Democracy Diverted: How Politicians Win Elections by Losing Voters
In March of 2021, in response to a Democrat Joe Biden victory in the 2020 general election, Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a new slate of voting rights laws, outlawing the act of providing food and water to those waiting in line to vote and reducing the number of polling places. It was part of a pattern of voter suppression that extended across the country and through the history of voting rights in the United States. Often, voting itself is thought of as the cornerstone of democracy and a fundamental part of life in America. As such, the right to vote is just as important. A continuous effort to suppress voters, however, has always tried to undermine the participatory democracy that our Founding Fathers’ envisioned– a democracy that America allegedly exemplifies. Since the 2016 presidential election, this fundamental idea has become ever more contested– in legislatures, courts, and political campaigns. Yet this recent surge in the suppression of voting rights is only an echo of the Jim Crow laws, segregation, and Black Codes of the pre-Civil Rights movement.
“A continuous effort to suppress voters, however, has always tried to undermine the participatory democracy that our Founding Fathers’ envisioned– a democracy that America allegedly exemplifies.”
The most significant legislation related to voting rights was the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which effectively eliminated any political barriers that would prevent racial discrimination at the polling booth. At the time, Americans believed that Jim Crow laws were effectively eliminated and state and local election laws needed to abide by federal standards that allowed people of all socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds to turn up and vote fairly. Any state with historic discrimination needed federal approval before it could make any changes to its election laws. These initiatives greatly prevented the danger of discrimination and suppression in our elections.
However, in the last few years, many states have made an effort to undermine the scrutiny of the federal government’s election laws. For example, in 2011, South Carolina and Texas introduced voting ID laws that the Department of Justice and the DC federal district court claimed were negatively impacting voter turnout for minority groups. Afterward, in 2013, in Shelby v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted one of the most effective protections for the right to vote by rendering ineffective the requirement that certain jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination get pre-approval for voting changes. States then wasted no time enacting discriminatory laws including Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, South Dakota, Iowa, and Indiana.
These states introduced laws revolving around the requirement to present government photo identification when voting, stringent voter registration deadlines, and the reduction of mail-in voting opportunities. It is no coincidence that the states that pushed for voter suppression laws immediately following Shelby were the states that met the Voting Rights Act of 1965’s criteria of historically discriminating minorities. When given the opportunity, many of these states immediately pushed for a return to voter suppression. Since the 2016 General Election, accusations of voter fraud have prompted states to enact even bolder efforts to suppress the vote.
These efforts since the 2013 Shelby decision have largely reversed the course of voting rights expansion since the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Decades of progress and activism from the civil rights movements have been eroded by partisan and racially discriminatory legislation. State governments have taken action to undermine voting rights with measures that share the same motivation as Jim Crow laws.
“For politicians, the idea is simple: win elections without winning votes.”
Challenges to voting rights recently have put the strategies of politicians in a clearer light. For politicians, the idea is simple: win elections without winning votes. Their most widespread, yet most covert tool is gerrymandering: the rigging of district maps to undermine voting power. They do so under the guise that redrawing district maps allows districts to adapt to changing populations. The reality is much different.
The most notable example of gerrymandering is in the battleground swing-state of Wisconsin. In 2011, after the Republican majority redrew the Assembly district map, the party won a supermajority in the chamber. In 2018, Democrats in Wisconsin won every statewide office and a majority of the statewide vote, but due to gerrymandering, the Republicans retained a supermajority in the General Assembly. Since July 2023, 74 cases have been filed against congressional or legislative district maps as racially discriminatory or partisan in 27 different states.
All too often, gerrymandering specifically targets minority groups. Redistricting pushes black Americans into the minority and drowns out their voices. In Louisiana, the voting age population is around 33% Black and 58% White, but the effects of gerrymandering have altered their voting power; Black voters are only able to influence the electoral outcome in around 17% of Louisiana’s districts, while white voters determine the outcome in 83% of them.
Yet, the outcomes of other measures are even more obvious. Another ongoing trend of neo-Jim Crow Laws is reducing the ability to vote, specifically in heavily urbanized and rural areas: two areas that tend to have many minority groups. Politicians achieve this in the simplest way possible: closing polling places. Since 2016, over 2,800 polling place closures occurred in the 9 states identified in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In almost all counties where this occurred, they featured large minority populations. In Texas, 74 closures occurred in Dallas County, which is 41 percent Latino and 22 percent African American. In Arizona, Maricopa County, which is 31 percent Latino, closed 171 locations since 2012. For politicians, it's not a priority that everyone votes. Their priority is to win with the least amount of votes.
Even more nefarious, however, is the disguise that these measures aren’t racially motivated. Politicians cite economic issues, stating that less polling places lead to lower costs. They cite disability access, but instead, close down polling places, forcing voters to travel miles to vote. Similarly, the Jim Crow laws from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were never a statute that stated, “Black people cannot vote.” Instead, they passed legislation that required literacy tests, polling taxes, and allowed extrajudicial intimidation and violence against Black voters. They claimed these as reforms to protect election security and fairness.
The danger behind recent initiatives is alike, lawmakers do not claim that they are making voting harder for certain groups of people. Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2022 outlaws the ability for volunteers to distribute water and food to people who may have to wait in line for long periods. Combined with the fact that polling place closures in counties with large minority populations have led to longer lines in those areas, this law specifically targets minorities. However, the legislation justifies this new part of the law by stating that volunteers distributing food, snacks, or water are there to solicit voters. This arbitrary distinction raises the question: How is distributing water to voters any different from the numerous merchandise handed out throughout the campaign? When activists and volunteers strive to create equity in an inequitable voting system, politicians pass inconsistent legislation to protect a broken system. Further, politicians continue to justify this explicit act of disenfranchising voters based on race with the guise of election fairness and security.
From its disguise to its methods, voter suppression in the twenty-first century is hardly new. While politicians may wield new techniques to drown out the voices of minority voters, it is an extension of the Jim Crow laws and the segregation that has existed throughout American history.
