By Lance Simmens
It is no revelation that legislatures in many states contrive all sorts of obstacles to keep certain constituencies from voting. In particular, minorities are targeted in order to keep from casting ballots in many jurisdictions through suppression and intimidation.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE, in a strictly partisan vote of 221-198. The only thing it attempts to save is a crooked partisan attempt to limit minorities and the poor from casting votes for the perpetuation of democracy. According to a response from the Executive Office of the President, “This bill would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but it would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls.”
The legislation requires “individuals registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship to participate in federal elections,” according to Lia Chien of the Missouri Independent. In addition, Chien adds, the legislation would “require most individuals to have a passport to register to vote… only about 48 percent of US citizens have a passport, according to State Department data.” It is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist. It gives new meaning to the idiom “tilting at windmills.”
According to the Associated Press, “States such as North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, California, and Texas reviewed their voter rolls between 2016 and 2022 …these audits found that fewer than 50 noncitizens in each state had voted in recent elections, out of upwards of 23 million total votes per state.” Once again this is much ado about nothing; the audits proved to be unfounded. It is indicative of the degree to which mis-and disinformation is falsely spewed forth to intimidate some and confuse others.
Sean Morales-Doyle from the Brennan Center for Justice offers “the bill plays into greater themes of racism and xenophobia … it’s also a very damaging lie with an ulterior motive: to lay the groundwork for challenging legitimate election results down the road.”
Leslie Proll, senior director for voting rights at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights offered, “for our democracy to work, it must include all of our voices. The SAVE Act represents a dangerous attempt to intimidate voters of color, impose onerous burdens on their political participation, and sow doubt about the legitimacy of our electoral process. Instead of promoting fear and division, Congress must focus on passing laws that protect and expand the right to vote.”
The Carnegie Corporation of New York has put together a list of impediments that directly limit attempts to expand voting rights in America today, they include:
- Election officials use false claims of rampant voter fraud to justify strict requirements like a photo ID, often aimed at suppressing the votes of people of color and younger voters;
- Local jurisdictions are not translating materials or offering language assistance as required by law, proving a persistent barrier to increased voting among language minorities in the Asian American and Latino communities;
- Under the guise of reviewing voter rolls to remove duplicate names, the names of deceased individuals, or those with standing felony conviction, officials have undertaken to purge voter lists, deleting millions of eligible voters’ names, often with a disproportionate impact on communities of color;
- Election officials have closed thousands of polling places, largely affecting communities of color;
- Lack of funding inhibits the ability of localities to manage elections that ensure everyone’s vote counts equally;
- Federal law allows voters whose eligibility is in question to use a provisional ballot to be counted once the voter is confirmed. However localities set their own rules in how many provisional ballots to print and training poll workers on processing them, resulting in eligible voters bring turned away or their ballots discounted;
- States and localities have long used early voting to reduce Election Day crunch and open up the process to prospective voters bound by work or other commitments. Faith-based groups have also used early voting for nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts. Officials across the nation have curtailed early voting, largely hitting communities of color;
- Reducing voting hours can make voting less convenient, and even impossible, for many voters. Low-income and working-class people often have less freedom to arrive late or leave early from work, or take a break from their shifts in the middle of the day. Parents with inflexible childcare arrangements can be similarly impacted;
- Poll workers constrained by lack of funding for good training means poll workers are poorly equipped to do their jobs;
- Our highly decentralized election system hands the responsibility for managing elections to state and local administrators, some of them partisan officials with a clear interest in election outcomes favorable to their parties and candidates. Too often, this results in efforts to suppress the votes of groups that might be viewed as opponents;
- Creation of at-large local offices to dilute minority vote. An at-large election covers voters across a city or county, in contrast to smaller district elections, which can often result in higher representation for people of color since votes are not diluted by an area-win population. As a result, some officials create at-large districts to limit the influence of minority communities.
The foregoing represents real problems that require serious actions.