How Can I Keep Thee from Voting or Marginalize Your Vote

 

How Can I Keep Thee from Voting or Marginalize Thy Vote?

Let me count the ways

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who is least likely to have a driver’s license. Less affluent people living in significant urban areas. The elderly who are no longer able to drive and are equally unable to afford to overseas travel (which requires a passport). Students enrolled in a college or university who live on campus and have no place to park a car. Young people who live in big cities with adequate mass transportation who don’t want a car. Poor people who cannot afford a car even if they need one. It’s also not that difficult to determine cohorts of individuals who are not likely to vote Republican. Like everyone described above. In an era where elections are often determined by a percentage point or two, the ability to shut down opposing votes can be monumental.

We have discussed gerrymandering at length in past blogs. On March 27th, without details, the US Supreme Court rejected reviewing a May 2022 Kansas Supreme Court ruling that effectively endorsed a severely partisan redistricting plan, drawn by a GOP controlled legislature. The Kansas court ruled on the grounds that such one-sided partisan voting maps are not unconstitutional. So, we know that tool is available in red states to keep them red. If there is a change here, it has only become easier to gerrymander for purely partisan reasons.

We also know that making polls inaccessible to people who do not drive or are time impaired, severely limiting the use of mail-in ballots, is an equally effective tool primarily against Democrats. Having a single ballot box in a white suburb, for example, makes it very tough for those living in minority neighborhoods from reaching those polling stations. Making it illegal to drive or bus people to the polls underscores keeping those polling areas white. Even giving out bottles of water to voting lines is illegal in some red states. All in the name of fighting against non-existent election fraud and keeping election integrity intact. Yup, intact.

The Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the Constitution eliminated poll taxes in 1964, taxes which had made keeping impoverished Blacks from the polls during the Jim Crow era very easy. All those civil and voting rights bills passed in the 1960s have been materially diluted by recent Supreme Court decisions. Like the 2013 Shelby County vs Holder Supreme Court ruling. So those states whose traditions included imposing voter restrictions on anti-GOP voters were unleashed. Guess what happened? Almost instantly, those voting restrictions came back, but with new and improved language. Voter IDs… with required photographs on government issued documents?

“As Ohio’s primary approaches, a strict new photo ID requirement is stirring concerns for military veterans and out-of-state college students, in Amish communities and among older voters… Other Republican-led states are moving in the same direction as they respond to conservative voters unsettled by unfounded claims of widespread fraud and persistent conspiracy theories over the accuracy of U.S. elections. Critics characterize such requirements as an overreaction that could end up disenfranchising eligible voters.

“Ruth Kohake is among those caught up in the confusion over Ohio’s law, which is going into effect this year. The retired nurse from Cincinnati gave up her driver’s license and her car in 2019. Now 82, she thought she might never have to set foot in another state license agency.

“But Ohio now requires an unexpired photo ID in order for someone to vote, and she’ll have to get that at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. The law adds passports as valid ID but eliminates nonphoto documentation such as a bank statement, government check or utility bill for registration and in-person voting. Military IDs also are no longer acceptable when registering to vote…

“Of 35 states that request or require a photo ID to vote, Ohio is the ninth Republican-controlled state to move to a strict law allowing few to no alternatives, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Fifteen states allow other ways voters can verify their identify, such as an electric bill, bank statement or signature match… The number of states where voters face strict photo ID requirements is poised to rise in the coming months.

“Nebraska lawmakers are in the process of establishing a new photo ID program after voters approved a requirement in November. In North Carolina, a photo ID requirement declared unconstitutional just three months ago could be revived by the state Supreme Court that has a new Republican majority. Meanwhile, a new Idaho law, which prohibits students from using college IDs at the polls, drew a recent legal challenge.

“Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the new Ohio law undercuts the Republican narrative about the state having a record of clean and well-run elections.” Julie Carr Smyth writing for the March 27th Associated Press. In so many instances, it is so much easier not to vote.

We live in a time where it does not take a popular majority to win a presidential election as the 2016 polls reflected. Districts are counted (via “electors”), not voters. We also live in an era where excluding voters, except where a statute expressly states on its face a discriminatory intent (they never do, by the way), is A-OK according to the Supreme Court of the United States. It is funny that virtually all the efforts to restrict people from voting just happen to be, purely by coincidence if you ask the legislators who passed the relevant exclusionary law, so much more beneficial to Republicans than Democrats. I wonder why?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it seems to me that a political party that truly believes it represents the will of the majority of Americans would not be so obstinately committed to excluding voters from its major political opposition.