The ACLU sued the administration and successfully blocked the citizenship question before the census was conducted. Resources on redistricting and gerrymandering See how your district lines have changed over time. Thirty-six states have identification requirements at the polls. Seven states have strict photo ID laws, under which voters must present one of a limited set of forms of government-issued photo ID in order to cast a regular ballot — no exceptions. These strict ID laws are part of an ongoing strategy to suppress the vote.
Over 21 million U. The ID itself can be costly, and even when IDs are free, applicants must incur other expenses to obtain the underlying documents that are needed to get an ID. This can be a significant burden on people in lower-income communities. Further, the travel required to obtain an ID is an obstacle for people with disabilities, the elderly, and people living in rural areas.
The short answer is all of us. Our democracy is debased when the vote is not accessible for all. But the fact is that some groups are disproportionately affected by voter suppression tactics, including people of color, young people, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The proof is in the numbers. Nearly two-thirds of polling places had at least one impediment for people with disabilities.
The right to vote is the most fundamental constitutional right for good reason: democracy cannot exist without the electoral participation of citizens. Not the other way around. President Biden and states can enact measures to encourage rather than suppress voting. Automatic, online, and same-day voter registration encourage participation and reduce chances of error.
Early voting helps people with travel or accessibility concerns participate. And states must enforce the protections of the Voting Rights Act.
At an individual level, the best way to fight voter suppression is to know your rights — and vote. Expand Voting Access During a Pandemic. Skip navigation. Federal advocacy Our work with law and policy makers to ensure necessary statutes exist to protect our civil rights. Know your rights Do you know your rights? Share This Page.
Last updated: August 18, Voter Registration Restrictions. Criminalization of the Ballot Box. More on criminalization of the ballot box. American Civil Liberties Union. The case of a Texas mother is a window into how the myth of voter fraud is being weaponized to suppress the vote.
Felony Disenfranchisement. Many states made it harder to get absentee ballots and imposed stricter voter identification requirements. On the other hand, according to the Brennan Center, 25 states passed laws making it easier to vote.
Most of the changes made voting by mail easier and expanded opportunities for early voting. In California, the law passed now requires that all voters receive a ballot by mail. Previously, this had been up to county officials. The law now extends this to all elections and all local officials.
In Maryland, voters can now choose to get ballots in the mail forever without having to request an absentee ballot for every election. But some states adopted a mix of laws; some make voting easier and some make it more difficult. Take the case of Indiana, a very Republican state. Its reforms dealt primarily with how ballots were counted. Indiana laws limited the availability of voter drop boxes while at the same time making it easier to vote by mail.
In New York, a very Democratic state, the legislature required that voters get their absentee ballot applications submitted 15 days before an election instead of seven days. So, what will be the political effect of these new laws on the upcoming elections? One way to look at this is to divide the changes into states where the laws passed are clearly restrictive, states where the laws passed are clearly expansive, and states where the laws are mixed.
Table 1 provides a quick look at the likely impact of restrictive voting laws in 11 states. Some states on this list, like Alabama for instance, are so Republican that the restrictive laws are likely to have little impact on outcomes.
But Arizona, Florida, and Georgia, where presidential election results were very close, will have Senate races and as many as seven House races that are likely to be high profile and somewhat competitive as of now. Who votes in is of critical importance to the balance of power in Congress. The fact that Mississippi has some of the nation's most restrictive voting laws and an overall health system that's ranked dead last in the nation may seem unrelated.
But some say they're not, because restrictive voting laws lead to voters electing less competent political leaders who don't respond to the needs of all their constituents. A worker secures a railing on a state-run mobile field hospital at the Mississippi State Fair Grounds on March 19, , in Jackson.
That's what Alex Keena , a political scientist, discovered while researching a book he co-authored, " Gerrymandering the States: Partisanship, Race, and the Transformation of American Federalism. Keena says members of Congress who get elected to office in part because of restrictive election laws or partisan gerrymandering often focus on cultural wedge issues or conspiracy theories because they're in safe voting districts where they don't have to address a diverse constituency.
This inability to govern can have lethal consequences. Keena says. States that enacted partisan gerrymandering -- redrawing congressional districts to favor the Republican party and deprive Black people of voting power -- tended to have higher infant mortality rates, Keena says. They also were more likely to challenge the Affordable Care Act in courts and were generally less responsive to the COVID pandemic in than Republican-controlled states that didn't gerrymander, he found.
There is a phrase that describes what happens to some White voters in states like Mississippi. It's called "Dying of Whiteness" -- the name of a book by Jonathan M. Metzl that describes a political dynamic where racial, "backlash governance" leads to White voters picking political leaders who enact policies that tend to make them sicker, poorer and more likely to die early by gun suicide.
This same dynamic is partly why most of the counties in the US with the fewest fully vaccinated people are in Southern states led by GOP governors. They alienate young White voters.
Republican leaders who seek to restrict voting rights also hurt themselves by turning off young White voters who could make the difference for them in future elections.
Some GOP leaders make an effort to appeal to young voters, but their party's voter restriction laws send another message: We don't want you to vote.
This message hurts young White voters by breeding political cynicism and apathy, says Mary A. Evins , coordinator for the American Democracy Project, a program that encourages civic engagement among youth.
She says "the big chunk" of White voters impacted by voter restriction laws are the youngest voters. Many students already offer all sorts of excuses for not voting: They're too busy with their classes and they believe their vote doesn't count. Voting is an acquired habit that needs to be taught and practiced to take root, Evins says. Students at Phoenix College gather to fill out voter registration forms on September 24, , in Phoenix, Arizona.
The best way to ensure that students turn into good citizens who vote in every election is through steps such as placing polling places on every college campus -- something discouraged by many new, restrictive voting laws, she says.
The Democrats' voting overhaul bill would address many of Evins' concerns. The new bill would make Election Day a public holiday, make it easier to register to vote, ensure states have early voting for federal elections and allow all voters to request mail-in ballots. They suppress the political power of middle-class White people.
Voter suppression hurts White people in another, more insidious way. It silences their voice in the political process. A famous study concluded that the US is not a democracy but an oligarchy where the elites, not ordinary voters, determine public policy. That study validated a belief among many lower- and middle-class White voters that politicians listen to wealthy donors but not to them.
Voter suppression laws make it easier for political leaders to do just that -- favor wealthy people over others, says Lindsey Cormack , an expert on voter suppression and elections at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. A poll tax sign in Mineola, Texas,
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