Voter Suppression is reducing the number of votes cast by a targeted group by making it inconvenient, difficult, or impossible for its members to vote.

Outline

1. Voter Suppression
2. 61 Forms of Voter Suppression
3. History of Voter Suppression in the US
   1. Voting in the U.S.A., Britannica
   2. Black Voting Rights since 1900, Britannica
4. A Bogus Justification for Laws Restricting Voting
5. Is Voting Too Easy?
6. Evaluating Laws that Make Voting Easier or Harder
7. Felon Voting Rights
8. Voter ID Laws
   1. Voter ID Laws in Effect
   2. How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
   3. Debunked claim that voter fraud is widespread
   4. Requiring Proof of Citizenship
9. Incurable Ballots
10. Cost of Voting Index: How Easy or Hard it is to Vote, by State
11. Voter Suppression: Quick Take

Voter Suppression

• Voter Suppression is reducing the number of votes cast by a targeted group
  • by making it inconvenient, difficult, or impossible for its members to vote
  • for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.

61 Forms of Voter Suppression

The Voting Rights Alliance: 61 Forms of Voter Suppression

• Example: Robocall Disinformation
  • Right-Wing Operatives Plead Guilty in Voter-Suppression Scheme NYT October 2022
    • Two right-wing political operatives have pleaded guilty in Ohio to a telecommunications fraud charge for arranging thousands of robocalls that falsely claimed that the information voters included with mail ballots could be used by law enforcement and debt collectors, prosecutors said.
• Example: Making it more difficult for college students to vote
  • Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses NYT March 2023
    • In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.
    • But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters.

History of Voter Suppression in the US

Voting in the U.S.A., Britannica

• The Constitution doesn’t specify who can vote. That’s left to the states.
• In the first presidential election (1789), voters were almost all landowning white Protestant males. 
• By the 1860s white males largely enjoyed universal suffrage
• While voting rights expanded for some, states began enacting laws that barred women, African Americans, Native Americans, and many immigrants from casting ballots. 
• After slavery ended, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, guaranteeing the right to vote to all men, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” 
• Southern states subsequently suppressed the black vote through intimidation and other measures, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.
• By the early 20th century, nearly all African Americans had been disenfranchised in the South.
• In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, extending suffrage to women. 
• Native Americans gained suffrage in 1957.
  • Until 1957 some states barred Native Americans from voting, since the right to vote is governed by state law
• As late as the mid-1960s fewer than 7 percent of blacks were registered to vote in Mississippi. 
• In 1964 the Twenty-fourth Amendment was adopted, prohibiting poll taxes in federal elections. 
• In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was signed, which banned efforts to deny voting rights, such as literacy tests.
• In 1971 the Twenty-sixth Amendment extended suffrage to citizens at least 18.
• Some states passed strict voter ID requirements supposedly to prevent voter fraud, though critics argued the real purpose was to suppress voting. Some of these laws have been ruled unconstitutional.

Black Voting Rights since 1900, Britannica

• 1900 Blacks in South are effectively disenfranchised by
  • poll taxes
  • literacy tests
  • grandfather clauses for literacy tests
  • whites-only primaries
• 1915 Guinn v. United States
  • Struck down grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests
• 1937 Breedlove v. Suttles
  • Upheld a Georgia poll tax (because the tax applied to all voters)
• 1944 Smith v. Allwright
  • Struck down whites-only primaries
• 1964 Twenty-fourth Amendment
  • Prohibited poll taxes in federal elections
• 1964 Harper v. Virginia Board of Electors
  • Supreme Court extended the prohibition of poll taxes to state elections.
• 1965 Voting Rights Act
  • Preclearance: provided for federal approval of proposed changes to voting laws or procedures for jurisdictions that had previously used tests to determine voter eligibility
  • Suspended literacy tests
  • Directed the Attorney General to challenge poll taxes for state and local elections.
• 2013 Shelby County v. Holder
  • Struck down the Preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act, removing the preclearance requirement for:
    • Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Arizona and parts of seven other states.

A Bogus Justification for Laws Restricting Voting

• A common justification for laws restricting voting is that they are needed to prevent voter fraud.
  • But voter fraud is rare
    • View Voter Fraud.
  • Moreover, infringing a person’s right to vote is much more serious than a fraudulent vote. A law restricting voting is more likely to reduce legal voting than reduce voter fraud.
• A secondary argument is that voters’ doubts about election integrity need to be allayed.
  • But restoring the confidence of some voters should not be accomplished by suppressing the vote of others.

Is Voting Too Easy?

• Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC WaPo April 20, 2023
  • Cleta Mitchell, a top Republican legal strategist, told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that conservatives must band together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, according to a copy of her presentation reviewed by The Washington Post.
  • “What are these college campus locations?” she asked, according to the audio. “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”

• Republicans don’t complain much about polling places at senior centers Philip Bump WaPo
  • So what if it’s super easy for college students to vote? Why shouldn’t it be? Why shouldn’t it be this easy for everyone? This is, in a sense, the point of universalizing mail-in ballots: anyone can roll out of bed, fill out their ballot and send it in. But even without that, why shouldn’t it be easy for everyone to cast an in-person ballot? Why should we scoff when it’s easy for anyone to do so?

Evaluating Laws that Make Voting Easier or Harder

• In evaluating laws that make voting easier or harder, the risk of violating a citizen’s right to vote must be weighed against the risk of a fraudulent vote cast.
• There are two components of the risk of X:
  • Probability of X
  • Seriousness of X
  • For example, being killed by a meteorite is extremely unlikely but very serious. Getting caught and fined $200 for driving an unregistered car is a real possibility but not too serious.
• Thus, in evaluating a law that makes it easier or harder to vote:
  • The probability of violating a citizen’s right to vote must be weighed against the probability of a fraudulent vote cast.
  • The seriousness of violating a citizen’s right to vote must be weighed against the seriousness of a fraudulent vote cast.
• Probabilities
  • The probabilities are determined empirically, by analyzing facts and figures.
  • In fact voter fraud is rare.
    • View Voter Fraud
• Seriousness
  • Since free and fair elections are the core of democracy, violating a citizen’s right to vote is much more serious than a fraudulent vote cast.

Felon Voting Rights

• State Felon Voting Laws, Britannica ProCon.org
  • Depending on the state:
    • A felon may vote from prison
    • A felon’s vote is restored after prison
    • A felon’s vote is restored after prison and parole
    • A felon’s vote is restored after prison, parole, and probation
    • A felon may lose the vote permanently

• Felon Voting Rights, National Conference of State Legislatures

Voter ID Laws

Voter ID Laws in Effect

• National Conference of State Legislatures
  • Voter ID Laws

How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

• Efforts to discourage voting are fundamentally anti-democratic, and they have a particularly deplorable history in the United States. Although contemporary voter-restriction efforts are nowhere near as far-reaching as those undertaken by southern Democrats in the late nineteenth century, they are nevertheless significant.
• The push for voter ID laws was based on a false claim: that voter fraud is widespread in the United States. All reputable studies have concluded that levels of such fraud in this country are low. Yet Republicans began to push for measures to combat this nonexistent problem.
• According to a July 2017 Morning Consult/Politico poll, 47 percent of Republicans believed that Trump won the popular vote, compared to 40 percent who believed Hillary Clinton won. In other words, about half of self-identified Republicans said they believe that American elections are massively rigged.

Debunked claim that voter fraud is widespread

View Debunked Claim that Voter Fraud is Widespread

Requiring Proof of Citizenship

• Judge Rejects Kansas Law Requiring Voters to Show Proof of Citizenship, NYT June 2018
  • A restrictive law on voting in Kansas championed by Kris W. Kobach, the secretary of state, was struck down on Monday by a federal judge who said Mr. Kobach had failed during a trial to show evidence of widespread voter fraud.
  • The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Mr. Kobach in 2016 on behalf of the League of Women Voters and individual Kansans, arguing that the law disenfranchised people who were attempting to register legally but did not have access to the required documents.
  • Federal District Judge Julie A. Robinson of Kansas said in her 188-page ruling that while there was evidence of a “small number of noncitizen registrations in Kansas, it is largely explained by administrative error, confusion, or mistake.” 
• Supreme Court won’t revive Kansas voting law requiring proof of citizenship, WaPo December 2020
  • The Supreme Court declined Monday to revive a Kansas law that required showing specific proof-of-citizenship documents before registering to vote, ending a fight that had continued for years.
  • The court did not give a reason for rejecting the appeal of the state’s new secretary of state, Scott Schwab. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) had opposed the effort asking for Supreme Court review.

Incurable Ballots

• Voting explainer: In many states, there’s a process to fix an error with your ballot NPR
  • During big U.S. elections, hundreds of thousands of mail ballots are typically thrown out and left uncounted. In 2020, for instance, more than 560,000 ballots were rejected (that’s nearly 1% of the total).
  • Experts say ballot rejections are largely the result of relatively minor voter errors, often associated with security measures that are designed to verify a voter’s identity.
  • That’s why about half of states have a process in place to help voters fix their mail ballots if they do make a mistake. It’s known as ballot curing.

• Cure period for absentee and mail-in ballots Ballotpedia
  • All 50 states require voters to provide valid signatures on their absentee/mail-in ballot return documents.
  • In the event of a missing signature or a discrepancy in signature matching, 24 states require officials to notify voters and allow voters to correct signature errors through a process called ballot curing. Ballot curing is a two-part process that involves notification and correction.
  • States that do not have a ballot curing process do not count ballots with missing or mismatched signatures.

Link to Ballotpedia Graphic

Cost of Voting Index:
How Easy or Hard it is to Vote, by State

Cost of Voting in the American States: 2022 , Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Voting by State from Easiest to Hardest

• The ‘Cost’ of Voting in America: A Look at Where It’s Easiest and Hardest NYT
  • The findings are part of the 2022 edition of the Cost of Voting Index, a nonpartisan academic study that seeks to cut through the politics of voting access. The study ranks all 50 states based on the overall investment a resident must make, in time and resources, to vote.
  • Researchers focused on 10 categories related to voting, including registration, inconvenience, early voting, polling hours and absentee voting.
  • The study was first drawn up by professors from Northern Illinois University, Jacksonville University and Wuhan University in 2018 as a means of looking empirically at voting in the United States. It was published again in 2020.

Voter Suppression: Quick Take

• Voter Suppression is reducing the number of votes cast by a targeted group by making it harder or impossible for its members to vote, e.g. by denying suffrage, requiring strict voter IDs, or reducing the number of polling places.
• The US has a long history of voter suppression, from restricting suffrage to white male land-owners to Jim Crow laws.
• Laws restricting voting are today typically justified by the “need” to reduce voter fraud. There are two problems:
  • Voter fraud is extremely rare.
  • Violating a citizen’s right to vote is worse than a fraudulent vote cast.

View entire Voter Suppression