Voter suppression in the United States
Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 improved voting access. Since the beginning of voter suppression efforts, proponents of these laws have cited concerns over electoral integrity as a justification for various restrictions and requirements, while opponents argue that these constitute bad faith given the lack of voter fraud evidence in the United States.[1]
In the 21st century, some fear voter suppression has been revived, at least in part due to the 2013 US Supreme Court ruling of Shelby County v. Holder, which ruled that the enforcement of the Voting Right's Act power requiring that the federal government give pre-clearance to states with a history of voter discrimination was unconstitutional because it used a coverage formula based on over 40 year old data. Since then (and as of March 24, 2021), more than 361 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 47 states according to the Brennan Center for Justice.[2][3]
2000s[edit]
2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal[edit]
In the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, Republican officials attempted to reduce the number of Democratic voters by paying professional telemarketers in Idaho to make repeated hang-up calls to the telephone numbers used by the Democratic Party's ride-to-the-polls phone lines on election day. By tying up the lines, voters seeking rides from the Democratic Party would have more difficulty reaching the party to ask for transportation to and from their polling places.[64][65]
2004 presidential election[edit]
Allegations surfaced in several states that a private group, Voters Outreach of America, which had been empowered by the individual states, had collected and submitted Republican voter registration forms while inappropriately discarding voter registration forms where the new voter had chosen to register with the Democratic Party. Such people would believe they had registered to vote, and would only discover on election day that they were not registered and could not cast a ballot.[66][67][68][69]
Michigan Republican state legislator John Pappageorge was quoted as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."[70]
In 2006, four employees of candidate John Kerry's campaign were convicted of slashing the tires of 25 vans rented by the Wisconsin state Republican Party which were to be used for driving Republican voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day 2004. They received jail terms of four to six months. At the campaign workers' sentencing, Judge Michael B. Brennan told the defendants, "Voter suppression has no place in our country. Your crime took away that right to vote for some citizens."[71][72]
2006 Virginia Senate election[edit]
During the Virginia U.S. Senate election, Secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections Jean Jensen concluded that incidents of voter suppression appeared widespread and deliberate. Documented incidents of voter suppression include:[73]
2010s[edit]
Maryland[edit]
In the Maryland gubernatorial election in 2010, the campaign of Republican candidate Bob Ehrlich hired a consultant who advised that "the first and most desired outcome is voter suppression", in the form of having "African-American voters stay home."[102] To that end, the Republicans placed thousands of Election Day robocalls to Democratic voters, telling them that the Democratic candidate, Martin O'Malley, had won, although in fact the polls were still open for some two more hours.[103] The Republicans' call, worded to seem as if it came from Democrats, told the voters, "Relax. Everything's fine. The only thing left is to watch it on TV tonight."[102] The calls reached 112,000 voters in majority-African American areas.[103] In 2011, Ehrlich's campaign manager, Paul Schurick, was convicted of fraud and other charges because of the calls.[102][103] In 2012, he was sentenced to 30 days of home detention, a one-year suspended jail sentence, and 500 hours of community service over the four years of his probation, with no fine or jail time.[104][105] The Democratic candidate won by a margin of more than 10 percent.[106]
In 2015, Maryland's Montgomery County, Republicans planned to move two early-voting sites from densely populated Bethesda and Burtonsville to more sparsely populated areas in Brookeville and Potomac. They claimed to be aiming for more "geographic diversity"; Democrats accused them of trying to suppress the vote. The Burtonsville site had the most minority voters of all the early-voting sites in the county, while the proposed new locations were in more Republican-friendly areas with fewer minority residents.[107] The Republican election board chairman admitted at a County Council committee that he and two GOP colleagues held a conference call with the chairman of Montgomery's Republican Party Central Committee. They said the call, from which Democrats were excluded, was legal. Democrats called it a violation of Maryland's Open Meetings Act. Todd Eberly, a political science professor from Saint Mary's College, called the claim by the Republicans, "a stupid defense."[107]
Anti-suppression efforts[edit]
Starting in 2015, various states enacted laws for automatic voter registration. At Politico's "State Solutions" voter engagement conference, former Secretary of State and Oregon Governor Kate Brown said, "Registration is a barrier to people participating in this process... [v]oting is a fundamental right of being a citizen, and people across the country should have the ability to access this fundamental right without barriers like registration." She emphatically aimed at critics of policies such as Oregon's "motor voter" law that are aimed at increasing voter turnout, saying, "I think the good news is, in Oregon, we actually want people to vote in our state."[190]
The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, passed by the House of Representatives but not the Senate in 2021, would restore certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act in compliance with and in response to the Shelby County v. Holder decision.