Does your vote matter? But will they let you vote?

(Oct. 9, 2024) — “I can’t vote for Trump again, but I don’t like Harris.  I’m going to just stay home.”

When I hear people say this, I’m so disheartened.  When they’re on TV, I want to shake my fist at the screen and yell, “there are so many other things on your ballot that you should care about.”

I also want to remind these stay-at-home voters that there is an active effort in our own country to prevent or discourage others from voting.  That’s how precious the vote is.  Some states want to twist the voting rules to ensure they win.

Why stay-at-home voters should go to the polls

Every night TV stations bombard us with news about the presidential race.  Who’s up and who’s down in the polls?  Where are the two candidates campaigning and how big is the crowd size?  But for the rest of the ballot, we have to fend for ourselves.

What’s on the rest of the ballot can affect us most directly in our daily lives.  Ask these reluctant neighbors: Do you want to pay more in an assessment to fix your roads?  Do you favor raising the minimum wage in your state? Should local government be allowed to expand rent control? How do you feel about electing a school board candidate who’s on record to ban certain books?  Will the city council candidate who sent you a flyer vote against the nearby high-rise development you oppose?

These “down ballot” issues can be very important to residents in their communities.  If they don’t vote, that means they are allowing someone else to decide for them.

The answer is YES your vote matters.

But will they let you vote?

Some states are trying to discourage certain segments of society from reaching the polls or having their vote count. Other efforts by states insert partisanship into voting rules to change the outcome in their favor.

Repressing the Vote—how we got there and how we still repress

HISTORY

The 15^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified after the Civil War to prohibit states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” That didn’t stop nearly a century of discrimination against Blacks trying to vote.  For example, some Southern states forced Blacks to recite the entire Constitution in order register to vote. Poll taxes, a set amount each person had to pay In order to vote in federal elections, were often levied to prevent poor Blacks from voting. The 24^th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes in federal elections.

In January 1965, Martin Luther King came to Selma, Alabama to register Blacks to vote. Writing in the New York Times about the arrests that resulted, King said, “This is Selma, Alabama. There are more negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.”

In March, activist John R. Louis and his followers tried to call attention to violations of Blacks’ voting rights in a march from Selma to Montgomery to meet with the governor. Americans saw Alabama troopers beat, whip and gas the marchers on national television, moving President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to act.

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.  The Act prohibits literacy tests and provided federal oversight in areas where less than 50% of non-whites had registered to vote.

In 1966 the Supreme Court banned poll taxes in state elections as well.

NOW

Poor Lemont in the above cartoon “Candorville!”  He is experiencing a phone call attempting to repress his vote.  He has the right reaction, “Not Falling for It!”  But here are some other attempts to repress his vote happening today.

In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled on a 5-4 vote that federal oversight of states’ voting procedures, as required in the Voting Rights Act, was outdated. At least 31 states have passed 103 voting restrictions since then. The result is a new round of voter repression. Many of these states assert that they are aimed at preventing noncitizens from voting, although a 1996 federal law makes it illegal for noncitizens to vote for federal offices.  Violators can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year—or deported.  Because of these penalties, it’s a specious argument that the U.S. is flooded with noncitizens who would risk all to vote.  In fact, incidents are non-detectable, according to the Cato Institution.

A list of some of the new restrictions include

• shortening the days for early voting;
• shortening the days for mail-in ballots;
• closing the polls earlier;
• reducing ballot drop boxes to only a few or just one for an urban city; (e.g., we’re looking at you Atlanta, Georgia)
• criminalizing anyone who helps another fill out their mail-in ballot; (e.g., beware of helping grandma in Alabama unless you live with her)
• criminalizing anyone who delivers another’s mail-in ballot; (e.g., don’t risk a fine or jail in Idaho for helping Aunt Mae in her wheelchair)
• requiring specific forms of identification to vote at a polling place, such as a birth certificate.

Some alarming examples of voter repression include:

Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering means manipulating the constituency’s electoral district boundaries to create undue advantage for a party, incumbent or socioeconomic class. Gerrymandering is illegal under the Voting Rights Act, but states are using other methods to achieve the same result. Cracking, stacking and packing “manage to achieve the appearance of balance while maintaining racial imbalance among elected officials,” according to the League of Women Voters:

• Cracking: Minority populations are broken up and dispersed among other districts to ensure that all districts are majority white.
• Stacking: Minority populations are combined with a greater number of white voters in order to ensure that districts are majority white.
• Packing: Minorities are concentrated in as few districts as possible. The result is a minimum number of districts where the majority of voters are members of a minority population.

Targeting naturalized citizens: The Secretary of State in Alabama, saying he wanted to crackdown on noncitizen voting, is removing 3,251 naturalized citizens from the voter roles for “further investigation and possible criminal prosecution.” Naturalized citizens are individuals born in foreign countries who go through a formal process to become a U.S. citizen.  Those who were already registered but removed from Alabama’s voter rolls must then re-register to vote by the upcoming election.

Challenging other voters’ registrations: A 2021 Georgia law allows a single voter to bring an unlimited number of challenges to the eligibility other voters.  Some large counties were inundated with demands by individuals to remove voters, challenges which were eventually thrown out. A 2024 bill now makes it easier to uphold the challenge by a single voter.

Rural Voting by Mail: A new law in North Carolina potentially disenfranchises rural voters who rely on their postal system. Any mail-in ballots not received by Election Night will be thrown out, instead of the current three-day grace period after the election, which has up until now allowed for delayed rural mail delivery.

Limiting early voting hours: Georgia is limiting early voting on Sundays, affecting Blacks attending church in Georgia, who organized “souls to the polls” bus rides after services.

Blocking initiatives: The Arkansas Supreme Court is preventing an abortion rights initiative from appearing on the ballot because “when the ballot initiative sponsor submitted its petition on the due date, it failed to staple a photocopy of a document it had already submitted a week earlier.” This ruling holds even though nothing in the state law requires the photocopy to be stapled and the sponsor immediately fixed the problem. Similarly, a Missouri court on September 6 moved to strike a ballot measure establishing the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution, saying the measure’s ramifications are not clear.

Partisanship: The above voter repression actions aren’t alone in threatening the integrity of the elections. Several legislatures have appointed partisan members to the county and state Election Boards. For example, the Georgia State Election Board’s last-minute changes to the election’s procedural rules by three Republicans on the Board are being challenged in court by the Democrats.  Because the new rules may lead to voter confusion about whether or how they qualify, voters may stay away.  In addition, potential “reasonable inquiries” before certifying the election could delay the results and push the election’s outcome from the voters into the state’s house of representative.

What’s next?

Voting Rights Act in 2024 The Senate reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in February. Because the 2013 Supreme Court overturned federal oversight required in the original Voting Rights Act, the proposed new law would restore the preclearance.  Preclearance requires states to prove that their new policies aren’t making it harder for people of color to vote. The new law would set specific criteria to prevent gerrymandering of congressional districts. The government could send federal observers on Election Day to jurisdictions where substantial evidence of discrimination exists.  Given the current partisanship in Congress, the bill faces an uphill fight.

What should we who CAN vote do?

Our local news stations can’t cover all the controversial decisions for every community in the region. With the demise of local newspapers, the lack of information for the voter is more acute.  People have to rely on candidate mailers, paid TV ads, or social media, all of which can be misleading and inaccurate. Like Lemont in the Candorville cartoon, we have to be vigilant against misinformation and disinformation being thrust upon us from every quarter, foreign and domestic.

1. There are valiant efforts by the League of Women Voters of the United States to help voters. The League created a tool found on the website org in each state, which contains in-depth information on candidates and measures for that state.  It helps condense the often thick material in the mailed ballot pamphlet. Since July, 84% of newly registered voters are young.  We can refer high school grads to the site, where more than 50% of voters under 45 years of age use vote411.org
2. The Secretary of State in California, Shirley Weber, created a post titled “California Elections Rumor Control.” If you don’t live in California, check with your own state’s Secretary of State on how it answers faulty rumors. Here are two examples of the disinformation Shirley Weber debunks:

• “Dead people are voting:” This is illegal under federal law, which also requires that voter rolls be updated regularly using Social Security Administration lists. In California, as in most states, signatures are verified by election officials to match the signature on the returned ballot.
• “Drop boxes for ballots can be tampered with:” In California, the boxes are of heavy, high-grade metal bolted to the ground and too difficult to move or steal. They have a small slot where the ballot can be inserted and are fire-and-waterproof.

Her post also corrects rumors about mail-in and provisional ballots, the type of pens used, and, particularly important, the testing of voting machines’ software.  Find her post about trusted information at https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/election-cybersecurity/trusted-information

Voting, the most fundamental freedom of living in democracy, is under attack. We are the guardians of our vote. Vote like democracy depends on it.  It does!

Read local election news from the Pioneer.