Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. … Voter suppression attempts to reduce the number of voters who might vote against a candidate or proposition.
Suppress the vote playbook
A political party attacks voters’ rights by passing laws that eliminate them from voting rolls or by creating a poll tax such as paying for Voter ID approved by the state, not MVA. Also, they practice ways to create long lines and waiting times to discourage people from voting. For instance, too many polling stations are closed, or there are not enough voting machines, creating long lines and waiting times.
Another strategy political parties use to suppress the vote involves investing in their party. Money used to fund specific candidates can help them win and take over the state assembly to pass laws that will benefit the party. They can enforce unfair practices that adversely affect a group of people. On a national level, the senators confirm judges to support laws that violate its spirit. Money becomes the voice of democracy and drowns out the little guy. Due to suppression, our voting process voids democracy.
Our politicians use several tactics to choose their voters, in the hope to keep their seats.
In 2013, the Supreme court gutted the voting rights bill of 1965, making invalid the fifth section of the statue; instead, it states that a state DOES NOT NEED CLEARANCE to change the rules to vote.
Tactics used to suppress the vote:
1) Gerrymandering –
A practice intended to establish an unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries to impact the majority. Two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering: “cracking” and “packing”–diluting the vote or concentration of the vote, respectively.
Although the Supreme Court ruled gerrymandering as unconstitutional, in 2018, it made gerrymandering constitutional based on partisanship. In other words, gerrymandering is necessary to maintain both parties as long as district drawings are not heavily partisan.
2) Voter ID –
Laws passed to make voting harder. This law is unnecessary because fraud rarely happens. Also, Georgia’s “exact match” voter ID law was passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature last year. Kemp, who is running for governor while holding office as secretary of state, is overseeing its implementation. The law requires the information on government-issued identification, such as a driver’s license or Social Security card, to match up precisely with the name on a voter registration application. If they don’t match — even because of something like a missing hyphen, an extra space, or a typo — the applicant has to take additional steps to verify their identity. Although their applications limbo, they are not notified. These voters can still vote in the election, as long as they bring an acceptable form of photo ID to the polls (like a driver’s license). Again, voting rights advocates fear the move will confuse voters about whether they’re allowed to vote and disenfranchise those without photo IDs.
As Vox’s German Lopez has written, a study by Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt found just 35 credible allegations of fraud from 2000 and 2014 — out of more than 800 million ballots cast.
There are several versions of voter identification laws that adversely impact college students, voters with P.O. Box addresses, and people who do not drive.
3) Purged from voter rolls –
If persons do not vote in previous years, they are prevented from voting or illegally removed from the voting list due to a technical error. For instance, “…the state [Virginia] has removed more than 379,000 names slightly from the rolls than it did from 2008 to 2012, according to the Brennan report. Researchers.”
Solution: Automatically register a person to vote when he/she turns 18. A person can vote regardless of the number of missed elections. Also, registers can collect proof of ID at the time he/she turns 18.
4) Not replacing or opening voting polls in certain areas –
This practice creates long lines to discourage voters from voting or confuse them about where to vote.
5) Eliminating early voting –
This method disrupts voting because it makes it difficult to vote or discourages the voter. For example, black churches sponsor an event called ‘souls to the polls’ to encourage early voting and provide transportation in a family atmosphere.
6) Electoral college –
Eliminates the theory, one person one vote. Delegates choose our president. For example, the person who won the popular vote(66,000,000) did not win the 2016 election; instead, the winner of the electoral college became president (63,000,000).
The electoral college, created during slavery, no longer applies. Select our president by popular vote!
In summary, the tactics used to maintain the status quo, help the rich and the well-connected profit above 99% of the people. Capitalism is not distributed fairly because the powerful want to stay in control. Voting is a tool used to check the people in authority who control our lives. It may seem like an unfair process, but voters will make it fairer.
Update: 8/16/2020
Postal Services
To help his re-election, the President plans not to fund postal services. The postmaster he appointed removed some post office boxes, eliminated over time, and got rid of mail sorters to delay the presidential results.
To justify the postmaster’s decisions, the President uses his bully pulpit to denounce mail-in ballots as fraudulent and persuade voters that a delayed accounting is unacceptable.
Reference(s): Vox
