The term subitism points to sudden awakening, the idea that insight into Buddha-nature, or the nature of mind, is "sudden,"
c.q. "in one glance," "uncovered all together," or "together,
completely, simultaneously," in contrast to "successively or being
uncovered one after the other." It may be posited as opposite to gradualism,
the original Buddhist approach which says that following the dharma can
be achieved only step by step, through an arduous practice.
Etymology
The application of the term "subitism" to Buddhism is derived from the French illumination subite
(sudden awakening), contrasting with 'illumination graduelle' (gradual
awakening). It gained currency in this use in English from the work of sinologistPaul Demiéville. His 1947 work 'Mirror of the Mind' was widely read in the U.S. It inaugurated a series by him on subitism and gradualism.
The Chinese term tun, as used in tun-wu, translated as "subite," sudden, has a broader meaning than "sudden."
It is more apt translated as "in one glance," "uncovered all together,"
or "together, completely, simultaneously," in contrast to "successively
or being uncovered one after the other."
It means that all aspects of Buddhist practice are realized, or
actualized, simultaneously, and not one after another as in a gradual or
linear school curriculum. Specifically, the defilements are not erased
gradually, by good works, but simultaneously.
Subitizing,
also derived from the Latin adjective subitus, is the rapid, accurate,
and confident judgments of numbers performed for small numbers of items.
It is important to be aware subitism can also be used in this context.
Tun wu in Chinese Buddhism
Chan
The distinction between sudden and gradual awakening has its roots in Indian Buddhism. It was first introduced in China in the beginning of the 5th century CE by Tao Sheng. The term became of central importance in Chan Buddhism, where it is used to denote the doctrinal position that awakening,
the comprehension or realization of the Buddhist teachings, happens
simultaneously, and is not the fruit of a gradual accretion or
realisation.
Shenhui
In the 8th century the distinction became part of a struggle for influence at the Chinese court by Shenhui, a student of Huineng.
Hereafter "sudden enlightenment" became one of the hallmarks of Chan
Buddhism, though the sharp distinction was softened by subsequent
generations of practitioners.
While the Patriarch was living in
Bao Lin Monastery, the Grand Master Shen Xiu was preaching in Yu Quan
Monastery of Jing Nan. At that time the two Schools, that of Hui Neng of
the South and Shen Xiu of the North, flourished side by side. As the
two Schools were distinguished from each other by the names "Sudden"
(the South) and "Gradual" (the North), the question which sect they
should follow baffled certain Buddhist scholars (of that time). (Seeing
this), the Patriarch addressed the assembly as follows:
So far as the Dharma
is concerned, there can be only one School. (If a distinction exists)
it exists in the fact that the founder of one school is a northern man,
while the other is a southerner. While there is only one dharma,
some disciples realize it more quickly than others. The reason why the
names 'Sudden' and 'Gradual' are given is that some disciples are
superior to others in mental dispositions. So far as the Dharma is
concerned, the distinction of 'Sudden' and 'Gradual' does not exist.
Rivalry between schools
While
the socalled "Southern School" was said to place emphasis on sudden
enlightenment, it also marked a shift in doctrinal basis from the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra to the prajnaparamita tradition, especially the Diamond Sutra. The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, which endorses the Buddha-nature, emphasized purity of mind, which can be attained in gradations. The Diamond Sutra emphasizes śūnyatā, which "must be realized totally or not at all".
Once this dichotomy was in place, it defined its own logic and
rhetorics, which are also recognizable in the distinction between Caodong (Sōtō) and Linji (Rinzai) schools. But it also leads to a "sometimes bitter and always prolix sectarian controversy between later Ch'an and Hua-yen exegetes". In the Huayan classification of teachings, the sudden approach was regarded inferior to the Perfect Teaching of Huayan. Guifeng Zongmi, fifth patriarch of Huayan and Chan master, devised his own classification to counter this subordination. To establish the superiority of Chan, Jinul, the most important figure in the formation of Korean Seon, explained the sudden approach as not pointing to mere emptiness, but to suchness or the dharmadhatu.
Later re-interpretations
Guifeng Zongmi,
fifth-generation successor to Shenhui, also softened the edge between
sudden and gradual. In his analysis, sudden awakening points to seeing
into one's true nature, but is to be followed by a gradual cultivation
to attain buddhahood.
Ch'an expressions refer to
enlightenment as "seeing your self-nature". But even this is not enough.
After seeing your self-nature, you need to deepen your experience even
further and bring it into maturation. You should have enlightenment
experience again and again and support them with continuous practice.
Even though Ch'an says that at the time of enlightenment, your outlook
is the same as of the Buddha, you are not yet a full Buddha.
Chinul,
a 12th-century Korean Seon master, followed Zongmi, and also emphasized
that insight into our true nature is sudden, but is to be followed by
practice to ripen the insight and attain full Buddhahood.
In contemporary Korean Seon, Seongcheol has defended the stance of "sudden insight, sudden cultivation". Citing Taego Bou (太古普愚: 1301-1382) as the true successor of the Linji Yixuan (臨済義玄) line of patriarchs rather than Jinul (知訥: 1158-1210), he advocated Hui Neng's original stance of 'sudden enlightenment, sudden cultivation' (Hangul: 돈오돈수, Hanja: 頓悟頓修) as opposed to Jinul's stance of 'sudden enlightenment, gradual cultivation' (Hangul: 돈오점수, Hanja: 頓悟漸修).
Whereas Jinul had initially asserted that with enlightenment comes the
need to further one's practice by gradually destroying the karmic
vestiges attained through millions of rebirths, Huineng and Seongcheol maintained that with perfect enlightenment, all karmic remnants disappear and one becomes a Buddha immediately.
Popularisation in the west
When Zen was introduced in the west, the Rinzai stories of
unconventional masters and sudden enlightenment caught the popular
imagination. D. T. Suzuki was a seminal influence in this regard. It was Suzuki's contention that a Zen satori (awakening) was the goal of the tradition's training.
As Suzuki portrayed it, Zen Buddhism was a highly practical religion
whose emphasis on direct experience made it particularly comparable to
forms of mystical experience that scholars such as William James had emphasized as the fountainhead of all religious sentiment.
Indian spirituality
The
emphasis on direct experience is also recognized in forms of Indian
spirituality, which gained popularity in the west in 1960s and 1970s,
and further influenced the discourse on awakening in the west.
Ramana Maharshi - Akrama mukti
Ramana Maharshi made a distinction between akrama mukti, "sudden liberation", as opposed to the krama mukti, "gradual liberation" as in the Vedanta path of jnana yoga:
‘Some people,’ he said, ‘start off
by studying literature in their youth. Then they indulge in the
pleasures of the world until they are fed up with them. Next, when they
are at an advanced age, they turn to books on Vedanta. They go to a guru
and get initiated by him and then start the process of sravana, manana
and nididhyasana, which finally culminates in samadhi. This is the
normal and standard way of approaching liberation. It is called krama
mukti [gradual liberation]. But I was overtaken by akrama mukti [sudden
liberation] before I passed through any of the above-mentioned stages.’
Inchegeri Sampradaya - "the Ant's way"
The teachings of Bhausaheb Maharaj, the founder of the Inchegeri Sampradaya, have been called "the Ant's way", the way of meditation,
while the teachings of Siddharameshwar Maharaj and his disciples
Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ranjit Maharaj have been called "the Bird's
Way", the direct path to Self-discovery:
The way of meditation is a long
arduous path while the Bird's Way is a clear direct path of Self
investigation, Self exploration, and using thought or concepts as an aid
to understanding and Self-Realization. Sometimes this approach is also
called the Reverse Path. What Reverse Path indicates is the turning
around of one's attention away from objectivity to the more subjective
sense of one's Beingness.
With the Bird's Way, first one's mind must be made subtle. This is
generally done with some initial meditation on a mantra or phrase which
helps the aspirant to step beyond the mental/conceptual body, using a
concept to go beyond conceptualization.
The terms appear in the Varaha Upanishad, Chapter IV:
34. (The Rishi) Suka is a Mukta (emancipated person). (The Rishi) Vamadeva
is a Mukta. There are no others (who have attained emancipation) than
through these (viz., the two paths of these two Rishis). Those brave men
who follow the path of Suka in this world become Sadyo-Muktas (viz.,
emancipated) immediately after (the body wear away);
35. While those who always follow the path of Vamadeva (i.e.,
Vedanta) in this world are subject again and again to rebirths and
attain Krama (gradual) emancipation, through Yoga, Sankhya and Karmas
associated with Sattva (Guna).
36. Thus there are two paths laid down by the Lord of Devas (viz.,) the
Suka and Vamadeva paths. The Suka path is called the bird’s path; while
the Vamadeva path is called the ant’s path.
"The Gerry-mander" first appeared in this cartoon-map in the Boston Gazette, March 26, 1812.
Gerrymandering in the United States has been used to increase the power of a political party. Gerrymandering is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative
bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding
boundaries rather than compact areas. The term "gerrymandering" was
coined by a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry that was named because one of the districts looked like a salamander.
In the United States, redistricting takes place in each state about every ten years, after the decennial census. It defines geographical boundaries, with each district within a state being geographically contiguous and having about the same number of state voters. The resulting map affects the elections of the state's members of the US House of Representatives
and the state legislative bodies. Redistricting has always been
regarded as a political exercise and in most states, it is controlled by
state legislators and governor. When one party controls the state's
legislative bodies and governor's office, it is in a strong position to
gerrymander district boundaries to advantage its side and to
disadvantage its political opponents.
Since 2010, detailed maps and high-speed computing have facilitated
gerrymandering by political parties in the redistricting process, in
order to gain control of state legislation and congressional
representation, and to potentially maintain that control over several
decades even against shifting political changes in a state's population.
Gerrymandering has been sought as unconstitutional in many instances,
but it has made many elections more representative. Even as redistricting can advantage the party in control of the process, political science research
suggests that its effects are not as large as critics may say. It does
not necessarily "advantage incumbents, reduce competitiveness, or
exacerbate political polarization."
Typical gerrymandering cases in the United States take the form
of partisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at favor in one political
party or weaken another; bipartisan gerrymandering, which is aimed at
protecting incumbents by multiple political parties; and racial
gerrymandering, which is aimed at weakening the power of minority
voters.
Gerrymandering can also recreate districts with the aim of
maximizing the number of racial minorities to assist particular
nominees, who are minorities themselves. In some other cases that have
the same goal of diluting the minority vote, the districts are
reconstructed in a way that packs minority voters into a smaller or
limited number of districts.
In the 20th century and afterwards, federal courts have deemed
extreme cases of gerrymandering to be unconstitutional but have
struggled with how to define the types of gerrymandering and the
standards that should be used to determine which redistricting maps are
unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court has affirmed in Miller v. Johnson
(1995) that racial gerrymandering is a violation of constitutional
rights and upheld decisions against redistricting that is purposely
devised based on race. However, the Supreme Court has struggled as to
when partisan gerrymandering occurs (Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004) and Gill v. Whitford (2018)) and a landmark decision, Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), ultimately decided that questions of partisan gerrymandering represent a nonjusticiablepolitical question,
which cannot be dealt with by the federal court system. That decision
leaves it to states and to Congress to develop remedies to challenge and
to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Some states have created
independent redistricting commissions to reduce political drivers for redistricting.
Different ways to draw district boundaries in a hypothetical state.
Partisan gerrymandering
Origins (1789–2000)
Printed
in March 1812, this political cartoon was drawn in reaction to the
newly drawn Congressional electoral district of South Essex County drawn
by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the Democratic-Republican
Party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists. The
caricature satirizes the bizarre shape of a district in Essex County, Massachusetts
as a dragon-like "monster." Federalist newspapers editors and others at
the time likened the district shape to a salamander, and the word gerrymander was a blend of that word and Governor Gerry's last name.
Partisan gerrymandering, which refers to redistricting that favors
one political party, has a long tradition in the United States.
The word gerrymander (originally written "Gerry-mander") was used
for the first time in the Boston Gazette (not to be confused with the Boston Gazette) on March 26, 1812 in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814), who signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts to the north of Boston was said to resemble the shape of a salamander.
The coiner of the term "gerrymander" may never be firmly established. Historians widely believe that the Federalist newspaper editors Nathan Hale, and Benjamin and John Russell
were the instigators, but the historical record does not have
definitive evidence as to who created or uttered the word for the first
time. Appearing with the term, and helping to spread and sustain its popularity, was a political cartoon
depicting a strange animal with claws, wings and a dragon-like head
satirizing the map of the odd-shaped district. This cartoon was most
likely drawn by Elkanah Tisdale, an early 19th-century painter, designer, and engraver who was living in Boston at the time. The word gerrymander
was reprinted numerous times in Federalist newspapers in Massachusetts,
New England, and nationwide during the remainder of 1812.
Gerrymandering soon began to be used to describe not only the
original Massachusetts example, but also other cases of district-shape
manipulation for partisan gain in other states. The first known use
outside the immediate Boston area came in the Newburyport Herald of Massachusetts on March 31, and the first known use outside Massachusetts came in the Concord Gazette of New Hampshire on April 14, 1812. The first known use outside New England came in the New York Gazette & General Advertiser on May 19. What may be the first use of the term to describe the redistricting in another state (Maryland) occurred in the Federal Republican
(Georgetown, Washington, DC) on October 12, 1812. There are at least 80
known citations of the word from March through December 1812 in
American newspapers.
The practice of gerrymandering the borders of new states
continued past the Civil War and into the late 19th century. The
Republican Party used its control of Congress to secure the admission of
more states in territories friendly to their party. A notable example
is the admission of Dakota Territory as two states instead of one. By the rules for representation in the Electoral College, each new state carried at least three electoral votes, regardless of its population.
From time to time, other names are given the "-mander" suffix to
tie a particular effort to a particular politician or group. These
include "Jerrymander" (a reference to California Governor Jerry Brown), and "Perrymander" (a reference to Texas Governor Rick Perry).
In the 1960s, a series of "one person, one vote" cases were decided by the Supreme Court, which resulted in a mandate of redistricting
in response to the results of each census. Prior to these decisions,
many states had stopped redrawing their districts. As a result of the
periodic need to redistrict, political conflicts over redistricting have
sharply increased.
2000-2010
The potential to gerrymander a district map has been aided by advances in computing power and capabilities. Using geographic information system
and census data as input, mapmakers can use computers to process
through numerous potential map configurations to achieve desired
results, including partisan gerrymandering.
Computers can assess voter preferences and use that to "pack" or
"crack" votes into districts. Packing votes refers to concentrating
voters in one voting district by redrawing congressional boundaries so
that those in opposition of the party in charge of redistricting are
placed into one larger district, therefore reducing the party's
congressional representation. Cracking refers to diluting the voting
power of opposition voters across many districts by redrawing
congressional boundaries so that voting minority populations in each
district are reduced, therefore lowering the chance of a
district-oriented congressional takeover. Both techniques lead to what
the Times describes as "wasted votes," which are votes that do not
supply a party with any victory. These can either be a surplus of votes
in one district for one party that are above the threshold needed to
win, or any vote that has resulted in a loss.
A study done by the University of Delaware mentions situations in which
an incumbent that is required to live in the district they represent
can be "hijacked" or "kidnapped" into a neighboring district due to the
redrawing of congressional boundaries, subsequently placing them in
districts that are more difficult for them to win in. Partisan gerrymandering oftentimes leads to benefits for a particular political party, or, in some cases, a race.
In Pennsylvania, the Republican-dominated state legislature used gerrymandering to help defeat Democratic representative Frank Mascara.
Mascara was elected to Congress in 1994. In 2002, the Republican Party
altered the boundaries of his original district so much that he was
pitted against fellow Democratic candidate John Murtha
in the election. The shape of Mascara's newly drawn district formed a
finger that stopped at his street, encompassing his house, but not the
spot where he parked his car. Murtha won the election in the newly
formed district.
State legislatures have used gerrymandering along racial or
ethnic lines both to decrease and increase minority representation in
state governments and congressional delegations. In the state of Ohio, a
conversation between Republican officials was recorded that
demonstrated that redistricting was being done to aid their political
candidates. Furthermore, the discussions assessed race of voters as a
factor in redistricting, because African-Americans had backed Democratic
candidates. Republicans apparently removed approximately 13,000
African-American voters from the district of Jim Raussen,
a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives, in an attempt
to tip the scales in what was once a competitive district for Democratic
candidates.
International election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, who were invited to observe and report on the 2004 national elections,
expressed criticism of the U.S. congressional redistricting process and
made a recommendation that the procedures be reviewed to ensure genuine
competitiveness of congressional election contests.
2010-2020
In the lead-up to the 2010 United States elections, the Republican party initiated a program called REDMAP,
the Redistricting Majority Project, which recognized that the party in
control of state legislatures would have the ability to set their
congressional and legislative district maps based on the pending 2010 United States Census
in manner to assure that party's control over the next ten years. The
Republicans took significant gains from the 2010 elections across
several states, and by 2011 and 2012, some of the new district maps
showed Republican advantage through perceived partisan gerrymandering.
This set the stage for several legal challenges from voters and groups
in the court system, including several heard at the Supreme Court level.
In 2015, Thomas Hofeller was hired by the Washington Free Beacon
to analyze what would happen if political maps were drawn based on the
population of U.S. citizens of voting age rather than on the total
population. He concluded that doing so “would be advantageous to
Republicans and non-Hispanic whites." Although the study was not
published, it was discovered after his death in 2018. Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. have refused to cooperate with an investigation into why the Trump administration added a U.S. citizenship question to the 2020 census and specifically whether it seeks to benefit Republicans as suggested by Hofeller's study.
Several state court rulings found partisan gerrymandering to be
impermissible under state constitutions, and several state ballot
measures passed in 2018 that require non-partisan commissions for the
2020 redistricting cycle.
Legality
U.S. congressional districts covering Travis County, Texas (outlined in red) in 2002, left, and 2004, right. In 2003, the majority of Republicans in the Texas legislature redistricted the state,
diluting the voting power of the heavily Democratic county by parceling
its residents out to more Republican districts. In 2004 the orange district 25 was intended to elect a Democrat while the yellow and pink district 21 and district 10 were intended to elect Republicans. District 25 was redrawn as the result of a 2006 Supreme Court decision. In the 2011 redistricting, Republicans divided Travis County between five districts, only one of which, extending to San Antonio, elects a Democrat.
2018
election results for the US House of Representatives, showing
Democratic Party vote share and seat share. While the overall vote share
and seat share were the same at 54%, there were several states with
significant differences in share. Note that several states with few or
one representative appear at the 0 or 100% seat share. States with more
representatives and sizable share differences are more analytically
relevant for evaluating the risk of gerrymandering.
Federal courts
Whether
a redistricting results in a partisan gerrymandering has been a
frequent question put to the United States court system, but which the
courts have generally avoided a strong ruling for fear of showing
political bias towards either of the major parties. The Supreme Court had ruled in Davis v. Bandemer (1986) that partisan gerrymandering violates the Equal Protection Clause and is a justiciable
matter. However, in its decision, the Court could not agree on the
appropriate constitutional standard against which legal claims of
partisan gerrymandering should be evaluated. Writing for a plurality of
the Court, Justice White said that partisan gerrymandering occurred when
a redistricting plan was enacted with both the intent and the effect of
discriminating against an identifiable political group. Justices Powell
and Stevens said that partisan gerrymandering should be identified
based on multiple factors, such as electoral district shape and
adherence to local government boundaries. Justices O'Connor, Burger, and
Rehnquist disagreed with the view that partisan gerrymandering claims
were justiciable and would have held that such claims should not be recognized by courts. Lower courts found it difficult to apply Bandemer, and only in one subsequent case, Party of North Carolina v. Martin (1992), did a lower court strike down a redistricting plan on partisan gerrymandering grounds.
The Supreme Court revisited the concept of partisan gerrymandering claims in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004).
While the Court upheld that partisan gerrymandering could be
justiciable, the justices were divided in this specific case as no clear
standard against which to evaluate partisan gerrymandering claims
emerged. Writing for a plurality, Justice Scalia said that partisan
gerrymandering claims were nonjusticiable. A majority of the court would
continue to allow partisan gerrymandering claims to be considered
justiciable, but those justices had divergent views on how such claims
should be evaluated. Justice Anthony Kennedy,
in a concurrence with the plurality, offered that a manageable means to
determine when partisan gerrymandering occurred could be developed, and
challenged lower courts to find such means. The Court again upheld that partisan gerrymandering could be justiciable in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006). While the specific case reached no conclusion of whether there was partisan gerrymandering, Justice John Paul Stevens's
concurrence with the plurality added the notion of partisan symmetry,
in that the electoral system should translate votes to representative
seats with the same efficiency regardless of party.
Opinions from Vieth and League, as well as the
strong Republican advantage created by its REDMAP program, had led to a
number of political scholars working alongside courts to develop such a
method to determine if a district map was a justiciable partisan
gerrymandering, as to prepare for the 2020 elections.
Many early attempts failed to gain traction the court system, focusing
more on trying to show how restricting maps were intended to favor one
party or disfavor the other, or that the redistricting eschewed
traditional redistricting approaches. Around 2014, Nicholas Stephanopoulos and Eric McGhee developed the "efficiency gap", a means to measure the number of wasted votes
(votes either far in excess of what we necessary to secure a win for a
party, or votes for a party that had little chase to win) within each
district. The larger the gap of wasted votes between the two parties
implied the more likely that the district maps supported a partisan
gerrymandering, and with a sufficiently large gap it would be possible
to sustain that gap indefinitely. While not perfect, having several
potential flaws when geography of urban centers were considered, the
efficiency gap was considered to be the first tool that met both
Kennedy's and Stevens' suggestions.
The first major legal test of the efficiency gap came into play for Gill v. Whitford (2016).
The District Court in the case used the efficiency gap statistic to
evaluate the claim of partisan gerrymander in Wisconsin's legislative
districts. In the 2012 election for the state legislature, the
efficiency gap was 11.69% to 13% in favor of the Republicans.
"Republicans in Wisconsin won 60 of the 99 Assembly seats, despite
Democrats having a majority of the statewide vote."
Moving the Harris's from a
Democratic, Milwaukee district into a larger Republican area was part of
a strategy known as 'packing and cracking.' Heavily Democratic
Milwaukee voters were 'packed' together in fewer districts, while other
sections of Milwaukee were 'cracked' and added to several Republican
districts ... diluting that Democratic vote. The result? Three fewer
Democrats in the state assembly representing the Milwaukee area.
— PBS NewsHour October 1, 2017
The disparity led to the federal lawsuit Gill v. Whitford,
in which plaintiffs alleged that voting districts were gerrymandered
unconstitutionally. The court found that the disparate treatment of
Democratic and Republican voters violated the 1st and 14th amendments to
the US Constitution. The District Court's ruling was challenged and appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States,
which in June 2017 agreed to hear oral arguments in the case in the
2017–2018 term of court.The case was then dismissed due to lack of
standing for the plaintiffs with no decision on the merits being
made.The case was then remanded for further proceedings to demonstrate
standing.
While previous redistricting cases before the Supreme Court have
involved the Equal Protection test, this case also centers on the
applicability of the First Amendment freedom of association clause.
Benisek v. Lamone
was a separate partisan gerrymandering case heard by the Supreme Court
in the 2017 term, this over perceived Democratic-favored redistricting
of Maryland's 6th congressional district,
with plaintiffs trying to get a stay on the use of the new district
maps prior to the October 2018 general election. The Court did not give
opinions on whether the redistricting was unconstitutional, but did
establish that on the basis of Gill that the case should be reconsidered at the District Court.
The District Court did subsequently rule the redistricting was
unconstitutional, and that decision was appealed again to the Supreme
Court, who have agreed to hear the case in the 2018 term as Lamone v. Benisek.
Yet another partisan redistricting case was heard by the Supreme Court during the 2018 term. Rucho v. Common Cause
deals with Republican-favored gerrymandering in North Carolina. The
District Court had ruled the redistricting was unconstitutional prior to
Gill; an initial challenge brought to the Supreme Court resulted
in an order for the District Court to re-evaluate their decision in
light of Gill. The District Court, on rehearing, affirmed their
previous decision. The state Republicans again sought for review by the
Supreme Court, which is scheduled to issue its opinion by June 2018.
Similarly, Michigan's post-2010 redistricting has been
challenged, and in April 2019, a federal court determined the
Republican-led redistricting to be an unconstitutional partisan
gerrymander, and orders the state to redraw districts in time for the
2020 election.
Within a week, a similar decision was arrived by a federal district
court reviewing Ohio's district maps since 2012 and were declared
unconstitutional as they were drawn by the Republican-majority lawmakers
with "invidious partisan intent", and ordered the maps redrawn. The
Republican-favored maps led Ohio's residents to vote for a statewide
initiative that requires the new redistricting maps after the 2020
Census to have at least 50% approval from the minority party.
The Republican party sought an immediate challenge to the redistricting
order, and by late May 2019, the Supreme Court ordered both the
court-ordered redrawing to be put on hold until Republicans can prepare a
complete petition, without commenting on the merits of the case
otherwise. Additionally, observers to the Supreme Court recognized that
the Court would be issuing its orders to the North Carolina and Maryland
cases, which would likely affect how the Michigan and Ohio court orders
would be interpreted.
Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek were
decided on June 27, 2019, which, in the 5–4 decision, determined that
judging partisan gerrymandering cases is outside of the remit of the
federal court system due to the political questions involved. The
majority opinion stated that extreme partisan gerrymandering is still
unconstitutional, but it is up to Congress and state legislative bodies
to find ways to restrict that, such as through the use of independent
redistricting commissions.
State courts
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
that gerrymandering was unconstitutional, ruling that the districts
drawn to favor Republicans violated "free and equal" Elections Clause of
the Pennsylvanian constitution and redrew the districts after the state
government failed to comply with the deadline in its order to redraw. The U.S. Supreme Court denied to hear the challenge and allowed the Pennsylvania Supreme Court maps to remain in place.
In October 2019, a three-judge panel in North Carolina threw out a gerrymandered electoral map, citing violation of the constitution to disadvantage the Democratic Party.
Bipartisan gerrymandering (favoring incumbents)
Bipartisan
gerrymandering, where redistricting favors the incumbents in both the
Democratic and Republican parties, became especially relevant in the
2000 redistricting process, which created some of the most
non-competitive redistricting plans in American history. The Supreme Court held in Gaffney v. Cummings (1973) that bipartisan gerrymanders are constitutionally permissible under the Equal Protection Clause.
Racial gerrymandering
Racial
makeup can be used as a means to create gerrymanders. There is overlap
between racial and partisan gerrymandering, as minorities tend to favor
Democratic candidates; the North Carolina redistricting in Rucho v. Common Cause
was such a case dealing with both partisan and racial gerrymanders.
However, racial gerrymanders can also be created without considerations
of party lines.
Negative
"Negative
racial gerrymandering" refers to a process in which district lines are
drawn to prevent racial minorities from electing their preferred
candidates.
Between the Reconstruction Era and mid-20th century, white Southern Democrats effectively controlled redistricting throughout the Southern United States.
In areas where some African-American and other minorities succeeded in
registering, some states created districts that were gerrymandered to
reduce the voting impact of minorities. Minorities were effectively
deprived of their franchise into the 1960s. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
and its subsequent amendments, redistricting to carve maps to
intentionally diminish the power of voters who were in a racial or
linguistic minority, was prohibited. The Voting Rights Act was amended
by Congress in the 1980s, Congress to "make states redraw maps if they
have a discriminatory effect." In July, 2017, San Juan County, Utah
was ordered to redraw its county commission and school board election
districts again after "U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby ruled that they
were unconstitutional." It was argued that the voice of Native
Americans, who were in the majority, had been suppressed "when they are
packed into gerrymandered districts."
While the Equal Protection Clause, along with Section 2 and Section 5
of the Voting Rights Act, prohibit jurisdictions from gerrymandering
electoral districts to dilute the votes of racial groups, the Supreme
Court has held that in some instances, the Equal Protection Clause
prevents jurisdictions from drawing district lines to favor racial
groups. The Supreme Court first recognized these "affirmative racial
gerrymandering" claims in Shaw v. Reno (Shaw I) (1993),
holding that plaintiffs "may state a claim by alleging that
[redistricting] legislation, though race neutral on its face, rationally
cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate
voters into different districts on the basis of race, and that the
separation lacks sufficient justification". The Supreme Court reasoned
that these claims were cognizable because relying on race in
redistricting "reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine
our system of representative democracy by signaling to elected officials
that they represent a particular racial group rather than their
constituency as a whole". Later opinions characterized the type of unconstitutional harm created by racial gerrymandering as an "expressive harm",
which law professors Richard Pildes and Richard Neimi have described as
a harm "that results from the idea or attitudes expressed through a
governmental action."
Subsequent cases further defined the counters of racial
gerrymandering claims and how those claims relate to the Voting Rights
Act. In United States v. Hays (1996), the Supreme Court held that only those persons who reside in a challenged district may bring a racial gerrymandering claim. In Miller v. Johnson (1995), the Supreme Court held that a redistricting plan must be subjected to strict scrutiny
if the jurisdiction used race as the "predominant factor" in
determining how to draw district lines. The court defined "predominance"
as meaning that the jurisdiction gave more priority to racial
considerations than to traditional redistricting principles such as
"compactness, contiguity, [and] respect for political subdivisions or
communities defined by actual shared interests." In determining whether racial considerations predominated over
traditional redistricting principles, courts may consider both direct
and circumstantial evidence of the jurisdiction's intent in drawing the
district lines, and irregularly-shaped districts constitute strong
circumstantial evidence that the jurisdiction relied predominately on
race.
If a court concludes that racial considerations predominated, then a
redistricting plan is considered a "racially gerrymandered" plan and
must be subjected to strict scrutiny, meaning that the redistricting
plan will be upheld as constitutional only if it is narrowly tailored to
advance a compelling state interest. In Bush v. Vera (1996),
the Supreme Court in a plurality opinion assumed that compliance with
Section 2 or Section 5 of the Act constituted compelling interests, and
lower courts have treated these two interests as the only compelling
interests that may justify the creation of racially gerrymandered
districts.
In Hunt v. Cromartie (1999) and its follow-up case Easley v. Cromartie
(2001), the Supreme Court approved a racially focused gerrymandering of
a congressional district on the grounds that the definition was not
pure racial gerrymandering but instead partisan gerrymandering, which is
constitutionally permissible. With the increasing racial polarization
of parties in the South in the U.S. as conservative whites move from the
Democratic to the Republican Party, gerrymandering may become partisan
and also achieve goals for ethnic representation.
Various examples of affirmative racial gerrymandering have emerged. When the state legislature considered representation for Arizona's Native American reservations, they thought each needed their own House member, because of historic conflicts between the Hopi and Navajo
nations. Since the Hopi reservation is completely surrounded by the
Navajo reservation, the legislature created an unusual district
configuration for the 2nd congressional district
that featured a fine filament along a river course several hundred
miles in length to attach the Hopi reservation to the rest of the
district; the arrangement lasted until 2013. The California state legislature created a congressional district
(2003–2013) that extended over a narrow coastal strip for several
miles. It ensured that a common community of interest will be
represented, rather than having portions of the coastal areas be split
up into districts extending into the interior, with domination by inland
concerns.
In the case of League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, the United States Supreme Court upheld on June 28, 2006, most of a Texas congressional map suggested in 2003 by former United States House Majority LeaderTom DeLay, and enacted by the state of Texas.
The 7–2 decision allows state legislatures to redraw and gerrymander
districts as often as they like (not just after the decennial census).
In his dissenting opinion in LULAC v. Perry, Justice John Paul
Stevens, joined by Justice Stephen Breyer, quoted Bill Ratliffe, former
Texas lieutenant governor and member of the Texas state senate saying,
"political gain for the Republicans was 110% the motivation for the
plan," and argued that a plan whose "sole intent" was partisan could
violate the Equal Protection Clause. This was notable as previously Justice Stevens had joined Justice Breyer's opinion in Easley v. Cromartie,
which held that explicitly partisan motivation for gerrymanders was
permissible and a defense against claims of racial gerrymandering. Thus
they may work to protect their political parties' standing and number of
seats, so long as they do not harm racial and ethnic minority groups. A
5–4 majority declared one congressional district unconstitutional in the case because of harm to an ethnic minority.
Inclusion of prisons
Since the 1790 United States Census, the United States Census Bureau
has counted prisoner populations as residents of the districts in which
they are incarcerated, rather than in the same district as their
previous pre-incarceration residence. In jurisdictions where
incarcerated people cannot vote, moving boundaries around a prison can
create a district out of what would otherwise be a population of voters
which is too small. One extreme example is Waupun, Wisconsin,
where two city council districts are made up of 61% and 76%
incarcerated people, but as of 2019, neither elected representative has
visited the local prisons.
In 2018, the Census Bureau announced that it would retain the
policy, asserting that the policy "is consistent with the concept of
usual residence, as established by the Census Act of 1790," but also
conceding assistance to states who wish "'to 'move' their prisoner
population back to the prisoners' pre-incarceration addresses for
redistricting and other purposes".
A number of states have since ordered their state governments to
recognize incarcerated persons as residents of their pre-incarceration
homes for the sake of legislative and congressional redistricting at all
levels, including Maryland (2010), New York (2010) in time for the 2010 Census, and California (2011), Delaware (2010), Nevada (2019) and Washington State (2019), New Jersey (2020), and Colorado (2020) in time for the 2020 Census.
Colorado (2002), Michigan (1966), Tennessee (2016) and Virginia (2013)
have passed laws restricting counties and municipalities from (or
allowing counties and municipalities to avoid) prison-based
redistricting, and Massachusetts passed a 2014 resolution requesting the
Census Bureau to end the practice of counting prisoners in their
incarceration districts.
Remedies
Various political and legal remedies have been used or proposed to diminish or prevent gerrymandering in the country.
Neutral redistricting criteria
Various
constitutional and statutory provisions may compel a court to strike
down a gerrymandered redistricting plan. At the federal level, the
Supreme Court has held that if a jurisdiction's redistricting plan
violates the Equal Protection Clause or Voting Rights Act of 1965,
a federal court must order the jurisdiction to propose a new
redistricting plan that remedies the gerrymandering. If the jurisdiction
fails to propose a new redistricting plan, or its proposed
redistricting plan continues to violate the law, then the court itself
must draw a redistricting plan that cures the violation and use its
equitable powers to impose the plan on the jurisdiction.
In the Supreme Court case of Karcher v. Daggett (1983), a New Jersey redistricting plan was overturned when it was found to be unconstitutional by violating the constitutional principle of one person, one vote.
Despite the state claiming its unequal redistricting was done to
preserve minority voting power, the court found no evidence to support
this and deemed the redistricting unconstitutional.
At the state level, state courts may order or impose
redistricting plans on jurisdictions where redistricting legislation
prohibits gerrymandering. For example, in 2010 Florida adopted two state
constitutional amendments that prohibit the Florida Legislature from
drawing redistricting plans that favor or disfavor any political party
or incumbent.
Ohio residents passed an initiative in 2018 that requires the
redistricting maps to have at least 50% approval by the minority party
in the legislature.
Congressional redistricting methods by state after the 2010 census: State legislatures control redistricting Commissions control redistricting Nonpartisan staff develop the maps, which are then voted on by the state legislature No redistricting due to having only one congressional district
Some states have established non-partisan redistricting commissions with redistricting authority. Washington, Arizona, and California have created standing committees for redistricting following the 2010 census. However, it has been argued that the Californian standing committee has failed to end gerrymandering. Rhode Island and the New Jersey Redistricting Commission have developed ad hoc committees, but developed the past two decennial reapportionments tied to new census data.
The predominant voting system in the United States is a first-past-the-post system that uses single-member districts. Various alternative district-based
voting systems that do not rely on redistricting, or rely on
redistricting minimally, have been proposed that may mitigate against
the ability to gerrymander. These systems typically involve a form of
at-large elections or multimember districts. Examples of such systems
include the single-transferable vote, cumulative voting, and limited voting.
Proportional voting systems, such as those used in all but three European states,
would bypass the problem altogether. In these systems, the party that
gets, for example, 30 percent of the votes gets roughly 30 percent of
the seats in the legislature. Although it is common for European states
to have more than two parties, a sufficiently high election threshold can limit the number of parties elected. Some proportional voting systems
have no districts or larger multimember districts and may break the
strong constituency link, a cornerstone of current American politics, by
eliminating the dependency of individual representatives on a concrete
electorate. However, systems like mixed-member proportional representation
keep local single-member constituencies but balance their results with
nationally elected or regionally-elected representatives to reach party
proportionality.
Effects
Democracy
A
2020 study found that gerrymandering "impedes numerous party functions
at both the congressional and state house levels. Candidates are less
likely to contest districts when their party is disadvantaged by a
districting plan. Candidates that do choose to run are more likely to
have weak resumes. Donors are less willing to contribute money. And
ordinary voters are less apt to support the targeted party. These
results suggest that gerrymandering has long‐term effects on the health
of the democratic process beyond simply costing or gaining parties seats
in the legislature."
Gerrymandering and the environment
Gerrymandering
has the ability to create numerous problems for the constituents
impacted by the redistricting. A study done by the peer-reviewed
Environmental Justice Journal analyzed how gerrymandering contributes to
environmental racism.
It suggested that partisan gerrymandering can often lead to adverse
health complications for minority populations that live closer to United
States superfund
sites and additionally found that during redistricting periods,
minority populations are "effectively gerrymandered out" of districts
that tend to have fewer people of color in them and are farther away
from toxic waste sites. This redistricting can be seen as a deliberate
move to further marginalize minority populations and restrict them from
gaining access to congressional representation and potentially fixing
environmental hazards in their communities.
Gerrymandering and the 2018 midterm elections
Gerrymandering was considered by many Democrats to be one of the biggest obstacles they came across during the 2018 U.S. midterm election.
In early 2018, both the United States Supreme Court and the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court determined that the Republican parties in
North Carolina and Pennsylvania had committed unconstitutional partisan
gerrymandering in the respective cases Cooper v. Harris and League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
In the case of Pennsylvania, the map was reconfigured into an evenly
split congressional delegation, which gave Democrats in Pennsylvania
more congressional representation and subsequently aided the Democrats
in flipping the U.S. House of Representatives. In contrast, North
Carolina did not reconfigure the districts prior to the midterm
elections, which ultimately gave Republicans there an edge during the
election. Republicans in North Carolina acquired 50% of the vote, which
subsequently garnered them about 77% of the available seats in congress.
At
a federal level, gerrymandering has been blamed for a decrease in
competitive elections, movement toward extreme party positions, and gridlock in Congress. Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight
argues that decreasing competition is partly due to gerrymandering, but
even more so due to the population of the United States
self-segregating by political ideology, which is seen in by-county voter
registrations. Enten points to studies which find that factors other
than gerrymandering account for over 75% of the increase in polarization
in the past forty years, presumably due largely to changes among voters
themselves. Because the Senate (which cannot be gerrymandered due to
the fixed state borders) has been passing fewer bills but the House
(which is subject to gerrymandering) has been passing more (comparing
1993–2002 to 2013–2016), Enten concludes gridlock is due to factors
other than gerrymandering.
Voter suppression in the United States concerns various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible voters from exercising their right to vote. Where found, such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Separately, there have also been various efforts to enfranchise and disenfranchise various voters in the country, which concern whether or not people are eligible to vote in the first place.
Methods
Historical
The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 guaranteed the right to vote to men of all races, including former slaves. Initially, this resulted in high voter turnout among African-Americans in the South. In the 1880 United States presidential election,
a majority of eligible African-American voters cast a ballot in every
Southern state except for two. In eight Southern states, Black turnout
was equal to or greater than White turnout. At the end of the Reconstruction era, Southern states began implementing policies to suppress Black voters.
After 1890, less than 9,000 of Mississippi's 147,000 eligible
African-American voters were registered to vote, or about 6%. Louisiana
went from 130,000 registered African-American voters in 1896 to 1,342 in
1904 (about a 99% decrease).
Poll taxes
Poll taxes were used to disenfranchise voters, particularly African-Americans and poor whites in the South. Poll taxes started in the 1890s, requiring eligible voters to pay a fee before casting a ballot. Some poor whites were grandfathered in if they had an ancestor who voted before the Civil War era. This meant that they were exempt from paying the tax.
Eleven Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and
Virginia), as well as several outside the South, imposed poll taxes. The
poll tax mechanism varied on a state-by-state basis; in Alabama, the
poll tax was cumulative, meaning that a man had to pay all poll taxes
due from the age of twenty-one onward in order to vote. In other states,
poll taxes had to be paid for several years before being eligible to
vote. Enforcement of poll tax laws was patchy. Election officials had
the discretion whether or not to ask for a voter's poll tax receipt.
The constitutionality of the poll tax was upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1937 Breedlove v. Suttles and again affirmed in 1951 by a federal court in Butler v. Thompson.
Poll taxes began to wane in popularity despite judicial affirmations,
with five Southern states keeping poll taxes by 1962 (Alabama, Arkansas,
Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia). The poll tax was officially prohibited in 1964 by the Twenty-fourth Amendment.
Literacy tests
Like poll taxes, literacy tests were primarily used to disenfranchise poor or African-American voters in the South.
African-American literacy rates lagged behind White literacy rates
until 1940. Literacy tests were applied unevenly: property owners were
often exempt, as well as those who would have had the right to vote (or
whose ancestors had the right to vote) in 1867, which was before the
passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Some states exempted veterans of the
Civil War from tests. Literacy tests varied in difficulty, with
African-Americans often given more rigorous tests. In Macon County, Alabama
in the late 1950s, for example, at least twelve whites who had not
finished elementary school passed the literacy test, while several
college-educated African-Americans were failed. Literacy tests were
prevalent outside the South as well, as they were seen as keeping
society's undesirables (the poor, immigrants, or the uninformed) from
voting; twenty states still had literacy tests after World War II,
including seven Southern states, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
and New York. A 1970 Amendment to the Voting Rights Act prohibited the use of literacy tests for determining voting eligibility.
Contemporary
Purging of voter rolls
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 were not
allowed to vote at that time 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. However, according to the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement, nearly 89% of felons convicted in
Florida are black; therefore, a purge of convicted felons could be
expected to include a disproportionately high number of blacks. The Post
added that "a review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT
employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an
elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were
specifically targeted".
Between November 2015 and early 2016, over 120,000 voters were dropped from rolls in Brooklyn, New York.
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 2008, more than 98,000 registered Georgia
voters were removed from the roll of voters because of discrepancies in
computer records of their identification information. Some 4,500
voters had to prove their citizenship to regain their right to vote.
Georgia was challenged
for requesting more Social Security-based verifications than any other
state—about 2 million voters in total. An attorney involved in the
lawsuit said that since the letters were mailed within 90 days of the
election, Georgia violated federal law. The director of the American
Civil Liberty Union's Georgia Voting Rights Project said, "They are
systematically using these lists and matching them and using those
matches to send these letters out to voters. They're using a systematic
purging procedure that's expressly prohibited by federal laws, if people
who are properly eligible are getting improperly challenged and purged.
Elise Shore, a regional attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense
and Educational Fund (MALDEF), agreed the letters appear to violate two
federal laws against voter purging within 90 days of the election.
People are being targeted, and people are being told they are
non-citizens, including both naturalized citizens and U.S.-born
citizens," said Shore. "They're being told they're not eligible to vote,
based on information in a database that hasn't been checked and
approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ), and that we know has flaws
in it." Secretary of State Karen Handel denied that the removal of voters' names was an instance of voter suppression.
In 2019, presiding circuit court Judge Paul V. Malloy of Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, removed 234,000 voters from the statewide rolls, ruling that state law compelled him to do so.
Limitations on early and absentee voting
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 disproportionately affected
African Americans, including cutting back on early voting. In a 2016 appellate court
case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down a
law that removed the first week of early voting. The court held 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.
As of 2020, Georgia requires absentee voters to provide their own postage for their ballots. On April 8, 2020, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging this rule, claiming it "is tantamount to a poll tax."
Voting procedure disinformation
Voting
procedure disinformation involves giving voters false information about
when and how to vote, leading them to fail to cast valid ballots.
Just prior to the 2018 elections, The New York Times
warned readers of numerous types of deliberate misinformation, sometimes
targeting specific voter demographics. These types of disinformation
included false information about casting ballots online by email and by
text message, the circulation of doctored photographs in 2016 which
claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) agents were arresting voters at polling places and included
threatening language meant to intimidate Latino voters, polling place
hoaxes, disinformation on remote voting options, suspicious texts,
voting machine malfunction rumors, misleading photos and videos, and
false voter fraud allegations. The Times added that messages
purportedly sent by Trump to voters in Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, and
Georgia were actually disseminated from Republican organizations. In
2018, Trump actually spread information about defective machines in a
single Utah county, giving the impression that such difficulties were
occurring nationwide.
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.
Identification requirements
Some states have imposed photo ID requirements, which critics claim
are intended to depress the turnout of minority voters. It has been
explored whether or not photo ID laws disproportionately affect
non-white voters and those of lower income: 8% of White Americans lack
driver's licenses, for example, compared to 25% of African-American
citizens.
For driver's licenses that are unexpired where the stated address and
name exactly match the voter registration record, 16% of White Americans
lack a valid license, compared to 27% of Latinos and 37% for African
Americans.
In July 2016, a federal appeals court found that a 2011 Texas 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.
In August 2017, an updated version of the same Texas voter ID law was
found unconstitutional in federal district court; the district judge
indicated that one potential remedy for the discrimination would be to
order Texas election-related laws to be pre-cleared by the U.S.
Department of Justice (DOJ).
The court also ruled that the law would force some voters to spend
money traveling to a government office to update their identification
information; the court compared this provision to a poll tax.
During the 21st century, Wisconson and North Carolina – states
with Republican-controlled governments – passed laws that restrict the
ability of people to vote using student ID cards for identification.
This is likely motivated by the fact that students tend to be more
liberal than the general population.
A 2019 paper by University of Bologna and Harvard Business School
economists found that voter ID laws had "no negative effect on
registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race,
gender, age, or party affiliation." A 2019 study in the journal Electoral Studies found that the implementation of voter ID laws in South Carolina reduced overall turnout but did not have a disparate impact. 2019 studies in Political Science Quarterly and the Atlantic Economic Journal found no evidence that voter ID laws have a disproportionate influence on minorities, while other studies show differently. These claims are contradicted by the "Findings of fact and conclusions of law" in Fish v. Kobach: In that case, Judge Julie Robinson, who had been appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush,
a Republican, noted that the Kansas Documentary Proof of Citizenship
law illegally denied 12.4% of new voter registration applications, over
31,000 US citizens, during the period covered by data considered in that
case.
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 30 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.
Rumors among both parties spread that there were casualties in
the conflict. When Joseph Smith and volunteers rode to Adam-ondi-Ahman
to assess the situation, they discovered there were no truths to the
rumors.
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. All were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures after the Reconstruction period. The laws were enforced until 1965.
The origin of the phrase "Jim Crow" has often been attributed to "Jump Jim Crow", a song-and-dance caricature of blacks performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice in blackface, which first surfaced in 1832 and was used to satirize Andrew Jackson's populist policies. As a result of Rice's fame, "Jim Crow"
by 1838 had become a pejorative expression meaning "Negro". When
southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation directed against
blacks at the end of the 19th century, these statutes became known as Jim Crow laws.
During the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the U.S. South for freedmen,
the African Americans who had formerly been slaves, and the minority of
blacks who had been free before the war. In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, having used insurgentparamilitary groups, such as the White League and the Red Shirts, to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate blacks to suppress their voting.
In 1877, a national Democratic Party compromise to gain Southern support in the presidential election (a corrupt bargain)
resulted in the government's withdrawing the last of the federal troops
from the South. White Democrats had regained political power in every
Southern state.
Blacks were still elected to local offices throughout the 1880s,
but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections.
Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules
more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most
blacks and many poor whites began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements.
Voter turnout dropped drastically through the South as a result
of such measures. In Louisiana, by 1900, black voters were reduced to
5,320 on the rolls, although they comprised the majority of the state's
population. By 1910, only 730 blacks were registered, less than 0.5% of
eligible black men. "In 27 of the state's 60 parishes, not a single
black voter was registered any longer; in 9 more parishes, only one
black voter was." The cumulative effect in North Carolina
meant that black voters were completely eliminated from voter rolls
during the period from 1896 to 1904. The growth of their thriving middle
class was slowed. In North Carolina and other Southern states, blacks
suffered from being made invisible in the political system: "[W]ithin a
decade of disfranchisement, the white supremacy campaign had erased the image of the black middle class from the minds of white North Carolinians." In Alabama
tens of thousands of poor whites were also disenfranchised, although
initially legislators had promised them they would not be affected
adversely by the new restrictions.
In some cases, progressive measures intended to reduce election fraud, such as the Eight Box Law in South Carolina, acted against black and white voters who were illiterate, as they could not follow the directions. While the separation of African Americans from the white general population was becoming legalized and formalized during the Progressive Era
(1890s–1920s), it was also becoming customary. For instance, even in
cases in which Jim Crow laws did not expressly forbid black people to
participate in sports or recreation, a segregated culture had become
common.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965,
passed by huge bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress and
signed by President Lyndon Johnson, aimed to end these practices.
A key provision of the act required that states with a history of
disenfranchising black voters, namely those in the Jim Crow South,
submit to the Department of Justice for "pre-clearance" any proposed
changes to state voting laws. This provision was overturned by the
Supreme Court in the case of Shelby County v. Holder (2013).
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued,
“Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work
to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a
rainstorm because you are not getting wet."
In 1981 and 1986, the Republican National Committee (RNC) sent out letters to African-American neighborhoods.
When tens of thousands of them were returned undeliverable, the party
successfully challenged the voters and had them deleted from voting
rolls. The violation of the Voting Rights Act got the RNC taken to court by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). As a result of the case, the RNC entered a consent decree,
which prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that
targeted minorities from conducting mail campaigns to "compile voter
challenge lists."
Modern examples
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 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."
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
Michigan
On
September 16, 2008, attorneys for then-Democratic presidential
candidate Barack Obama announced their intention to seek an injunction
to stop an alleged caging scheme in Michigan. It was alleged that the
Michigan Republican Party used home foreclosure lists to challenge
voters who used their foreclosed homes as their primary addresses at the
polls. Michigan GOP officials called the suit "desperate".
The Democratic party eventually dropped the case, instead accepting a
non-legally binding public agreement from the Michigan GOP to not engage
in foreclosure-based voter challenges.
On October 30, 2008, a federal appeals court ordered the
reinstatement of 5,500 voters wrongly purged from the voter rolls by the
state, in response to an ACLU of Michigan lawsuit which questioned the
legality of a Michigan state law requiring local clerks to nullify the
registrations of newly registered voters whenever their voter
identification cards are returned by the post office as undeliverable.
Minnesota
The conservative nonprofit Minnesota Majority reportedly made phone calls claiming that the Minnesota Secretary of State had concerns about the validity of voters' registration. Their actions were referred to the Ramsey County attorney's office.
Pennsylvania
On Election Day 2008, at a polling station in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, two members of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP)—Minister
King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson—stood in front of the entrance to a
polling station in uniforms that have been described as military or paramilitary. Shabazz carried a billy club, and was reported to have pointed it at voters and shouted racial slurs, including phrases such as "white devil" and "you're about to be ruled by the black man, cracker".
The incident drew the attention of police, who around 10:00 am, sent
Shabazz away, in part because of his billy club. Jackson was allowed to
stay because he was a certified poll watcher and was not accused of
intimidation. Stephen Robert Morse, upon arriving at the scene, filmed Shabazz. The incident gained national attention after the video was uploaded to YouTube and went viral with over a million views. The Philadelphia incident became known as the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case.
No complaints were filed by voters about the incident, though
poll watchers witnessed some voters approach the polls and then turn
away, apparently in response to the NBPP members.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration's Department of Justice (DOJ)
became aware of the incident and started an inquiry. In January 2009,
less than two weeks before the Bush Administration left office,
Christopher Coates of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division filed a civil suit under the Voting Rights Act against four defendants, including Shabazz. There was no evidence that Shabazz's actions were directed or incited by the party or its national leader.
Although none of the defendants challenged the lawsuit, the Obama
administration dropped its claims against all but Shabazz in May 2009.
In response to the controversy, the NBPP suspended its
Philadelphia chapter and repudiated Minister King Shabazz in a posting
at its website. In December 2010, the Civil Rights Commission
released a report concluding that their investigations had uncovered
"numerous specific examples of open hostility and opposition" within the
Obama DOJ to pursue cases in which whites were victims. The report
accused the DOJ of failing to cooperate with investigations into its
reason for dropping the case.
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.
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 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.
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."
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.
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
has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for allegedly trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas.
In particular, Fish v. Kobach was filed in 2016 and heard in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas in 2018 by Chief District Judge Julie A. Robinson; she had been appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush,
a Republican. She found that Kobach's Documentary Proof of Citizenship
law had illegally refused to accept 12.4% of new voter registration
applications by US citizens while it was in effect, over 31,000 people,
to protect the "integrity" of elections from the threat of votes by 39
non-citizens who had registered to vote. Moreover, the "voting rate
among purported noncitizen registrations on [a Kansas temporary drivers
license] match list is around 1%, whereas the voting rate among
registrants in Kansas more generally is around 70%." She also noted
that Hans von Spakovsky, whom Kobach called as an expert witness, had made multiple misleading
statements, including claiming that a U.S. GAO study 'found that up to 3
percent of the 30,000 individuals called for jury duty from voter
registration roles over a two-year period in just one U.S. district
court were not U.S. citizens.' On cross-examination, however, he
acknowledged that the GAO study contained information on 8 district
courts, 4 of which had reported zero non-citizen called for jury duty,
and the other 3 reported that less than 1% of those called for jury duty
from voter rolls were noncitizens.
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 U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the Appeals Court ruling.
North Dakota
North Dakota abolished voter registration in 1951 for state and federal elections, the only state to do so.
It has since 2004 required voters to produce an approved form of ID
before being able to vote, one of which was a tribe ID commonly used by
Native Americans. However, it was common and lawful for a post office
box to be used on this ID instead of a residential address. This has led
to North Dakota being accused of voter suppression because many Native
American were being denied a vote because they did not have an approved
form of ID with a residential address.
North Dakota's ID law especially adversely affected large numbers
of Native Americans, with almost a quarter of Native Americans in the
state, otherwise eligible to vote, being denied a vote on the basis that
they do not have proper ID; compared to 12% of non-Indians. A judge
overturned the ID law in July 2016, also saying: "The undisputed
evidence before the Court reveals that voter fraud in North Dakota has
been virtually non-existent." However, the denial of a vote on this basis was also an issue in the 2018 mid-term election.
In the run-up to North Dakota's election for U.S. Senate in 2018,
state lawmakers implemented changes to voter identification rules,
citing nine "suspected" double voting cases. Under the new rules, voter
IDs had to include a residential address, rather than a post office box.
The change led to rebuke and lawsuits from Native American voters on a Turtle MountainChippewa reservation, as well as claims of partisanship from then-Senator Heidi Heitkamp,
a Democrat, as the law was championed by Republican state
representatives. The voters claimed discrimination, and in legal filings
cited a survey that indicated 18% of Native Americans lacked a valid ID
due to the new street address requirement, while the requirement only
affected 10.9% of non-Natives. The survey pinned the discrepancy on
higher poverty rates and lower transportation access in areas with
higher proportions of Native Americans. The legal battle quickly rose to
national attention. While former Attorney General Eric Holder
called the rule "nothing more than voter suppression", North Dakota
House Majority Leader Republican Al Carlson, who sponsored the law, said
"Our attempt was never to disenfranchise anybody. From a legislative
standpoint, we wanted the integrity ... in the ballots, but we also want
to have anybody that wants to vote that is a legal citizen be able to
identify where they live and be able to vote." Ultimately, the legal battle ended when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in November 2018, which effectively left the rule in place. In July 2019, the ID law was judged to be constitutional. A settlement of the dispute was reached in February 2020.
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.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin has enforced a photo ID law for all elections since April 7, 2015.
A federal judge found that Wisconsin'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, PresidentDonald 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, the communist League of Women Voters — the ACLU and the communist League of Women Voters 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
Alabama HB 56, an anti-illegal-immigration bill co-authored by Kansas Secretary of StateKris Kobach and passed in 2011, required proof of citizenship to be presented by voters on Election Day. Much of the law was invalidated on appeal at various levels of appeals courts or voluntarily withdrawn or reworded.
In its 2014 Shelby County v. Holder
decision, the Supreme Court of the United States 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 that ruling,
Alabama implemented a previously-passed 2011 law requiring specific
types of photo identification to be presented by voters. 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 the process to require proof of citizenship from voters, despite
Merrill saying he did not know of any cases where non-citizens had
voted. Four-term Republican Representative Mo Brooks
found that he himself had been purged from the rolls. Merrill also
declined to publicize the passage of legislation that enabled some
60,000 Alabamian former felons to vote. Alabama's requirement regarding proof of citizenship had been approved by federal Election Assistance Commission Director Brian Newby.
Kobach had supported Newby in the federal suit, and had appointed him
to an elections position in Kansas prior to his EAC appointment.
In 2018, critics accused the state of intentionally disenfranchising non-white voters. The suburban and rural outreach efforts by the Doug Jones campaign were successful and he captured the U.S. Senate seat, the first Democrat in 25 years to do so, and in a state that Donald Trump had won by 30 points.
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 were allowed to vote in the November
2018 election and has been accused of voter suppression. 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. Strict voter registration deadlines in
Georgia prevented 87,000 Georgians from voting because they had
registered after the deadline.
"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.
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.
2019–2020
Georgia
Georgia made efforts to correct voting problems that had occurred in the 2018 election. In the 2020 statewide primary,
however, many irregularities were reported, including missing machines
at polling places and mail-in ballots that never arrived at voters'
houses. Georgia has a law prohibiting felons on probation for crimes involving moral turpitude from voting or registering to vote, with a similar law in Alabama having been criticized by the United States Supreme Court in 471 U.S. 222 (1985) as having roots in white supremacy.
Mississippi
In late June 2020, Gail Welch, a Jones County
election commissioner, posted a social media comment saying: "I'm
concerned about voter registration in Mississippi. The blacks are having
lots [of] events for voter registration. People in Mississippi have to
get involved, too." Welch later explained that she had meant to send the
message privately, not publicly, but also claimed that she was "trying
to strike a match under people and get them to vote," and told reporters
that whites have had high voter registration numbers "in the past."
Texas
In March 2020, it was reported that Texas
leads the South in closing down voting places, making it more difficult
for Democratic-leaning African-Americans and Latinos to vote. The 50
counties that have experienced the greatest increases in
African-American and Latino populations had 542 polling sites closed
between 2012 and 2018, while those with the lowest increases in minority
populations had only 34 closures. Brazoria County,
south of Houston, closed 60% of its polling places, below the statutory
minimum; the county clerk promised this would not happen again. Texas
law allows the centralization of vote centers, which sometimes make it
easier for people to vote. However, the 334 poll closures outside of
vote centers still put Texas ahead of Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and
Mississippi.
Texas limits who can request absentee postal ballots only to
voters over 65, those sick or disabled, those who will be out of the
county on election day and those who are in jail.
Attempts in court to expand mail in voting before the 2020 elections
because of health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic have been
unsuccessful.
In addition, some eligible postal voters want to lodge postal ballots
in advance in drop-off points rather than rely on the postal service,
which had warned that ballot papers may not arrive in time to be counted
on election day. However, on October 1, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, ordered a limit of one drop-off location per county. Harris County, for example, received national media attention because it is larger than the size of Rhode Island and has 2.4 million registered voters but is being served by only one voting drop-box location.
On October 10, a judge blocked the order to allow only one absentee
vote drop-off point per county, on the basis that it would affect older
and disabled voters. A
Texas appeals court on October 23 confirmed the ruling that the
Republican governor cannot limit drop-off sites for mail ballots to one
per county.
Some prominent Texas Republicans sued Governor Abbott in
September 2020, seeking to limit the number of days early voting was
allowed in the state. They sought to push back the early voting start
date from October 13 to October 19. Early voting had been expanded by
the governor in July, in response to the pandemic and to the limits he
had imposed on mail in voting. The same lawsuit also sought to limit the
time frame for submitting mail-in ballots in person.
A similar lawsuit was filed by Houston Republicans a week later,
seeking the same restrictions on in person and absentee ballots in
Harris County.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the Republicans and allowed early
voting to take place from October 13 to October 30, 2020.
A conservative activist and three Republican candidates sued in
late October 2020 to have 127,000 drive-through ballots cast in
predominantly Democratic Harris County, tossed. A federal judge rejected the Republican lawsuit, as did the Texas Supreme Court.
Turnout in the 2020 Texas election increased by more than 6%,
breaking a 28-year record, with both major-party Presidential candidates
breaking records for the most votes ever cast for a candidate in Texas.
Wisconsin
In 2019, district court Judge Paul V. Malloy of Ozaukee County, Wisconsin removed 234,000 voters from state rolls. Wisconsin's Attorney General Josh Kaul appealed to halt the purge, on behalf of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
The issue was brought before the court by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a conservative organization mostly supported by the Bradley Foundation, which funds such political causes.
The lawsuit demanded that the Wisconsin Election Commission respond to a
"Movers Report," generated from voter data analysis produced by the
Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a national,
non-partisan partnership funded in 2012 by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
ERIC shares voter registration information to improve the accuracy of
voter rolls.
The report tagged 234,039 voters who may have moved to an address that
had not yet been updated on their voter registration forms. Despite thin
evidence for removal of that extraordinary number of qualified voters,
Wisconsin may be forced to comply with Malloy's order.
On January 2, 2020, WILL said it asked the circuit court to hold the
Elections Commission in contempt, fining it up to $12,000 daily, until
it advances Malloy's December 17, 2019 order to purge from the voting
rolls hundreds of thousands of registered voters who possibly have moved
to a different address.
The case being litigated in a state appeals court, but it was
thought that the conservative-dominated Wisconsin Supreme Court would be
likely to hear it.
The purge was claimed to be targeting voters in the cities of Madison
and Milwaukee, and college towns, which all tend to favor Democrats. Disenfranchisement expert Greg Palast ties the Wisconsin effort at voter purging as part of a national Republican strategy.
COVID-19 pandemic and voting by mail, 2020 US election
The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
posed challenges for the 2020 election, with many states expanding
mail-in voting to avoid voters having to choose between not voting and
risking illness by voting in person. President Trump encouraged
restricting mail-in voting, and hundreds of lawsuits were filed
disputing whether witness requirements, arrival deadlines, the removal
of ballot drop-boxes, the reduction of polling places, and aggressive
rejection of "mismatched" signatures infringed the right to vote.
The large numbers of COVID-19 cases has postponed primary
elections. Voting by mail has become an increasingly common practice in
the United States, with 25% of voters nationwide mailing their ballots
in 2016 and 2018. The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is believed to have
caused a large increase in mail voting because of the possible danger of
congregating at polling places. This method of voting-by-mail may
potentially be limited to residents. For the 2020 election, a
state-by-state analysis concluded that 76% of Americans would be
eligible to vote by mail in 2020, a record number. The analysis
predicted that 80million ballots could be
cast by mail in 2020, more than double the number in 2016. Thus, voting
in 2020 may exclude minority groups such as homeless people, lower
socioeconomic groups, and people that are unable to register to vote via
the internet.
As an example, the state of New York, with a high spike of COVID cases,
has tried to cancel their primary elections and switched to
voting-by-mail.
The Postal Service sent a letter to multiple states in July 2020,
warning that the service would not be able to meet the state's
deadlines for requesting and casting last-minute absentee ballots. The
House voted to include an emergency grant of $25 billion to the post
office to facilitate the predicted flood of mail ballots. Trump conceded
that the post office would need additional funds to handle the
additional mail-in voting, and said he will not grant any additional
funding because he wanted to prevent any increase in balloting by mail.
As reported on the site Common Dreams, as an example of
occurrences across the country, the head of the Iowa Postal Workers
Union "alleged [Tuesday August 11, 2020] that mail sorting machines are
'being removed' from Post Offices in her state due to new policies
imposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Republican donor to
President Donald Trump whose operational changes have resulted in
dramatic mail slowdowns across the nation. Asked by National Public
Radio's Noel King whether she has felt the impact of DeJoy's changes,
Iowa Postal Workers Union President Kimberly Karol—a 30-year Postal
Service veteran—answered in the affirmative, saying 'mail is beginning
to pile up in our offices, and we're seeing equipment being removed.'
Karol went on to specify that 'equipment that we use to process mail for
delivery'—including sorting machines—is being removed from Postal
Service facilities in Iowa as DeJoy rushes ahead with policies that,
according to critics, are sabotaging the Postal Service's day-to-day
operations less than 90 days before an election that could hinge on
mail-in ballots."
Due to the timing of the coronavirus pandemic with respect to the
2020 presidential election, the Brennan Center for Justice has
recommended that states establish contingency plans and pandemic task
forces to limit the impact the virus has on voter turnout.
The memorandum encourages the expansion of early voting and online
registration, and a universal vote-by mail option; especially for
at-risk groups. The memorandum recommends polling places remain open to
the extent permissible by public health mandates, to prevent the
disenfranchisement of those for whom voting by mail is difficult.
Fifteen states (Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, West Virginia, Wyoming) and Puerto Rico have either delayed
their primary elections or switched to voting by mail with extended
deadlines.
The New York State Board of Elections decided to cancel the 2020
Democratic Primary as New York was experiencing a major outbreak
COVID-19 at the time. This decision was met with backlash from
supporters of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, since although
Sanders had suspended his campaign on April 8, he was still eligible to
receive delegates and thus influence the 2020 Democratic platform. The 2020 Democratic National Convention was pushed from its original June 9 date to the week of August 17th due to COVID-19.
In Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers (D) issued an executive order
postponing in-person voting and extending the deadline for absentee
voting to June, in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus. However,
the Wisconsin state Supreme Court denied this order; a decision upheld
by the US Supreme Court one day before the primary election.
Aftermath of the 2020 election
After Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, Republican lawmakers around the nation began attacking the voting methods used in the election.
Drawing on the false allegations of voting fraud and a stolen election,
by February 2021 Republican state legislatures had begun to implement
new laws and rules to restrict voting access in ways that would favor
Republican candidates. By April 2021, 361 bills in 47 states have been proposed by GOP lawmakers meant to restrict voting access.
In March 2021, John Kavanagh, a Republican elected to the Arizona
House of Representatives, justified restrictions on voting: "...
everybody shouldn’t be voting... Quantity is important, but we have to
look at the quality of votes, as well."
Anti-suppression efforts
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."
As of March 2021, Democrats in Congress were pursuing passage of the For The People Act,
which aims to create new national standards for elections, while
preventing common forms of voter suppression and easing access to
voting. They were also pursuing an update to the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
which had its federal preclearance mechanism for preventing racially
motivated voter suppression invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in
2013.
.gif)
.jpg)
