In the midst of a raging pandemic surging to new levels, on November 3, 2020, over 155 million voters turned out to cast their votes in the U.S. presidential election, a record turnout not seen in over one hundred years. Energized by a hotly contested election, the voter turnout was also enabled by a massive increase in mail-in and absentee ballots cast during a time in which going to the polls to cast your vote was dangerous to your health, especially to those most vulnerable.
Once the elections were certified, and in the midst of charges of voter fraud, the Heritage Foundation based in Washington, DC began conferring with state legislatures across the country with proposals for new laws to be passed that would drastically suppress the vote in the upcoming 2022 elections and beyond. To date, over 250 voter suppression laws are being considered in 43 states.
“Just find me 11,780 votes.” In closely contested battleground states like Georgia, that infamous statement by a now-defeated president reveals the crass motivation behind the new wave of voter suppression laws being considered and passed. Deny 12,000 voters in Georgia access to the polls, and the outcome of the election swings in another direction. It is estimated that if all the voter suppression laws across the country were to be passed, as many as ten million voters could be prevented from exercising their right to vote.
In Georgia, where voter suppression laws have now been passed, some provisions include providing a voter ID for absentee voting, plus proving that you have a valid reason for not being able to physically go to the polls. Others border on the ludicrous: it will be a crime to provide food and drink to those waiting in line to vote. The “Souls to the Polls” tradition of the African American churches will be severely curtailed. After attending Sunday church services, the Black churches have taken busloads of their members on early Sunday voting days to cast their ballots. That tradition is now restricted.
Early voting days will be limited, especially on weekends, and with voting hours reduced to 9-5 for all early voting, making it extremely difficult for low-income essential workers to vote. Drop boxes will be limited and available only during working hours. Perhaps most egregious of all, the state will have the power to take over and disband county elections boards whenever contested elections require recounts. Further, the elections review process will be taken from the Secretary of State and placed in the hands of a sole person appointed by the governor.
On the same day that the law was passed, the governor met behind closed doors to sign the bill into law, with only a handful of his political cohorts as witnesses. An African American woman legislator knocked on the closed door to be allowed in. The police immediately arrested her and took her away in handcuffs. The event exposed for all to see the true nature of what was transpiring, as the governor signed the bill with a painting of a Georgia plantation serving as a backdrop.
American history, especially in the South, could be told as a history of voter suppression. It is how, in a democracy, the ruling class asserts its supremacy. When the right to vote was for African Americans enshrined in the Constitution after the Civil War, the Southern states were able to get around that by asserting the state’s right to determine how their elections were to be conducted. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and other repressive devices were employed to virtually eliminate Black voters from the polls.
In 1965 the passage of the Voting Rights Act did away with all that, and millions of African American voters were able to participate in the democratic process for the first time. That continued until the Congress and the Supreme Court allowed the main provisions of the Act to be gutted, and a new spate of voter suppression laws were allowed to be passed. Stacy Abrams was narrowly defeated in the 2018 governor’s race, primarily due to voter suppression laws.
The increased intensity of suppression may have the opposite effect, however. Led by voting rights advocates such as Georgia’s Fair Fight Action, voters may once again be motivated to overcome whatever hurdles are put in their way. In Georgia, two-thirds say they are against measures to restrict Sunday voting. Seventy-six percent oppose efforts to take election authority away from local officials. Sixty percent oppose limiting vote-by-mail.
The U. S. Congress is also now considering restoring the Voting Rights Act, thus rendering null and void most state voter suppression laws.
We have to ask the question: who is most hurt by voter suppression? It appears that those who will be most hurt are the most vulnerable in society, those who don’t have the funds (as in poll tax) or the ability to obtain a voter ID, and those who can’t afford automobiles or other means of transportation to get to the polls. It is those who are not only politically unequal but those who are economically unequal.
The real target is this new class who have lost everything and are finding themselves excluded from society and who have no choice but to fight for their very survival. They are the ones who find themselves in the ranks of the chronically unemployed or underemployed, who swell the ranks of the food lines, who are most at risk to find themselves homeless. They have also entered into the political process to demand that the government meet their basic needs. It is they, the economically and socially excluded, that the ruling class is now moving to politically exclude. They must not and cannot succeed.
Published: April 12, 2021
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