Recently, the Camera published an account of vote suppression in Kansas, under Kris Kobach, who now heads the national “voter fraud” commission. His first act was to demand detailed voter information from every state. This is in line with the far right’s policy goal of suppressing votes from poor and minority communities. (See “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer for more on this agenda.) Their goal clearly will undermine democracy. As Boulderites and as Americans, we want our democracy to flourish and so the following details of voter suppression in 2016 are important to us.
1. Hacking. The Russians were able to get into voter rolls in at least 21 states. These rolls can be manipulated, e.g. voters deleted. Alas, the House recently defunded the only federal agency that helps states keep their voting machines from being hacked.
2. Cross-checking. Greg Palast, independent journalist, reports that, starting in 2013, Kobach created a system to purge 1.1 million Americans (with minorities targeted) from the voter rolls in Republican states. Cross-checking involves comparing voter rolls in different districts, even states, to see if the “same” person is registered in two places. If so, they are deleted. But the computer mainly located names that were actually quite dissimilar (e.g., Donald Alexander Webster Jr. of Ohio was purged for voting a second time in Virginia as Donald Eugene Webster Sr). Cross-checking was used in 2016, with these results: in Michigan Trump won by 13,107, while 449,922 voters were purged. In Arizona, Trump won by 85,257, while 270,824 voters were purged. Trump won in North Carolina by 177,008, while 589,393 voters were purged. The million voters purged were mainly in poor and minority districts.
3. Former felons, also largely poor and minorities, are not permitted to vote in many states, e.g. Florida, Iowa and Virginia. The New York Times reported last October that “the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization for criminal justice reform, estimates that 6.1 million Americans will not be allowed to vote next month because of these laws.” One and a half million Florida adults could not vote last year, and overall one in 40 Americans cannot vote as a result of these laws. The elections in Florida are deeply influenced by this law. In 2000, several thousand legitimate voters were falsely purged as “felons,” and Bush won the state by only a few hundred votes.
4. Voter ID laws. The Nation reported last November that “According to federal court records, 300,000 registered voters, 9 percent of the electorate, lacked strict forms of voter ID in Wisconsin. … strict voter-ID laws… led to a significant reduction in voter turnout…, with a disproportionate impact on African-American and Democratic-leaning voters. Wisconsin (had a) reduced turnout by 200,000 votes. (In contrast) states with no change to voter identification laws witnessed an average increased turnout of +1.3 percent from 2012 to 2016 . . . .” Alas, ” …87 bills to restrict access to the ballot have been introduced in 29 states this year, including voter-ID laws in 19 states.”
5. Fewer polling places: The Brennan Center reports that states with very long lines in 2012 (Florida, Maryland, and South Carolina) had precincts with fewer machines, poll workers, or both. Those who waited the longest tended to live in urban areas and were disproportionately African American and Latino. Slate reports that “… North Carolina counties cut an astonishing 27 voting sites (in 2016) and dramatically reduced early voting hours in many of the remaining sites. The result was… monstrously long lines that forced voters — many of them elderly — to stand outside for hours upon hours just to cast a ballot.” Other states sharply reduced polling places, e.g. Texas (403 poll closings), Louisiana (103), and Alabama (66). In Maricopa County, Ariz., as the Nation reports, “reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent from 2012 to 2016, from 200 to just 60 — one polling place per 21,000 registered voters.” Such endless lines amount to voter suppression, compliments of heavily funded efforts to ensure that the voices of poor and minority voters not be heard in the political system.
As Americans we should be appalled by all of this. We are living through a period in which our democracy is being undermined from within. An informed and voting population is the backbone of democracy.
D. R. Mayer lives in Boulder
