Voter suppression in the United States
concerns allegations about various efforts, legal and illegal, used to
prevent eligible voters from exercising their right to vote. Where
found, such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election.
Methods
Impediments to voter registration
Some laws and administrative practices have made it more difficult for people to register to vote. Florida enacted a deadline for the submission of voter registration forms in 2011, with penalties for late filing. The law ended the voter registration work by one organization, the League of Women Voters,
whose spokesperson said, "Despite the fact that the League of Women
Voters is one of the nation's most respected civic organizations, with a
91-year history of registering and educating voters, we will be unable
to comply with the egregious provisions contained in [this bill]."
Photo ID laws
In the United States, supporters of photo ID laws say that
photographic IDs (such as driver's licenses or student IDs) are
available and that presenting such IDs is a minor inconvenience when
weighed against the possibility of ineligible voters affecting
elections. Opponents argue that photo ID requirements disproportionately
affect minority, handicapped and elderly voters who do not normally
maintain driver's licenses. Also, requiring such groups to obtain and
keep track of photo IDs that are otherwise unneeded is considered a
suppression tactic aimed at those groups.
In one instance Indiana's photo ID law barred 12 retired nuns in South Bend, Indiana from voting in the state 2008 Democratic primary
election, because they did not have photo IDs. John Borkowski, a South
Bend lawyer volunteering as an election watchdog for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law,
said, "This law was passed supposedly to prevent and deter voter fraud,
even though there was no real record of serious voter fraud in
Indiana."
Proponents of a similar law proposed for Texas in March 2009 argued that photo identification
was necessary to prevent widespread voter fraud. Opponents responded
that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Texas, so no remedy is
required. They said that the "remedy" would decrease voting by senior citizens,
the disabled, and lower-income residents. Opponents also cited a study
stating that 1 million of the state's 13.5 million registered voters do
not have a photo ID.
State Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) said, "Voter fraud not
only is alive and well in the U.S., but also alive and well in Texas.
The danger of voter fraud threatens the integrity of the entire
electoral process." Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Leticia Van de Putte
(D-San Antonio) said the proposed law "is not about voter fraud. There
is no voter fraud. This is about voter suppression." Texas Attorney
General Greg Abbott
(R) spent $1.4 million investigating voter fraud and from 2002 to 2012
brought 311 accusations of voter fraud to the attorney general's office.
Fifty seven cases have been resolved, and among these convictions were
two cases of voter impersonation – arguably the type of fraud that
photo ID laws would prevent. More than 8,000,000 votes were cast in Texas in the most recent presidential election.
Legislation to impose photo ID requirements was prepared by the conservative organization ALEC and circulated to conservative state legislators.
In 2011, more than 100 Democratic members of Congress urged the Department of Justice
to oppose such legislation, arguing that it "has the potential to block
millions of eligible American voters, and thus suppress the right to
vote".
A 2017 study, published by The Journal of Politics
analyzed voter data from the elections starting in 2006 to 2014, and
the impact of strict voter identification laws on minorities. They
gathered data from Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) and
focused on 11 states
with strict voter identification laws. The study found that in the
states where these strict voter ID laws are implemented, minorities and
left-leaning voters suffered lower voter turnout rates than states who
had less restrictive voter ID laws.
Purging of voter rolls
On August 24, 2016, Rolling Stone magazine published a report by investigative reporter Greg Palast entitled, "The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters: Will an anti-voter-fraud program designed by one of Trump's advisers deny tens of thousands their right to vote in November?" Palast reported that "In January 2013, Kobach [the Secretary of State of Kansas] addressed a gathering of the National Association of State Election Directors
about combating an [alleged] epidemic of ballot-stuffing across the
country. He announced that Crosscheck had already uncovered 697,537
'potential duplicate voters' in 15 states, and that the state of Kansas
was prepared to cover the cost of compiling a nationwide list. That was
enough to persuade 13 more states to hand over their voter files to
Kobach's office." Palast alleges that virtually all of these 697,537
'potential duplicate voters' failed to meet Kobach's claims that they
matched first, middle, and last names, birth dates, and the last 4
digits of people's Social Security number:
Palast interviewed Donald Alexander Webster Jr., an African-American
registered in Ohio; Crosscheck claimed that D. A. Webster, Jr., was
also registered as Donald Eugene Webster (no "Jr.") in Charlottesville,
Virginia. D. A. Webster, Jr., assured Palast he had never been to
Charlottesville. Both of these individuals "were subject to losing
their ability to vote," Palast reported. Voting twice is a felony, but
Palast failed to find any prosecutions of double voting.
In his documentary "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (2016),
Palast explains that over 7 million voters—almost entirely voters of
color—were on the Crosscheck lists by the time of the 2016 presidential
election, allegedly because these voters had all voted multiple times in
previous elections (although no one from these lists had been
prosecuted for voting twice, which is a felony crime with a five-year
jail sentence). Palast explains that these cross-check lists were
produced only in GOP-controlled states and that the names on the list
were common last names of Latinos, African-Americans, and
Asian-Americans, such as "Garcia," "Hernandez," "Washington," and "Lee." Since the election, Palast has appeared on the independent media news program Democracy Now!
and has explained that on election day, approximately 1.1 million
voters of color found themselves bumped off the official voter rolls
through Crosscheck.
In 2017, researchers at Stanford University, the University of
Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Microsoft found that for every
legitimate instance of double registration it finds, Crosscheck's
algorithm returns approximately 200 false positives.
In 2008, more than 98,000 registered Georgia
voters were removed from the roll of voters because of a computer
mismatch in their personal identification information. Some 4,500
voters had to prove their citizenship to regain their right to vote. Between November 2015 and early 2016, over 120,000 voters were dropped from rolls in Brooklyn, NYC.
Officials have stated that the purge was a mistake and that those
dropped represented a "broad cross-section" of the electorate. However
an WNYC analysis found that the purge had disproportionately affected
majority-Hispanic districts. The board announced that it would reinstate
all voters in time for the 2016 Congressional primary.
The Board of Elections subsequently suspended the Republican appointee
in connection to the purge, but kept on her Democratic counterpart.
In 1998, Florida created the Florida Central Voter File
to combat vote fraud documented in the 1997 Miami mayoral election.
Many people were purged from voter registration lists in Florida,
because their names were similar to those of convicted felons, who are
not allowed to vote under Florida law. According to the Palm Beach Post, African-Americans accounted for 88% of those removed from the rolls but were only about 11% of Florida's voters. This may have cost Al Gore the presidency in the 2000 US presidential election.
Limitations on early and absentee voting
Early
voting is important for voters who do not have flexible working hours
and cannot take time off on a weekday to vote. The costs associated with
voting include potential lost wages, transit fare and the cost of
childcare.These factors inherently affect minorities and the poor more
because of deep-rooted inequalities: for example, minority voters are
likely to work salaried jobs and thus less likely to have paid time off
to get to the voting polls, and they are also less likely to own a car.
There are currently 23 states that do not have early voting available
to all qualified voters. Of the those, 20 states require an excuse to
mail an absentee ballot to voters. Since 2010, seven states have implemented additional restrictions on early voting.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice's 2013 Report Early Voting: What Works,
there are many benefits to early voting including shorter lines on
election day, more access to voting and increased satisfaction of
voters. In 2012 32% of voters voted early.
In a 2014 article in Political Research Quarterly
by Micheal C. Herron and Daniel A. Smith "Race, Party, and the
Consequences of Restricting Early Voting in Florida in the 2012 General
Election", they show that a 2011 cutting the early voting period in
Florida from 14 to 8 days and cutting the final Sunday of early voting
caused a large drop in 2012 in early voting for registered Democrats,
those without party ID and racial and ethnic minorities. It also states
that "voters who cast ballots on the last Sunday in 2008 were
disproportionately unlikely to cast a valid ballot in 2012."
This policy affected those who were already less likely to vote, in
this way it was effective in controlling information through controlling
who voted.
Cut backs in early voting disproportionately affect African
American voters who vote early in higher proportions than white voters.
In 2012, in Ohio, African American voters voted early at more than 2
times the rate of white voters.
In North Carolina, Republican lawmakers requested data on various
voting practices, broken down by race. They then passed laws that
restricted voting and registration many ways that disproportionally
affected African Americans, including cutting back on early voting. In a 2016 appellate court
case, the 4th US District Court of Appeals struck down a law that
removed the first week of early voting. They wrote that the GOP used the
data they gathered to remove the first week of early voting because
more African American voters voted during that week, and African
American voters were more likely to vote for Democrats. Between 2008 and 2012 in North Carolina, 70% of African American voters voted early. After cuts to early voting, African American turnout in early voting was down by 8.7% (around 66,000 votes) in North Carolina.
Felon disenfranchisement
In 2004, 5.3 million Americans were denied the right to vote because
of previous convictions. Thirteen states permanently disenfranchise
convicted felons; eighteen states restore voting rights after completion
of prison, parole, and probation; four states re-enfranchise felons
after they have been released from prison and have completed parole;
thirteen states allow felons who have been released from prison to vote,
and two states do not disenfranchise felons at all.
Some states require felons to complete a process to restore voting
rights, but offender advocates say such processes can be very difficult.
The United States is the only democracy in the world that
regularly bans large numbers of felons from voting after they have
discharged their sentences. Many countries including Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Peru, Sweden, and Zimbabwe allow prisoners to vote (unless convicted of crimes against the electoral system). Some countries, notably the U.K., disenfranchise people for only as long as they are in prison (however, this has been challenged by the European Court of Human Rights).
In Florida during the 2000 presidential election, some non-felons were banned due to record-keeping errors and not warned of their disqualification until the deadline for contesting it had passed.
This form of vote suppression in the United States disproportionately affects minorities including African-Americans and Latinos. Disenfranchisement of felons is opposed by some as a form of the medieval practice of civil death.
Transgender disenfranchisement
Transgender disenfranchisement related to voting is also present.
Disinformation about voting procedures
Voters may be given false information about when and how to vote, leading them to fail to cast valid ballots. For example, in recall elections for the Wisconsin State Senate in 2011, Americans for Prosperity (a conservative
organization that was supporting Republican candidates) sent many
Democratic voters a mailing that gave an incorrect deadline for absentee ballots. Voters who relied on the deadline in the mailing would have sent in their ballots too late for them to be counted. The organization said that the mistake was a typographical error.
Inequality in Election Day resources
Elections in the United States are funded at the local level, often unequally. In the 2004 elections,
Wyoming spent $2.15 per voter while California spent $3.99 per voter.
In contrast, Canada spends $9.51 per voter. Underfunded election areas
can result in long lines at polling places, requiring some voters either
to wait hours to cast a ballot or to forgo their right to vote in that
election. Voters who cannot wait the required amount of time are
therefore effectively disenfranchised, while voters in well-funded areas
with sufficient voting capacity may face minimal or no waiting time.
This, coupled with the fact that most elections are held on Tuesdays or
other weekdays, would generally make voting more difficult for workers
who work full-time or longer hours and/or commute.
Delays at polling places are widely regarded as being a greater problem in urban areas.
In 2012, polling places in minority neighborhoods in Maryland, South
Carolina, and Florida were systematically deprived of the resources they
needed to operate effectively, leading to long lines on election day.
Since 2013, 868 polling places across the South have been shut down completely; over 400 were closed in Texas alone.
Closure of DMV offices
Closing local branches of the Department of Motor Vehicles
(DMV) makes it harder for residents to obtain voter IDs. In 2014,
Alabama passed a law requiring a photo ID to vote; soon afterwards, the
state shut down dozens of DMV offices in minority neighborhoods.
Caging lists
Caging lists have been used by political parties to eliminate
potential voters registered with other political parties. A political
party sends registered mail
to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as
undeliverable, the mailing organization uses that fact to challenge the
registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the
address, the registration is fraudulent.
Gerrymandering
While the majority of the world's democracies use independent agents
to manage elections, 33 of 50 state election directors in the United
States are elected partisans. Those party affiliations can create conflicts of interest, or at least the appearance, when directing elections. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris served as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2000 presidential election, and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell served as his state's Bush-Cheney co-chair during the 2004 presidential election.
According to Richard E. Levy of the University of Kansas, parties in
power may use sophisticated computer software to gerrymander legislative
districts in their favor, with remarkable effectiveness.
Jim Crow laws
In the United States, voter suppression was used in most Southern states by democrats, who were conservatives during the Jim Crow era, until the Voting Rights Act
(1965) made most disenfranchisement and voting qualifications illegal.
Traditional voter suppression tactics included the institution of poll taxes and literacy tests, aimed at suppressing the votes of African Americans and poor white working class voters.
Off-year elections
As off-year elections
generally have much lower turnout, they can be a means by which
politicians can get policies approved that otherwise would not. This is
because the low turnout makes it easier for organized interest groups
and voters with vested interests to let their policy goals dominate.
Historical examples
1838 Gallatin County Election Day Battle
William Peniston, a candidate for the Missouri state legislature, made disparaging statements about the Mormons and warned them not to vote in the election. Reminding Daviess County
residents of the growing electoral power of the Mormon community,
Peniston made a speech in Gallatin claiming that if the Missourians
"suffer such men as these [Mormons] to vote, you will soon lose your
suffrage." Around 200 non-Mormons gathered in Gallatin on election day
to prevent Mormons from voting.
When about thirty Latter Day Saints approached the polling place,
a Missourian named Dick Weldon declared that Mormons were not allowed
to vote in Clay County.
One of the Mormons present, Samuel Brown, claimed that Peniston's
statements were false and then declared his intention to vote. This
triggered a brawl between the bystanders. The Mormons called upon the Danites, a Mormon vigilante group, and the Missourians left the scene to obtain guns and ammunition and swore to kill the Mormons. The skirmish is often cited as the first serious violence of the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, which included the Missourians sacking the Mormon settlement of De Witt, the Mormons sacking non-Mormon homes in Daviees County, the Battle of Crooked River, the Haun's Mill Massacre and the eventual expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri under Missouri Executive Order 44.
2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal
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.
2004 presidential election
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.
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."
In 2006, four employees of the John Kerry 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. 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."
2006 Virginia Senate election
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:
- Democratic voters receiving calls incorrectly informing them voting will lead to arrest.
- Widespread calls fraudulently claiming to be "[Democratic Senate candidate Jim] Webb Volunteers," falsely telling voters their voting location had changed.
- Fliers paid for by the Republican Party, stating "SKIP THIS ELECTION" that allegedly attempted to suppress African-American turnout.
The FBI has since launched an investigation into the suppression attempts.
Despite the allegations, Democrat Jim Webb narrowly defeated incumbent George Allen.
2008 presidential election
A review of states' records by The New York Times found unlawful actions leading to widespread voter purges.
A dispute between the Social Security Administration commissioner and the National Association of Secretaries of State about the use of the Social Security database to test the validity of voters led to the shutdown of the database over the Columbus Day holiday weekend.
Georgia
Wait times of 2 to 10 hours were reported during early voting at multiple Georgia locations.
Michigan
Before the presidential election,
on September 16, 2008, Obama legal counsel announced that they would be
seeking an injunction to stop an alleged caging scheme in Michigan
wherein the state Republican party would use home foreclosure lists to
challenge voters still using their foreclosed home as a primary address
at the polls. Michigan GOP officials called the suit "desperate".
A Federal Appeals court ordered the reinstatement of 5,500 voters wrongly purged from the voter rolls by the state.
Minnesota
The conservative nonprofit Minnesota Majority has been reported as making phone calls claiming that the Minnesota Secretary of State had concerns about the validity of the voters registration. Their actions have been referred to the Ramsey County attorney's office and the U.S. Attorney looked into Johnson's complaint.
Ohio
Wait times of six hours were reported for early voting in Franklin County, leading to people leaving the line without voting.
Wisconsin
The
Republican Party attempted to have all 60,000 voters in the heavily
Democratic city of Milwaukee who had registered since January 1, 2006,
deleted from the voter rolls. The requests were rejected by the
Milwaukee Election Commission, although Republican commissioner Bob
Spindell voted in favor of deletion.
2010 Maryland gubernatorial election
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." 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.
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." The calls reached 112,000 voters in majority-African American areas. In 2011, Ehrlich's campaign manager, Paul Schurick, was convicted of fraud and other charges because of the calls. 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. The Democratic candidate won by a margin of more than 10 percent.
2012 Florida
A
law was passed in 2011 by the Florida legislature which reduced the
days available for early voting, barred voter-registration activities of
groups like the League of Women Voters, and made it more difficult to vote for voters who since the last election had moved to a different county within the state. Jim Greer,
the main source for the information cited in the Palm Beach Post
article, was sentenced to 18 months for embezzling from the Florida
Republican Party.
A majority of early voting ballots cast in 2008 were cast by Democratic
voters, and minority voters are more likely to move. The reason given
by Republican politicians for the law was to reduce cost and to deter
voter fraud; however, some former senior Republican officials alleged
that the true drivers of the law were GOP political consultants who were
seeking ways to suppress the Democratic vote.
Several factors, including the reduction in early voting,
reductions in the number of polling places, and an unusually lengthy
ballot that included 11 detailed constitutional amendments, all combined
to produce long lines on election day, with waits of several hours.
By one estimate, the result was that at least 201,000 likely voters did
not vote, either leaving the line in frustration or not even getting in
line when they saw how long it would take.
2015 early voting controversy in Maryland
In
Maryland's Montgomery County, Republicans planned to move two
early-voting sites from densely populated Bethesda and Burtonsville to
more sparsely populated areas in Brookville 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.
2016 presidential election
The 2016 presidential election was the first in 50 years without all the protections of the original Voting Rights Act. Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place, including swing states such as Virginia and Wisconsin.
Arizona
Despite high turnout during the Arizona Democratic primary, 2016, many voters spent over five hours in lines at several Maricopa County and Arizona
polling stations. From 2008 to 2016, polling locations were cut down
over 70 percent, from over 200 to 40. State officials claimed the
decrease was a cost savings directive. Republican Governor Doug Ducey stated, "If people want to take the time to vote they should be able to, and their vote should be counted."
Kansas
In early
2016, a state judge struck down a law requiring voters to show proof of
citizenship, in cases where the voter had used a national voter
registration form. In May, a federal judge ordered the state of Kansas
to begin registering approximately 18,000 voters whose registrations had
been delayed because they had not shown proof of citizenship. Kansas
secretary of state Kris Kobach
ordered that the voters be registered, but not for state and local
elections. In July, a county judge struck down Kobach's order. Kobach,
who has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas, was appointed to lead the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
New York
An audit was started in April 2016 after 125,000 voters in Brooklyn were removed from voter rolls and voters had trouble accessing polling sites.
North Carolina
In 2013, the state House passed a bill that requires voters to show a photo ID issued by North Carolina,
a passport, or a military identification card to begin in 2016.
Out-of-state drivers licenses were to be accepted only if the voter
registered within 90 days of the election, and university photo
identification was not acceptable. In July 2016, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
reversed a trial court decision in a number of consolidated actions and
struck down the law's photo ID requirement, finding that the new voting
provisions targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision,"
and that the legislators had acted with clear "discriminatory intent"
in enacting strict election rules, shaping the rules based on data they
received about African-American registration and voting patterns. On May 15, 2017, the law officially died when the US Supreme Court rejected efforts to review the Appeals Court ruling.
North Dakota
An
ID law in North Dakota which would have disenfranchised large numbers
of Native Americans was overturned in July 2016. The judge wrote, "The
undisputed evidence before the Court reveals that voter fraud in North
Dakota has been virtually non-existent."
Ohio
Since 1994,
Ohio has had a policy of purging infrequent voters from the rolls. In
April 2016, a lawsuit was filed, challenging this policy on the grounds
that it violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
In June, the federal district court ruled for the plaintiffs, and
entered a preliminary injunction applicable only to the November 2016
election. The preliminary injunction was upheld in September by the
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Had it not been upheld,
thousands of voters would have been purged from the rolls just a few
weeks before the election.
Texas
In July
2016, a federal appeals court found that Texas's voter ID law
discriminated against black and Hispanic voters because only a few types
of ID were allowed; for example, military IDs and concealed carry permits were allowed, but state employee photo IDs and university photo IDs were not.
Wisconsin
In
Wisconsin, a federal judge found that the state's restrictive voter ID
law led to "real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather
than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority
communities"; and, given that there was no evidence of widespread voter
impersonation in Wisconsin, found that the law was "a cure worse than
the disease." In addition to imposing strict voter ID requirements, the
law cut back on early voting, required people to live in a ward for at
least 28 days before voting, and prohibited emailing absentee ballots to
voters. A study by Priorities USA, a progressive
advocacy group, estimates that strict ID laws in Wisconsin led to a
significant decrease in voter turnout in 2016, with a disproportionate
effect on African-American and Democratic-leaning voters.
2017–2018
Election Integrity Commission and Crosscheck
In May 2017, Donald Trump established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,
purportedly for the purpose of preventing voter fraud. Critics have
suggested its true purpose is voter suppression. The commission was led
by Kansas attorney general and Republican gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach,
a staunch advocate of strict voter ID laws and a proponent of the
Crosscheck system. Crosscheck is a national database designed to check
for voters who are registered in more than one state by comparing names
and dates of birth. Researchers at Stanford University, the University
of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Microsoft found that for every
legitimate instance of double registration it finds, Crosscheck's
algorithm returns approximately 200 false positives. Kobach has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil rights organizations for trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas.
On February 20, 2016, while speaking to a committee of Kansas 2nd
Congressional District delegates, regarding their challenges of the
proof-of-citizenship voting law he championed in 2011, Kobach said, "The
ACLU and their fellow communist friends, the League of Women Voters — you can quote me on that, sued".
Often, voter fraud is cited as a justification for such measures,
even when the incidence of voter fraud is low. In Iowa, lawmakers
passed a strict voter ID law with the potential to disenfranchise
260,000 voters. Out of 1.6 million votes cast in Iowa in 2016, there
were only 10 allegations of voter fraud; none were cases of
impersonation that a voter ID law could have prevented. Only one person,
a Republican voter, was convicted. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate,
the architect of the bill, admitted, "We've not experienced widespread
voter fraud in Iowa."
Alabama
In
2018, critics have accused the state of intentionally disenfranchising
non-white voters,aided by the Supreme Court which, in its Shelby County v. Holder
5-4 decision, allowed jurisdictions with a history of suppression of
minority voters to avoid continuing to abide by federal preclearance
requirements for changes in voter registration and casting of ballots.
Within 24 hours of the ruling, Alabama implemented a 2011 law requiring
specific types of photo I.D. to be presented. The state closed DMV
offices in eight of ten counties which had the highest percentage black
population, but only three in the ten counties with the lowest black
population. In 2016, Alabama's Secretary of State (SOS) John Merrill
began a process to require proof of citizenship from voters, despite
Merrill saying he did not know of a single case where a non-citizen had
voted. Purging of voter rolls is another method of disenfranchisement
and it was done so aggressively in Alabama. Even four-term Republican
Representative Mo Brooks who, in March 2018, was rated the House's least bipartisan member by The Lugar Center and who was a candidate in 2017, for the seat relinquished by Jeff Sessions,
found that he himself had been purged from the rolls. Merrill also
refused to publicize the passage of legislation that enabled some 60,000
Alabaman former felons to vote. Alabama's new requirement regarding proof of citizenship, had been approved by federal Election Assistance Commission
Director Brian Newby, an associate of voter disenfranchisement
advocate, Kansas SOS and Republican Gubernatorial nominee, Kris Kobach. Kobach was cited as a primary author of Alabama HB 56, passed in 2010, which was described as tougher than Arizona's law. Much of the law was invalidated on appeal at various levels of appeals courts or voluntarily withdrawn or reworded.
Georgia
In Louisville, Georgia, in October 2018, Black senior citizens were told to get off a bus that was to have taken them to a polling place for early voting.
The bus trip was supposed to have been part of the "South Rising" bus
tour sponsored by the advocacy group Black Voters Matter. A clerk of
the local Jefferson County Commission allegedly called the intended voters' senior center
to claim that the bus tour constituted "'political activity,'" which is
barred at events sponsored by the county. Latosha Brown, one of the
founders of Black Voters Matter, described the trip's prevention as a
clear-cut case of "'voter intimidation. This is voter suppression,
Southern style.'" The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
sent a letter to the county calling for an "'immediate investigation'"
into the incident, which it condemned as "'an unacceptable act of voter
intimidation'" that "'potentially violates several laws.'"
Georgia's Secretary of State, Brian Kemp,
the Republican gubernatorial nominee, was the official in charge of
determining whether or not voters will be allowed to vote in the
November 2018 election and has been accused of voter suppression.
Despite being prevented by a court from implementing wholesale
disenfranchisement, thanks to Kemp's "Exact Match" policy, the state
legislature wrote a new law in 2017 that facilitates use of the
strategy. Minority voters are statistically more likely to have names
that contain hyphens, suffixes or other punctuation that can make it
more difficult to match their name in databases, experts noted, and are
more likely to have their voter applications suspended by Kemp's office.
Barry C. Burden,
a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its
Elections Research Center said, "An unrealistic rule of this sort will
falsely flag many legitimate registration forms. Moreover, the evidence
indicates that minority residents are more likely to be flagged than are
whites." Kemp has suspended the applications of 53,000 voters, a
majority of whom are minorities. "Even if everyone who is on a pending
list is eventually allowed to vote, it places more hurdles in the way of
those voters on the list, who are disproportionately black and
Hispanic," said Charles Stewart III, Professor of Political Science at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Georgia officials kept hundreds of voting machines locked in warehouses on Election Day 2018, creating a shortage at the polls. This led to hours-long lines, which act as a deterrent to voters who had to work or take care of children.
Indiana
In
2017, Indiana passed a law allowing the state to purge voters from the
rolls without notifying them, based on information from the
controversial Crosscheck system. The Indiana NAACP and League of Women Voters have filed a federal lawsuit against Connie Lawson, Indiana's Secretary of State, to stop the purges. In June 2018, a federal judge ruled that the law violated the National Voter Registration Act.
North Dakota
In
September, a federal circuit court of appeals reversed an earlier
ruling that struck down a law requiring voters to have a residential
street address. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the
case.
Ohio
In February 2017, Ohio Secretary of State Jon A. Husted, a Republican, asked the United States Supreme Court
to review the appellate court decision that prevented the state from
purging infrequent voters from the rolls. The case was accepted; oral
arguments in Husted v. Randolph Institute were heard on November 8. The Court issued its decision on June 10, 2018, ruling 5–4 that Ohio's law did not violate federal laws.
Texas
In Texas,
a voter ID law requiring a driver's license, passport, military
identification, or gun permit, was repeatedly found to be intentionally
discriminatory. The state's election laws could be put back under the
control of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however, the DOJ has expressed support for Texas's ID law. (Sessions was accused by Coretta Scott King in 1986 of trying to suppress the black vote.)
