Why We Must Protect the Vote at All Costs
By Miriam Berro Krugman
What is a democracy without free and fair elections in which all eligible voters are actively encouraged to vote? Voter suppression is an immense problem in the United States, and Republican legislators are creating restrictive laws that directly target populations of color, specifically Black Americans. Not only is this practice racist, but it is anti-democratic; marginalized populations (that often vote for Democrats) are being prevented from voting, the cornerstone of our democracy. Voter suppression tactics must be controlled by the federal government through the passage of bills such as the Freedom to Vote Act. Congress must take swift action to prohibit racist attacks on Americans of color as they vote, to protect our civic duty and voice for a government that represents us all.
Over the past few decades, the use of voter suppression tactics has risen sharply throughout the country, especially following the Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013 that significantly weakened the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act. The preclearance provision mandated that covered jurisdictions had to “preclear” any changes to voting laws in order to protect against voter suppression. State and federal Republican lawmakers have shrouded their scuffle for restrictive voting laws as a fight against voter fraud, but their true aim is to influence election outcomes. Controlling who wins elections is not representative of American individuals’ right to vote when eligible voters are prevented from doing so. This is not democracy in practice.
An example of voter suppression is Florida Senate Bill 90. This bill, passed by the Florida Legislature in April of 2021, imposes broad restrictions on voting by mail. Tight controls include extremely limited access to ballot dropboxes, voter identification provisions that exclude people without driver’s licenses or social security numbers, and restrictions on who may physically deposit mail-in ballots at dropboxes. Why did the Republican-controlled legislature pass this bill? Because of alleged voter fraud that was not in response to actual fraud.
It is no coincidence that in 2020, almost half the ballots cast in Florida were mailed in and overall turnout was the state’s highest in 28 years at 77%, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Hence, state Republicans harshly reacted to vote by mail provisions through restrictive, targeted legislation. According to the NAACP LDF fact sheet, “over 500,000 Black [Floridian] voters cast mail ballots in 2020, more than twice as many as in 2016 and 2018.” Although the Republican-controlled legislature called upon voter fraud allegations to pass this bill, it is clear that its passage was an attack on the vote-by-mail process. It was “a direct response to unprecedented Black participation in vote-by-mail in the 2020 election,” all because Republicans did not achieve their ideal election outcome.
Such suppression efforts are not unique to Florida - similar restrictive laws have recently been passed in Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and other states. If Americans of color are being targeted by voter suppression tactics, then our democratic system is not allowing for each voter to participate fairly and easily, thus making election results an inaccurate representation of the electorate.
Republicans will claim that tight restrictions are necessary to prevent voter fraud, but how prevalent is voter fraud anyway? In the 2020 election, there were only 1,000 cases of voter fraud nationally reported by the FBI out of the 150 million votes cast.This makes for a fraud rate of 0.00067% during an entire election cycle, an acutely low number. The bottom line is that this “issue” is not a widespread problem at all. Unlike the nonissue of voter fraud, voter suppression has broad and lasting effects. The real reason why Republican-run states are passing restrictive voting laws is that they want to win elections, and are doing so by changing the rules of the game. We cannot allow this behavior as it has the potential to shift our government and democratic process for decades to come.
This is where you, the everyday American, come in. To prevent such anti-democratic rules from becoming the norm, we all have to speak up collectively. I have two asks of you today:
Pick up the phone and call your Representative and Senators to urge them to promptly pass the Freedom to Vote Act which was introduced in the Senate in September of 2021. Use this website to access your elected officials’ phone numbers.
Be sure to vote in every single election, whether local, state, or national, in order to have your voice heard and your vote counted.
We must do our civic duty and use our voices to take back control of our precious democracy. Voting for politicians who value free and fair elections, along with voting measures that make the practice easy and safe, are our best bet to protect the American experiment.
