White supremacy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White supremacy or white supremacism is the racist belief that white people are superior to people of other races and therefore should be dominant over them. White supremacy has roots in scientific racism, and it often relies on pseudoscientific arguments. Like most similar movements such as neo-Nazism, white supremacists typically oppose members of other races as well as Jews.

The term is also typically used to describe a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical, or institutional domination by white people (as evidenced by historical and contemporary sociopolitical structures such as the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow laws in the United States, and apartheid in South Africa). Different forms of white supremacism put forth different conceptions of who is considered white, and different groups of white supremacists identify various racial and cultural groups as their primary enemy.

In academic usage, particularly in usage which draws on critical race theory or intersectionality, the term "white supremacy" can also refer to a political or socioeconomic system, in which white people enjoy a structural advantage (privilege) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level.

History

White supremacy has ideological foundations that date back to 17th-century scientific racism, the predominant paradigm of human variation that helped shape international relations and racial policy from the latter part of the Age of Enlightenment until the late 20th century (marked by decolonization and the abolition of apartheid in South Africa in 1991, followed by that country's first multiracial elections in 1994).

The Battle of Liberty Place monument in Louisiana was erected in 1891 by the white-dominated New Orleans government. An inscription added in 1932 states that the 1876 US Presidential Election "recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state". It was removed in 2017 and placed in storage.

 

Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C. in 1926

United States

White supremacy was dominant in the United States both before and after the American Civil War, and it also persisted for decades after the Reconstruction Era. In the antebellum South, this included the holding of African Americans in chattel slavery, in which four million of them were denied freedom. The outbreak of the Civil War saw the desire to uphold white supremacy being cited as a cause for state secession and the formation of the Confederate States of America. In an editorial about Native Americans in 1890, author L. Frank Baum wrote: "The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians."

In some parts of the United States, many people who were considered non-white were disenfranchised, barred from government office, and prevented from holding most government jobs well into the second half of the 20th century. Professor Leland T. Saito of the University of Southern California writes: "Throughout the history of the United States, race has been used by whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion." The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only.

The denial of social and political freedom to minorities continued into the mid-20th century, resulting in the civil rights movement. Sociologist Stephen Klineberg has stated that U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965 clearly declared "that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race". The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups, and significantly altered the demographic mix in the U.S as a result. Many U.S. states banned interracial marriage through anti-miscegenation laws until 1967, when these laws were invalidated by the Supreme Court of the United States' decision in Loving v. Virginia. These mid-century gains had a major impact on white Americans' political views; segregation and white racial superiority, which had been publicly endorsed in the 1940s, became minority views within the white community by the mid-1970s, and continued to decline into 1990s polls to a single-digit percentage. For sociologist Howard Winant, these shifts marked the end of "monolithic white supremacy" in the United States.

After the mid-1960s, white supremacy remained an important ideology to the American far-right. According to Kathleen Belew, a historian of race and racism in the United States, white militancy shifted after the Vietnam War from supporting the existing racial order to a more radical position—self-described as "white power" or "white nationalism"—committed to overthrowing the United States government and establishing a white homeland. Such anti-government militia organizations are one of three major strands of violent right-wing movements in the United States, with white supremacist groups (such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi organizations, and racist skinheads) and a religious fundamentalist movement (such as Christian Identity) being the other two. Howard Winant writes that, "On the far right the cornerstone of white identity is belief in an ineluctable, unalterable racialized difference between whites and nonwhites." In the view of philosopher Jason Stanley, white supremacy in the United States is an example of the fascist politics of hierarchy, in that it "demands and implies a perpetual hierarchy" in which whites dominate and control non-whites.

Some academics argue that outcomes from the 2016 United States Presidential Election reflect ongoing challenges with white supremacy. Psychologist Janet Helms suggested that the normalizing behaviors of social institutions of education, government, and healthcare are organized around the "birthright of...the power to control society's resources and determine the rules for [those resources]". Educators, literary theorists, and other political experts have raised similar questions, connecting the scapegoating of disenfranchised populations to white superiority.

On July 23, 2019, Christopher A. Wray, the head of the FBI, said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the agency had made around 100 domestic terrorism arrests since October 1, 2018, and that the majority of them were connected in some way with white supremacy. Wray said that the Bureau was "aggressively pursuing [domestic terrorism] using both counterterrorism resources and criminal investigative resources and partnering closely with our state and local partners," but said that it was focused on the violence itself and not on its ideological basis. A similar number of arrests had been made for instances of international terrorism. In the past, Wray has said that white supremacy was a significant and "pervasive" threat to the U.S.

Effect of the media

White supremacism has been depicted in music videos, feature films, documentaries, journal entries, and on social media. The 1915 silent drama film The Birth of a Nation followed the rising racial, economic, political, and geographic tensions leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Southern Reconstruction era that was the genesis of the Ku Klux Klan. Nearly 100 years later, A 2016 film of the same name, was released to tell the story of Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion. It told the story of a literate slave, Nat Turner, and his pursuits to battle injustice between slave owners and slaves. Director Nate Parker stated he has "reclaimed this title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America, to inspire a riotous disposition toward any and all injustice in this country (and abroad) and to promote the kind of honest confrontation that will galvanize our society toward healing and sustained systemic change."

David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, believed that the Internet was going to create a "chain reaction of racial enlightenment that will shake the world." Jessie Daniels also said that racist groups see the Internet as a way to spread their ideologies, influence others and gain supporters. Legal scholar Richard Hasen describes a "dark side" of social media:

There certainly were hate groups before the Internet and social media. [But with social media] it just becomes easier to organize, to spread the word, for people to know where to go. It could be to raise money, or it could be to engage in attacks on social media. Some of the activity is virtual. Some of it is in a physical place. Social media has lowered the collective-action problems that individuals who might want to be in a hate group would face. You can see that there are people out there like you. That's the dark side of social media.

With the emergence of Twitter in 2006, and platforms such as Stormfront which was launched in 1996, an alt-right portal for white supremacists with similar beliefs, both adults and children, was provided in which they were given a way to connect. Daniels discussed the emergence of other social media outlets such as 4chan and Reddit, which meant that the "spread of white nationalist symbols and ideas could be accelerated and amplified". Sociologist Kathleen Blee notes that the anonymity which the Internet provides can make it difficult to track the extent of white supremacist activity in the country, but nevertheless she and other experts see an increase in the amount of hate crimes and white supremacist violence. In the latest wave of white supremacy, in the age of the Internet, Blee sees the movement as having primarily become a virtual one, in which divisions between groups become blurred: "[A]ll these various groups that get jumbled together as the alt-right and people who have come in from the more traditional neo-Nazi world. We're in a very different world now."

A series on YouTube hosted by the grandson of Thomas Robb, the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, "presents the Klan's ideology in a format aimed at kids — more specifically, white kids." The short episodes inveigh against race-mixing, and extol other white supremacist ideologies. A short documentary published by TRT describes the experience of Imran Garda, a journalist of Indian descent, who met with Thomas Robb and a traditional KKK group. A sign that greets people who enter the town states "Diversity is a code for white genocide." The KKK group interviewed in the documentary summarizes its ideals, principles, and beliefs, which are emblematic of white supremacists in the United States. The comic book super hero Captain America, in an ironic co-optation, has been used for dog whistle politics by the alt-right in college campus recruitment in 2017.

British Commonwealth

In 1937, Winston Churchill told the Palestine Royal Commission: "I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." British historian Richard Toye, author of Churchill's Empire, said that "Churchill did think that white people were superior."

South Africa

A number of Southern African nations experienced severe racial tension and conflict during global decolonization, particularly as white Africans of European ancestry fought to protect their preferential social and political status. Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times under the Dutch Empire, and it continued when the British took over the Cape of Good Hope in 1795. Apartheid was introduced as an officially structured policy by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party after the general election of 1948. Apartheid's legislation divided inhabitants into four racial groups—"black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian", with coloured divided into several sub-classifications. In 1970, the Afrikaner-run government abolished non-white political representation, and starting that year black people were deprived of South African citizenship. South Africa abolished apartheid in 1991.

Rhodesia

In Rhodesia a predominantly white government issued its own unilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom during an unsuccessful attempt to avoid immediate majority rule.^[40] Following the Rhodesian Bush War which was fought by African nationalists, Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith acceded to biracial political representation in 1978 and the state achieved recognition from the United Kingdom as Zimbabwe in 1980.

Poster of the Nazi paper Der Stürmer (1935) condemning relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans

Germany

Nazism promoted the idea of a superior Germanic people or Aryan race in Germany during the early 20th century. Notions of white supremacy and Aryan racial superiority were combined in the 19th century, with white supremacists maintaining the belief that white people were members of an Aryan "master race" which was superior to other races, particularly the Jews, who were described as the "Semitic race", Slavs, and Gypsies, which they associated with "cultural sterility". Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial degeneracy caused by racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the "purity" of the Nordic or Germanic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan or Germanic peoples and Jewish culture.

As the Nazi Party's chief racial theorist, Alfred Rosenberg oversaw the construction of a human racial "ladder" that justified Hitler's racial and ethnic policies. Rosenberg promoted the Nordic theory, which regarded Nordics as the "master race", superior to all others, including other Aryans (Indo-Europeans). Rosenberg got the racial term Untermensch from the title of Klansman Lothrop Stoddard's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man. It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925). Rosenberg was the leading Nazi who attributed the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard. An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, Stoddard wrote primarily on the alleged dangers posed by "colored" peoples to white civilization, and wrote The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920. In establishing a restrictive entry system for Germany in 1925, Hitler wrote of his admiration for America's immigration laws: "The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races."

German praise for America's institutional racism, previously found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930's, and Nazi lawyers were advocates of the use of American models. Race-based U.S. citizenship and anti-miscegenation laws directly inspired the Nazis' two principal Nuremberg racial laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. In order to preserve the Aryan or Nordic race, the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews, and later between Germans and Romani and Slavs. The Nazis used the Mendelian inheritance theory to argue that social traits were innate, claiming that there was a racial nature associated with certain general traits such as inventiveness or criminal behavior.

According to the 2012 annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6000 neo-Nazis.

Russia

Neo-Nazi organisations embracing white supremacist ideology are present in many countries of the world. In 2007, it was claimed that Russian neo-Nazis accounted for "half of the world's total".

Ukraine

In June 2015, Democratic Representative John Conyers and his Republican colleague Ted Yoho offered bipartisan amendments to block the U.S. military training of Ukraine's Azov Battalion — called a "neo-Nazi paramilitary militia" by Conyers and Yoho. Some members of the battalion are openly white supremacists.

Academic use of the term

The term white supremacy is used in some academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or societal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred. White racial advantages occur at both a collective and an individual level (ceteris paribus, i. e., when individuals are compared that do not relevantly differ except in ethnicity). Legal scholar Frances Lee Ansley explains this definition as follows:

By "white supremacy" I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.

This and similar definitions have been adopted or proposed by Charles Mills, bell hooks, David Gillborn, Jessie Daniels, and Neely Fuller Jr, and they are widely used in critical race theory and intersectional feminism. Some anti-racist educators, such as Betita Martinez and the Challenging White Supremacy workshop, also use the term in this way. The term expresses historic continuities between a pre–civil rights movement era of open white supremacism and the current racial power structure of the United States. It also expresses the visceral impact of structural racism through "provocative and brutal" language that characterizes racism as "nefarious, global, systemic, and constant". Academic users of the term sometimes prefer it to racism because it allows for a distinction to be drawn between racist feelings and white racial advantage or privilege.

The term's recent rise in popularity among leftist activists has been characterized by some as counterproductive. John McWhorter, a specialist in language and race relations, has described its use as straying from its commonly accepted meaning to encompass less extreme issues, thereby cheapening the term and potentially derailing productive discussion. Political columnist Kevin Drum attributes the term's growing popularity to frequent use by Ta-Nehisi Coates, describing it as a "terrible fad" which fails to convey nuance. He claims that the term should be reserved for those who are trying to promote the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks and not used to characterize less blatantly racist beliefs or actions. The use of the academic definition of white supremacy has been criticized by Conor Friedersdorf for the confusion it creates for the general public inasmuch as it differs from the more common dictionary definition; he argues that it is likely to alienate those it hopes to convince.

Ideologies and movements

Supporters of Nordicism consider the "Nordic peoples" to be a superior race. By the early 19th century, white supremacy was attached to emerging theories of racial hierarchy. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer attributed cultural primacy to the white race:

The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate.

The Good Citizen 1926, published by Pillar of Fire Church

 

The eugenicist Madison Grant argued in his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, and that admixture was "race suicide". In this book, Europeans who are not of Germanic origin but have Nordic characteristics such as blonde/red hair and blue/green/gray eyes, were considered to be a Nordic admixture and suitable for Aryanization.

Members of the second Ku Klux Klan at a rally in 1923.

 

In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the group most associated with the white supremacist movement. Many white supremacist groups are based on the concept of preserving genetic purity, and do not focus solely on discrimination based on skin color. The KKK's reasons for supporting racial segregation are not primarily based on religious ideals, but some Klan groups are openly Protestant. The KKK and other white supremacist groups like Aryan Nations, The Order and the White Patriot Party are considered antisemitic.

Nazi Germany promulgated white supremacy based on the belief that the Aryan race, or the Germans, were the master race. It was combined with a eugenics programme that aimed for racial hygiene through compulsory sterilization of sick individuals and extermination of Untermenschen ("subhumans"): Slavs, Jews and Romani, which eventually culminated in the Holocaust.

Christian Identity is another movement closely tied to white supremacy. Some white supremacists identify themselves as Odinists, although many Odinists reject white supremacy. Some white supremacist groups, such as the South African Boeremag, conflate elements of Christianity and Odinism. Creativity (formerly known as "The World Church of the Creator") is atheistic and it denounces Christianity and other theistic religions. Aside from this, its ideology is similar to that of many Christian Identity groups because it believes in the antisemitic conspiracy theory that there is a "Jewish conspiracy" in control of governments, the banking industry and the media. Matthew F. Hale, founder of the World Church of the Creator, has published articles stating that all races other than white are "mud races", which is what the group's religion teaches.

The white supremacist ideology has become associated with a racist faction of the skinhead subculture, despite the fact that when the skinhead culture first developed in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s, it was heavily influenced by black fashions and music, especially Jamaican reggae and ska, and African American soul music.

White supremacist recruitment activities are primarily conducted at a grassroots level as well as on the Internet. Widespread access to the Internet has led to a dramatic increase in white supremacist websites. The Internet provides a venue to openly express white supremacist ideas at little social cost, because people who post the information are able to remain anonymous.

White separatism

White separatism is a political and social movement that seeks the separation of white people from people of other races and ethnicities, the establishment of a white ethnostate by removing non-whites from existing communities or by forming new communities elsewhere.

Most modern researchers view that white separatism is not distinct from white supremacist beliefs. The Anti-Defamation League defines white separatism as "a form of white supremacy"; the Southern Poverty Law Center defines both white nationalism and white separatism as "ideologies based on white supremacy." Facebook has banned content that is openly white nationalist or white separatist because "white nationalism and white separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups".

Use of the term to self-identify has been criticized as a dishonest rhetorical ploy. The Anti-Defamation League argues that white supremacists use the phrase because they believe it has fewer negative connotations than the term white supremacist.

Dobratz & Shanks-Meile reported that adherents usually reject marriage "outside the white race". They argued the existence of "a distinction between the white supremacist's desire to dominate (as in apartheid, slavery, or segregation) and complete separation by race". They argued that this is a matter of pragmatism, that while many white supremacists are also white separatists, contemporary white separatists reject the view that returning to a system of segregation is possible or desirable in the United States.

Voter suppression in the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Voter suppression in the United States concerns allegations about various efforts, legal and illegal, used to prevent eligible voters from exercising their right to vote. Where found, such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election.

Methods

Impediments to voter registration

Some laws and administrative practices have made it more difficult for people to register to vote. Florida enacted a deadline for the submission of voter registration forms in 2011, with penalties for late filing. The law ended the voter registration work by one organization, the League of Women Voters, whose spokesperson said, "Despite the fact that the League of Women Voters is one of the nation's most respected civic organizations, with a 91-year history of registering and educating voters, we will be unable to comply with the egregious provisions contained in [this bill]."

Photo ID laws

In the United States, supporters of photo ID laws say that photographic IDs (such as driver's licenses or student IDs) are available and that presenting such IDs is a minor inconvenience when weighed against the possibility of ineligible voters affecting elections. Opponents argue that photo ID requirements disproportionately affect minority, handicapped and elderly voters who do not normally maintain driver's licenses. Also, requiring such groups to obtain and keep track of photo IDs that are otherwise unneeded is considered a suppression tactic aimed at those groups.

In one instance Indiana's photo ID law barred 12 retired nuns in South Bend, Indiana from voting in the state 2008 Democratic primary election, because they did not have photo IDs. John Borkowski, a South Bend lawyer volunteering as an election watchdog for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said, "This law was passed supposedly to prevent and deter voter fraud, even though there was no real record of serious voter fraud in Indiana."

Proponents of a similar law proposed for Texas in March 2009 argued that photo identification was necessary to prevent widespread voter fraud. Opponents responded that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Texas, so no remedy is required. They said that the "remedy" would decrease voting by senior citizens, the disabled, and lower-income residents. Opponents also cited a study stating that 1 million of the state's 13.5 million registered voters do not have a photo ID.

State Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) said, "Voter fraud not only is alive and well in the U.S., but also alive and well in Texas. The danger of voter fraud threatens the integrity of the entire electoral process." Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) said the proposed law "is not about voter fraud. There is no voter fraud. This is about voter suppression." Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) spent $1.4 million investigating voter fraud and from 2002 to 2012 brought 311 accusations of voter fraud to the attorney general's office. Fifty seven cases have been resolved, and among these convictions were two cases of voter impersonation – arguably the type of fraud that photo ID laws would prevent. More than 8,000,000 votes were cast in Texas in the most recent presidential election. 

Legislation to impose photo ID requirements was prepared by the conservative organization ALEC and circulated to conservative state legislators.

In 2011, more than 100 Democratic members of Congress urged the Department of Justice to oppose such legislation, arguing that it "has the potential to block millions of eligible American voters, and thus suppress the right to vote".

A 2017 study, published by The Journal of Politics analyzed voter data from the elections starting in 2006 to 2014, and the impact of strict voter identification laws on minorities. They gathered data from Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) and focused on 11 states with strict voter identification laws. The study found that in the states where these strict voter ID laws are implemented, minorities and left-leaning voters suffered lower voter turnout rates than states who had less restrictive voter ID laws.

Purging of voter rolls

On August 24, 2016, Rolling Stone magazine published a report by investigative reporter Greg Palast entitled, "The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters: Will an anti-voter-fraud program designed by one of Trump's advisers deny tens of thousands their right to vote in November?" Palast reported that "In January 2013, Kobach [the Secretary of State of Kansas] addressed a gathering of the National Association of State Election Directors about combating an [alleged] epidemic of ballot-stuffing across the country. He announced that Crosscheck had already uncovered 697,537 'potential duplicate voters' in 15 states, and that the state of Kansas was prepared to cover the cost of compiling a nationwide list. That was enough to persuade 13 more states to hand over their voter files to Kobach's office." Palast alleges that virtually all of these 697,537 'potential duplicate voters' failed to meet Kobach's claims that they matched first, middle, and last names, birth dates, and the last 4 digits of people's Social Security number: Palast interviewed Donald Alexander Webster Jr., an African-American registered in Ohio; Crosscheck claimed that D. A. Webster, Jr., was also registered as Donald Eugene Webster (no "Jr.") in Charlottesville, Virginia. D. A. Webster, Jr., assured Palast he had never been to Charlottesville. Both of these individuals "were subject to losing their ability to vote," Palast reported. Voting twice is a felony, but Palast failed to find any prosecutions of double voting.

In his documentary "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (2016), Palast explains that over 7 million voters—almost entirely voters of color—were on the Crosscheck lists by the time of the 2016 presidential election, allegedly because these voters had all voted multiple times in previous elections (although no one from these lists had been prosecuted for voting twice, which is a felony crime with a five-year jail sentence). Palast explains that these cross-check lists were produced only in GOP-controlled states and that the names on the list were common last names of Latinos, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans, such as "Garcia," "Hernandez," "Washington," and "Lee." Since the election, Palast has appeared on the independent media news program Democracy Now! and has explained that on election day, approximately 1.1 million voters of color found themselves bumped off the official voter rolls through Crosscheck. In 2017, researchers at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Microsoft found that for every legitimate instance of double registration it finds, Crosscheck's algorithm returns approximately 200 false positives.

In 2008, more than 98,000 registered Georgia voters were removed from the roll of voters because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. Some 4,500 voters had to prove their citizenship to regain their right to vote. Between November 2015 and early 2016, over 120,000 voters were dropped from rolls in Brooklyn, NYC. Officials have stated that the purge was a mistake and that those dropped represented a "broad cross-section" of the electorate. However an WNYC analysis found that the purge had disproportionately affected majority-Hispanic districts. The board announced that it would reinstate all voters in time for the 2016 Congressional primary. The Board of Elections subsequently suspended the Republican appointee in connection to the purge, but kept on her Democratic counterpart.

In 1998, Florida created the Florida Central Voter File to combat vote fraud documented in the 1997 Miami mayoral election. Many people were purged from voter registration lists in Florida, because their names were similar to those of convicted felons, who are not allowed to vote under Florida law. According to the Palm Beach Post, African-Americans accounted for 88% of those removed from the rolls but were only about 11% of Florida's voters. This may have cost Al Gore the presidency in the 2000 US presidential election.

Limitations on early and absentee voting

Early voting is important for voters who do not have flexible working hours and cannot take time off on a weekday to vote. The costs associated with voting include potential lost wages, transit fare and the cost of childcare.These factors inherently affect minorities and the poor more because of deep-rooted inequalities: for example, minority voters are likely to work salaried jobs and thus less likely to have paid time off to get to the voting polls, and they are also less likely to own a car. There are currently 23 states that do not have early voting available to all qualified voters. Of the those, 20 states require an excuse to mail an absentee ballot to voters. Since 2010, seven states have implemented additional restrictions on early voting.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice's 2013 Report Early Voting: What Works, there are many benefits to early voting including shorter lines on election day, more access to voting and increased satisfaction of voters. In 2012 32% of voters voted early.

In a 2014 article in Political Research Quarterly by Micheal C. Herron and Daniel A. Smith "Race, Party, and the Consequences of Restricting Early Voting in Florida in the 2012 General Election", they show that a 2011 cutting the early voting period in Florida from 14 to 8 days and cutting the final Sunday of early voting caused a large drop in 2012 in early voting for registered Democrats, those without party ID and racial and ethnic minorities. It also states that "voters who cast ballots on the last Sunday in 2008 were disproportionately unlikely to cast a valid ballot in 2012." This policy affected those who were already less likely to vote, in this way it was effective in controlling information through controlling who voted. 

Cut backs in early voting disproportionately affect African American voters who vote early in higher proportions than white voters. In 2012, in Ohio, African American voters voted early at more than 2 times the rate of white voters. In North Carolina, Republican lawmakers requested data on various voting practices, broken down by race. They then passed laws that restricted voting and registration many ways that disproportionally affected African Americans, including cutting back on early voting. In a 2016 appellate court case, the 4th US District Court of Appeals struck down a law that removed the first week of early voting. They wrote that the GOP used the data they gathered to remove the first week of early voting because more African American voters voted during that week, and African American voters were more likely to vote for Democrats. Between 2008 and 2012 in North Carolina, 70% of African American voters voted early. After cuts to early voting, African American turnout in early voting was down by 8.7% (around 66,000 votes) in North Carolina.

Felon disenfranchisement

In 2004, 5.3 million Americans were denied the right to vote because of previous convictions. Thirteen states permanently disenfranchise convicted felons; eighteen states restore voting rights after completion of prison, parole, and probation; four states re-enfranchise felons after they have been released from prison and have completed parole; thirteen states allow felons who have been released from prison to vote, and two states do not disenfranchise felons at all. Some states require felons to complete a process to restore voting rights, but offender advocates say such processes can be very difficult. 

The United States is the only democracy in the world that regularly bans large numbers of felons from voting after they have discharged their sentences. Many countries including Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Peru, Sweden, and Zimbabwe allow prisoners to vote (unless convicted of crimes against the electoral system). Some countries, notably the U.K., disenfranchise people for only as long as they are in prison (however, this has been challenged by the European Court of Human Rights).

In Florida during the 2000 presidential election, some non-felons were banned due to record-keeping errors and not warned of their disqualification until the deadline for contesting it had passed.

This form of vote suppression in the United States disproportionately affects minorities including African-Americans and Latinos. Disenfranchisement of felons is opposed by some as a form of the medieval practice of civil death.

Transgender disenfranchisement

Transgender disenfranchisement related to voting is also present.

Disinformation about voting procedures

Voters may be given false information about when and how to vote, leading them to fail to cast valid ballots. For example, in recall elections for the Wisconsin State Senate in 2011, Americans for Prosperity (a conservative organization that was supporting Republican candidates) sent many Democratic voters a mailing that gave an incorrect deadline for absentee ballots. Voters who relied on the deadline in the mailing would have sent in their ballots too late for them to be counted. The organization said that the mistake was a typographical error.

Inequality in Election Day resources

Elections in the United States are funded at the local level, often unequally. In the 2004 elections, Wyoming spent $2.15 per voter while California spent $3.99 per voter. In contrast, Canada spends $9.51 per voter. Underfunded election areas can result in long lines at polling places, requiring some voters either to wait hours to cast a ballot or to forgo their right to vote in that election. Voters who cannot wait the required amount of time are therefore effectively disenfranchised, while voters in well-funded areas with sufficient voting capacity may face minimal or no waiting time. This, coupled with the fact that most elections are held on Tuesdays or other weekdays, would generally make voting more difficult for workers who work full-time or longer hours and/or commute.

Delays at polling places are widely regarded as being a greater problem in urban areas. In 2012, polling places in minority neighborhoods in Maryland, South Carolina, and Florida were systematically deprived of the resources they needed to operate effectively, leading to long lines on election day.

Since 2013, 868 polling places across the South have been shut down completely; over 400 were closed in Texas alone.

Closure of DMV offices

Closing local branches of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) makes it harder for residents to obtain voter IDs. In 2014, Alabama passed a law requiring a photo ID to vote; soon afterwards, the state shut down dozens of DMV offices in minority neighborhoods.

Caging lists

Caging lists have been used by political parties to eliminate potential voters registered with other political parties. A political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable, the mailing organization uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent.

Gerrymandering

While the majority of the world's democracies use independent agents to manage elections, 33 of 50 state election directors in the United States are elected partisans. Those party affiliations can create conflicts of interest, or at least the appearance, when directing elections. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris served as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2000 presidential election, and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell served as his state's Bush-Cheney co-chair during the 2004 presidential election. According to Richard E. Levy of the University of Kansas, parties in power may use sophisticated computer software to gerrymander legislative districts in their favor, with remarkable effectiveness.

Jim Crow laws

In the United States, voter suppression was used in most Southern states by democrats, who were conservatives during the Jim Crow era, until the Voting Rights Act (1965) made most disenfranchisement and voting qualifications illegal. Traditional voter suppression tactics included the institution of poll taxes and literacy tests, aimed at suppressing the votes of African Americans and poor white working class voters.

Off-year elections

As off-year elections generally have much lower turnout, they can be a means by which politicians can get policies approved that otherwise would not. This is because the low turnout makes it easier for organized interest groups and voters with vested interests to let their policy goals dominate.

Historical examples

1838 Gallatin County Election Day Battle

William Peniston, a candidate for the Missouri state legislature, made disparaging statements about the Mormons and warned them not to vote in the election. Reminding Daviess County residents of the growing electoral power of the Mormon community, Peniston made a speech in Gallatin claiming that if the Missourians "suffer such men as these [Mormons] to vote, you will soon lose your suffrage." Around 200 non-Mormons gathered in Gallatin on election day to prevent Mormons from voting.

When about thirty Latter Day Saints approached the polling place, a Missourian named Dick Weldon declared that Mormons were not allowed to vote in Clay County. One of the Mormons present, Samuel Brown, claimed that Peniston's statements were false and then declared his intention to vote. This triggered a brawl between the bystanders. The Mormons called upon the Danites, a Mormon vigilante group, and the Missourians left the scene to obtain guns and ammunition and swore to kill the Mormons. The skirmish is often cited as the first serious violence of the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, which included the Missourians sacking the Mormon settlement of De Witt, the Mormons sacking non-Mormon homes in Daviees County, the Battle of Crooked River, the Haun's Mill Massacre and the eventual expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri under Missouri Executive Order 44.

2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal

In the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, Republican officials attempted to reduce the number of Democratic voters by paying professional telemarketers in Idaho to make repeated hang-up calls to the telephone numbers used by the Democratic Party's ride-to-the-polls phone lines on election day. By tying up the lines, voters seeking rides from the Democratic Party would have more difficulty reaching the party to ask for transportation to and from their polling places.

2004 presidential election

Allegations surfaced in several states that a private group, Voters Outreach of America, which had been empowered by the individual states, had collected and submitted Republican voter registration forms while inappropriately discarding voter registration forms where the new voter had chosen to register with the Democratic Party. Such people would believe they had registered to vote, and would only discover on election day that they were not registered and could not cast a ballot.

Michigan Republican state legislator John Pappageorge was quoted as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

In 2006, four employees of the John Kerry campaign were convicted of slashing the tires of 25 vans rented by the Wisconsin state Republican Party which were to be used for driving Republican voters and monitors to the polls. At the campaign workers' sentencing, Judge Michael B. Brennan told the defendants, "Voter suppression has no place in our country. Your crime took away that right to vote for some citizens."

2006 Virginia Senate election

During the Virginia U.S. Senate election, Secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections Jean Jensen concluded that incidents of voter suppression appeared widespread and deliberate. Documented incidents of voter suppression include:

• Democratic voters receiving calls incorrectly informing them voting will lead to arrest.
• Widespread calls fraudulently claiming to be "[Democratic Senate candidate Jim] Webb Volunteers," falsely telling voters their voting location had changed.
• Fliers paid for by the Republican Party, stating "SKIP THIS ELECTION" that allegedly attempted to suppress African-American turnout.

The FBI has since launched an investigation into the suppression attempts. Despite the allegations, Democrat Jim Webb narrowly defeated incumbent George Allen.

2008 presidential election

A review of states' records by The New York Times found unlawful actions leading to widespread voter purges.

A dispute between the Social Security Administration commissioner and the National Association of Secretaries of State about the use of the Social Security database to test the validity of voters led to the shutdown of the database over the Columbus Day holiday weekend.

Georgia

Wait times of 2 to 10 hours were reported during early voting at multiple Georgia locations.

Michigan

Before the presidential election, on September 16, 2008, Obama legal counsel announced that they would be seeking an injunction to stop an alleged caging scheme in Michigan wherein the state Republican party would use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters still using their foreclosed home as a primary address at the polls. Michigan GOP officials called the suit "desperate". A Federal Appeals court ordered the reinstatement of 5,500 voters wrongly purged from the voter rolls by the state.

Minnesota

The conservative nonprofit Minnesota Majority has been reported as making phone calls claiming that the Minnesota Secretary of State had concerns about the validity of the voters registration. Their actions have been referred to the Ramsey County attorney's office and the U.S. Attorney looked into Johnson's complaint.

Ohio

Wait times of six hours were reported for early voting in Franklin County, leading to people leaving the line without voting.

Wisconsin

The Republican Party attempted to have all 60,000 voters in the heavily Democratic city of Milwaukee who had registered since January 1, 2006, deleted from the voter rolls. The requests were rejected by the Milwaukee Election Commission, although Republican commissioner Bob Spindell voted in favor of deletion.

2010 Maryland gubernatorial election

In the Maryland gubernatorial election in 2010, the campaign of Republican candidate Bob Ehrlich hired a consultant who advised that "the first and most desired outcome is voter suppression", in the form of having "African-American voters stay home." To that end, the Republicans placed thousands of Election Day robocalls to Democratic voters, telling them that the Democratic candidate, Martin O'Malley, had won, although in fact the polls were still open for some two more hours. The Republicans' call, worded to seem as if it came from Democrats, told the voters, "Relax. Everything's fine. The only thing left is to watch it on TV tonight." The calls reached 112,000 voters in majority-African American areas. In 2011, Ehrlich's campaign manager, Paul Schurick, was convicted of fraud and other charges because of the calls. In 2012, he was sentenced to 30 days of home detention, a one-year suspended jail sentence, and 500 hours of community service over the four years of his probation, with no fine or jail time. The Democratic candidate won by a margin of more than 10 percent.

2012 Florida

A law was passed in 2011 by the Florida legislature which reduced the days available for early voting, barred voter-registration activities of groups like the League of Women Voters, and made it more difficult to vote for voters who since the last election had moved to a different county within the state. Jim Greer, the main source for the information cited in the Palm Beach Post article, was sentenced to 18 months for embezzling from the Florida Republican Party. A majority of early voting ballots cast in 2008 were cast by Democratic voters, and minority voters are more likely to move. The reason given by Republican politicians for the law was to reduce cost and to deter voter fraud; however, some former senior Republican officials alleged that the true drivers of the law were GOP political consultants who were seeking ways to suppress the Democratic vote.

Several factors, including the reduction in early voting, reductions in the number of polling places, and an unusually lengthy ballot that included 11 detailed constitutional amendments, all combined to produce long lines on election day, with waits of several hours. By one estimate, the result was that at least 201,000 likely voters did not vote, either leaving the line in frustration or not even getting in line when they saw how long it would take.

2015 early voting controversy in Maryland

In Maryland's Montgomery County, Republicans planned to move two early-voting sites from densely populated Bethesda and Burtonsville to more sparsely populated areas in Brookville and Potomac. They claimed to be aiming for more "geographic diversity"; Democrats accused them of trying to suppress the vote. The Burtonsville site had the most minority voters of all the early-voting sites in the county, while the proposed new locations were in more Republican-friendly areas with fewer minority residents.

2016 presidential election

The 2016 presidential election was the first in 50 years without all the protections of the original Voting Rights Act. Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place, including swing states such as Virginia and Wisconsin.

Arizona

Despite high turnout during the Arizona Democratic primary, 2016, many voters spent over five hours in lines at several Maricopa County and Arizona polling stations. From 2008 to 2016, polling locations were cut down over 70 percent, from over 200 to 40. State officials claimed the decrease was a cost savings directive. Republican Governor Doug Ducey stated, "If people want to take the time to vote they should be able to, and their vote should be counted."

Kansas

In early 2016, a state judge struck down a law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship, in cases where the voter had used a national voter registration form. In May, a federal judge ordered the state of Kansas to begin registering approximately 18,000 voters whose registrations had been delayed because they had not shown proof of citizenship. Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach ordered that the voters be registered, but not for state and local elections. In July, a county judge struck down Kobach's order. Kobach, who has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas, was appointed to lead the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

New York

An audit was started in April 2016 after 125,000 voters in Brooklyn were removed from voter rolls and voters had trouble accessing polling sites.

North Carolina

In 2013, the state House passed a bill that requires voters to show a photo ID issued by North Carolina, a passport, or a military identification card to begin in 2016. Out-of-state drivers licenses were to be accepted only if the voter registered within 90 days of the election, and university photo identification was not acceptable. In July 2016, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial court decision in a number of consolidated actions and struck down the law's photo ID requirement, finding that the new voting provisions targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision," and that the legislators had acted with clear "discriminatory intent" in enacting strict election rules, shaping the rules based on data they received about African-American registration and voting patterns. On May 15, 2017, the law officially died when the US Supreme Court rejected efforts to review the Appeals Court ruling.

North Dakota

An ID law in North Dakota which would have disenfranchised large numbers of Native Americans was overturned in July 2016. The judge wrote, "The undisputed evidence before the Court reveals that voter fraud in North Dakota has been virtually non-existent."

Ohio

Since 1994, Ohio has had a policy of purging infrequent voters from the rolls. In April 2016, a lawsuit was filed, challenging this policy on the grounds that it violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. In June, the federal district court ruled for the plaintiffs, and entered a preliminary injunction applicable only to the November 2016 election. The preliminary injunction was upheld in September by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Had it not been upheld, thousands of voters would have been purged from the rolls just a few weeks before the election.

Texas

In July 2016, a federal appeals court found that Texas's voter ID law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters because only a few types of ID were allowed; for example, military IDs and concealed carry permits were allowed, but state employee photo IDs and university photo IDs were not.

Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, a federal judge found that the state's restrictive voter ID law led to "real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities"; and, given that there was no evidence of widespread voter impersonation in Wisconsin, found that the law was "a cure worse than the disease." In addition to imposing strict voter ID requirements, the law cut back on early voting, required people to live in a ward for at least 28 days before voting, and prohibited emailing absentee ballots to voters. A study by Priorities USA, a progressive advocacy group, estimates that strict ID laws in Wisconsin led to a significant decrease in voter turnout in 2016, with a disproportionate effect on African-American and Democratic-leaning voters.

2017–2018

Election Integrity Commission and Crosscheck

In May 2017, Donald Trump established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, purportedly for the purpose of preventing voter fraud. Critics have suggested its true purpose is voter suppression. The commission was led by Kansas attorney general and Republican gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach, a staunch advocate of strict voter ID laws and a proponent of the Crosscheck system. Crosscheck is a national database designed to check for voters who are registered in more than one state by comparing names and dates of birth. Researchers at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Microsoft found that for every legitimate instance of double registration it finds, Crosscheck's algorithm returns approximately 200 false positives. Kobach has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil rights organizations for trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas. On February 20, 2016, while speaking to a committee of Kansas 2nd Congressional District delegates, regarding their challenges of the proof-of-citizenship voting law he championed in 2011, Kobach said, "The ACLU and their fellow communist friends, the League of Women Voters — you can quote me on that, sued".

Often, voter fraud is cited as a justification for such measures, even when the incidence of voter fraud is low. In Iowa, lawmakers passed a strict voter ID law with the potential to disenfranchise 260,000 voters. Out of 1.6 million votes cast in Iowa in 2016, there were only 10 allegations of voter fraud; none were cases of impersonation that a voter ID law could have prevented. Only one person, a Republican voter, was convicted. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, the architect of the bill, admitted, "We've not experienced widespread voter fraud in Iowa."

Alabama

In 2018, critics have accused the state of intentionally disenfranchising non-white voters,aided by the Supreme Court which, in its Shelby County v. Holder 5-4 decision, allowed jurisdictions with a history of suppression of minority voters to avoid continuing to abide by federal preclearance requirements for changes in voter registration and casting of ballots. Within 24 hours of the ruling, Alabama implemented a 2011 law requiring specific types of photo I.D. to be presented. The state closed DMV offices in eight of ten counties which had the highest percentage black population, but only three in the ten counties with the lowest black population. In 2016, Alabama's Secretary of State (SOS) John Merrill began a process to require proof of citizenship from voters, despite Merrill saying he did not know of a single case where a non-citizen had voted. Purging of voter rolls is another method of disenfranchisement and it was done so aggressively in Alabama. Even four-term Republican Representative Mo Brooks who, in March 2018, was rated the House's least bipartisan member by The Lugar Center and who was a candidate in 2017, for the seat relinquished by Jeff Sessions, found that he himself had been purged from the rolls. Merrill also refused to publicize the passage of legislation that enabled some 60,000 Alabaman former felons to vote. Alabama's new requirement regarding proof of citizenship, had been approved by federal Election Assistance Commission Director Brian Newby, an associate of voter disenfranchisement advocate, Kansas SOS and Republican Gubernatorial nominee, Kris Kobach. Kobach was cited as a primary author of Alabama HB 56, passed in 2010, which was described as tougher than Arizona's law. Much of the law was invalidated on appeal at various levels of appeals courts or voluntarily withdrawn or reworded.

Georgia

In Louisville, Georgia, in October 2018, Black senior citizens were told to get off a bus that was to have taken them to a polling place for early voting. The bus trip was supposed to have been part of the "South Rising" bus tour sponsored by the advocacy group Black Voters Matter. A clerk of the local Jefferson County Commission allegedly called the intended voters' senior center to claim that the bus tour constituted "'political activity,'" which is barred at events sponsored by the county. Latosha Brown, one of the founders of Black Voters Matter, described the trip's prevention as a clear-cut case of "'voter intimidation. This is voter suppression, Southern style.'" The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund sent a letter to the county calling for an "'immediate investigation'" into the incident, which it condemned as "'an unacceptable act of voter intimidation'" that "'potentially violates several laws.'"

Georgia's Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, was the official in charge of determining whether or not voters will be allowed to vote in the November 2018 election and has been accused of voter suppression. Despite being prevented by a court from implementing wholesale disenfranchisement, thanks to Kemp's "Exact Match" policy, the state legislature wrote a new law in 2017 that facilitates use of the strategy. Minority voters are statistically more likely to have names that contain hyphens, suffixes or other punctuation that can make it more difficult to match their name in databases, experts noted, and are more likely to have their voter applications suspended by Kemp's office. Barry C. Burden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its Elections Research Center said, "An unrealistic rule of this sort will falsely flag many legitimate registration forms. Moreover, the evidence indicates that minority residents are more likely to be flagged than are whites." Kemp has suspended the applications of 53,000 voters, a majority of whom are minorities. "Even if everyone who is on a pending list is eventually allowed to vote, it places more hurdles in the way of those voters on the list, who are disproportionately black and Hispanic," said Charles Stewart III, Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Georgia officials kept hundreds of voting machines locked in warehouses on Election Day 2018, creating a shortage at the polls. This led to hours-long lines, which act as a deterrent to voters who had to work or take care of children.

Indiana

In 2017, Indiana passed a law allowing the state to purge voters from the rolls without notifying them, based on information from the controversial Crosscheck system. The Indiana NAACP and League of Women Voters have filed a federal lawsuit against Connie Lawson, Indiana's Secretary of State, to stop the purges. In June 2018, a federal judge ruled that the law violated the National Voter Registration Act.

North Dakota

In September, a federal circuit court of appeals reversed an earlier ruling that struck down a law requiring voters to have a residential street address. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Ohio

In February 2017, Ohio Secretary of State Jon A. Husted, a Republican, asked the United States Supreme Court to review the appellate court decision that prevented the state from purging infrequent voters from the rolls. The case was accepted; oral arguments in Husted v. Randolph Institute were heard on November 8. The Court issued its decision on June 10, 2018, ruling 5–4 that Ohio's law did not violate federal laws.

Texas

In Texas, a voter ID law requiring a driver's license, passport, military identification, or gun permit, was repeatedly found to be intentionally discriminatory. The state's election laws could be put back under the control of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however, the DOJ has expressed support for Texas's ID law. (Sessions was accused by Coretta Scott King in 1986 of trying to suppress the black vote.)