Racial disparity in access harms Black voters
The South’s post-Civil War exclusion of Blacks from voting and achieving reasonable political representation precipitated the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the South had relied on its Senate delegation to filibuster federal attempts to end such racist governance policies.
However, post-1980 race-neutral race-targeted voter restrictions tactics then replaced Jim Crow era voter literacy tests, poll taxes and property ownership. Policies were also enacted to combat the ghost of fraudulent voting, purportedly to protect the sanctity of the vote within a democratic society.
In 2000, George W. Bush won the electoral vote despite losing the presidential popular vote. Republicans charged illegal voting occurred and established a committee to investigate.
Attorney General John Ashcroft declared: “Votes have been bought, voters intimidated, and ballot boxes stuffed.”
Five years later, the Department of Justice had found virtually no evidence of misconduct with the election and only 86 people were convicted.
Most had misunderstood eligibility rules and incorrectly filled out registration forms, which did not constitute fraud.
Such Republican tactics to control political outcomes have flourished since the 2008 election of the first Black president.
The primary tactic is requiring specific photo IDs. Prior to 2010, only three states had adopted extremely restrictive photo ID laws; but since that time, nine additional states controlled by Republicans have followed suit.
A 2006 Brennan Center for Justice study found about 11% (21 million eligible voters) did not possess government issued photo IDs, including 25% of African Americans, 18% of seniors over 65, and 15% of those with incomes below $35,000 a year.
The center reported, “of the 11 states with the highest African American turnout in 2008, seven have new restrictions in place. … Of the 12 with the largest Hispanic population growth between 2000 and 2010, nine passed laws making it harder for them to vote.”
In 2011, under the Obama administration, the DOJ objected to a new Texas voter ID law based on an estimated 600,000 to 795,000 registered voters lacking government issued IDs, with Hispanics overwhelmingly affected relative to whites.
Free state-issued voter IDs could be obtained at Department of Motor Vehicle offices, which, in some cases, required traveling up to 250 miles as only 173 of 254 counties had such offices.
In the 2012 election, Texas had a 50.1% voter turnout, ranking 48th nationally. Texas had replicated the South’s late
19th century strategy of maintaining one dominate all-white political party and governing system by substantially reducing and minimizing the number of nonwhite voters, thereby reducing the total number of votes, but ensuring a majority vote for the then all-white Southern Democratic Party.
In October 2014, the 2011 Texas ID law was struck down under Section 2 of the VRA, the court found members of the legislature, “were motivated, at least in part, because of and not merely in spite of the voter ID law’s detrimental effects on the African American and Hispanic electorate.”
Further, the law was found to have
“an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose” creating “an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.” And the
2014 Texas elections witnessed only 28% of eligible voters going to the polls, the lowest since 1942. Nationally, voter turnout was also the lowest since 1942.
In the 2016 presidential election, 55% of the U.S. voting-age population voted, ranking 28th internationally compared to the 75% average of more than 30 western developed nations.
In 2016, about 64% of the U.S. voting age population was registered to vote compared with 91% in Canada (2015) and the United Kingdom (2016), 96% in Sweden (2014), and nearly 99% in Japan (2014).”
So, from 1870 to 2020, America’s white self-interest has denied nonwhites the protection of the Fifteenth Amendment’s right to cast a vote that has the same weighting factor on political representation as that of a white vote.
Tom Wallace