We’ve struggled with enfranchising voters since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. That was the time of Jim Crow laws imposing literacy tests (often not applied to voters whose grandfathers were voters, a pre-Civil War rule that obviously excluded blacks), poll taxes and other laws specifically designed to limit voting to white men. For years, vigilantes (e.g., the KKK) stood guard at polling stations to make sure blacks were truly excluded. Local authorities just looked the other way.

The practices were so horrific and so continuous that it took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to end these discriminatory tactics. Those states with the most egregious discriminatory practices were placed under federal supervision. In 2013, the US Supreme Court removed that provision, and that federal supervision was ended: “The 5-4 ruling, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that ‘things have changed dramatically’ in the South in the nearly 50 years since the Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965.” Huffington Post (6/25/13).

Most of those controlled states instantly reinstated voter suppression laws in an effort to keep minorities, particularly African American voters, away from the ballot box. As courts ruled against such practices, the offending legislatures would almost immediately pass a slightly revised version of the discredited statute, an effort that continues into the present day.

Gerrymandering, which was used mercilessly by Democrats (especially the racist Dixiecrats) during reconstruction to keep voting in the South lily white, was adopted in the modern era as a primary GOP tool as state legislatures in the Bible belt became lockstep Republican strongholds. The underlying notion is to dilute voters a state wishes to disenfranchise by twisting and squirming to design voting districts with inappropriate forced pro-incumbent majorities. The above charts present a much better visual explanation. The Supreme Court, not wanting to get involved in the complex process of redefining voting districts, has tried hard to avoid cases involving politically motivated gerrymandering, but that judicial review is approaching and unavoidable. The Court could, however, easily insist that the solution is one for the electorate and not the judiciary. A horrible result.

Other tactics deployed by those in charge of a state’s voting process, often GOP partisan elected or appointed officials, include focusing on voter rolls in pockets of minority voters (supporting Democrats) to disqualify as many people as they can for any number of reasons, often totally fabricated. They may also strategically locate polling stations far from those minority communities, discouraging votes by way of distance or the unfriendly nature of the community where the polling station is located. By taking away a vote-by-mail alternative, the hope is that those voters simply will not vote at all. Hence, we have the massive GOP effort, based on empirically proven false claims that voting by mail leads to fraud, to kill off this vote-by-mail possibility (even though Trump himself voted by mail)… even if they have to defund and shut down the entire US Postal Service to do this.

But there is a new voter suppression methodology, in a state with a nasty recent history of culling blacks from voter rolls: Georgia. This system reared its ugly head in a primary election on June 9^th, where newly installed voting machines purportedly did not work, were delivered to the wrong addresses or where those administering the local polling stations were not instructed on how to use the equipment. Nobody really believed that it was a coincidence that these problems were focused primarily on Fulton County/Metro Atlanta, a blue city with a large and active African American voting bloc in a red state… and other counties and towns (like Savannah) where blue trumps red. These events do not bode well for the November election.

The June 11^th Associated Press explains the details: “Many Democrats blamed Georgia’s Republican secretary of state for hours-long lines, voting machine malfunctions, provisional ballot shortages and absentee ballots failing to arrive in time for Tuesday’s elections. Georgia Republicans deflected responsibility to metro Atlanta’s heavily minority and Democratic-controlled counties… It raised the specter of a worst-case November scenario: a decisive state, such as Florida and its ‘hanging chads’ and ‘butterfly ballots’ in 2000, remaining in dispute long after polls close.

“Tuesday’s breakdown drew the second round of stinging criticism for Georgia election officials since 2018, when the state’s closely watched gubernatorial election was marred by hours-long waits at some polling sites, security breaches that exposed voter information, and accusations that strict ID requirements and registration errors suppressed turnout. That led to lawsuits and changes to state law that included the $120-million switch to a new election system.

“Much of the outcry over the 2018 election targeted Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who was still serving as secretary of state when he ran for governor two years ago. Kemp has so far stayed silent on the most recent problems… Like two years ago, activists say voting problems seemed to disproportionately affect areas with large numbers of minority voters in cities such as Atlanta and Savannah… ‘We saw those overwhelming issues in Black and brown communities predominantly,’ Aklima Khondoker, state director of the advocacy group All Voting Is Local, told reporters.

“Votes were still being counted Wednesday, including absentee ballots that topped 1 million — the result of many voters trying to avoid trips to the polls because of the coronavirus pandemic. The possibility of an August runoff loomed in a high-profile primary race among Democrats seeking to challenge GOP Sen. David Perdue, meaning Georgia voters could face another logjam at the polls in just two months…

“President Trump’s senior campaign counsel Justin Clark blamed Georgia’s vote-by-mail push amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and alluded to the president’s unfounded claims that absentee voting yields widespread fraud… Rachana Desai Martin, a Joe Biden campaign attorney, called the scenes in Georgia a ‘threat’ to democracy.

“Martin stopped short of assigning blame, but two Georgia Democrats on Biden’s list of potential running mates pointed at Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who led the selection of Georgia’s new voting machine system and invited every active voter to request an absentee ballot.

“Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted at Raffensperger about problems in pockets of metro Atlanta. “Is this happening across the county or just on the south end?” the Democrat asked, referring to an area with a heavily Black population… Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor and an Atlanta resident, said, ‘The blame rests solely and squarely on the shoulders of the secretary of state.’… Abrams established herself as a voting rights advocate after she refused to concede her 2018 race to Kemp because of voting irregularities.” It is unfortunate that so many legislatures and governors are so threatened by representative democracy. That says a lot about America… and its chance to survive intact.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and if enough people care to protect democracy, it might survive.