In 1870 the 15th amendment was passed which explicitly stated that states could not bar citizens from voting based on “race, color, or previous servitude”. Newly freed black people came out in masses to vote and there was a brief period known as the Reconstruction where many black officials were elected into state and federal political offices.
This was not tenable to
whites in power and soon they began to create laws that prohibited people from
voting for reasons other than race but were specifically targeted against
people of color. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright mob violence
were used to suppress black voters.
In 1957, Eisenhower signed
into law the Civil rights Act which was the first attempt at rectifying this
situation. However, this was not enough. In 1965 the Voting rights
acts was passed with the goal of remedying these issues. A core special
provision is the Section 5 preclearance requirement, which prohibits certain
jurisdictions from implementing any change affecting voting without receiving
preapproval from the U.S. attorney general or
the U.S. District Court
for D.C. that the change does not discriminate against protected
minorities.
Now, new ways to suppress
black voters were needed. More and more states began implementing laws
that restricted the rights of former felons to franchisement. Although
not directly naming race, with the rising “law and order” governments, blacks
by the hundreds of thousands began losing their rights to vote.
In 2000, the national
election between Al Gore and George W. Bush came down to one state:
Florida. The person who is in charge of all voting in any state is the
Secretary of State. In Florida, it was Katherine Harris. She was
also the Chair of the George Bush campaign. She hired a private firm to
purge the voter rolls of any felons and they were told to use “loose
parameters”. They needn’t worry if the middle initial, the spelling of
the name, the DOB, junior or senior – and even sometimes race or gender –
didn’t match. They were to purge those names from the voter roles.
In 1 county 690 people were removed from the voting roles. When an
independent review came along to follow up on this, they discovered only 33 of
the 690 were actually previous felons. There’s no need to go with what
happened because we all remember that catastrophe.
In 2008, after the
Republicans lost the White House, they began organizing on a local and state
level very successfully. By voting Republicans into the State Legislature
they could effectively control the voting districts and racist gerrymandering
escalated.
In 2013, the Supreme Court
struck down the section of the Voting Rights act that required states to get
approval from the Attorney General before changing any laws regarding voting
and voter’s registration. Right away, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, South
Carolina, and Virginia enacted voter ID laws. Other states added other
various restrictions such as showing proof of citizenship.
The governor’s race in Georgia
in 2018 shows what happened as the results of restrictions. One of the
candidates, Brian Kemp, was also the State Auditor and therefore in charge of
the vote. He began purging the rolls. On one night in July 2017 he
purged over ½ million people from Georgia’s voter rolls! Voters from
Democratic Counties were purged at over 4 times the rate Republican counties
were. When the day for the actual election came, many, many polling sites
were closed thereby making voting unavailable for many and inordinately unfair
waiting times for those who could reach a polling place. As one example,
in Randolph Co which is 95% black, 7 out the 9 polling sites were closed. For those who
were able to make it, many were turned away because of “exact match”
requirements. If the voter’s name didn’t match EXACTLY what was written
on the roll they were not allowed to vote. Latinos and Asians were 6
times as likely to not have an exact match and African Americans were 8 times
as likely.
Now we’re faced with the 2020
election and most of us are already worried about the ability to vote and make
sure those votes are counted.
