The bedrock of democracy is
the free election of those who govern. Our founders created the world’s first constitutional
democracy in 1789, but only white men with property were allowed to vote at the
beginning. Although some highly undemocratic states allow everyone to vote
under very restrictive conditions, democracy has become synonymous with
universal suffrage. The United States only achieved universal suffrage because
of the protests of the 1960s, after which Jim Crow laws excluding African
Americans from the franchise were gradually dismantled.
Voting is complicated. Two
weeks ago, over 116
million Americans voted for thousands of political offices, the
highest proportion of eligible voters in a midterm election since 1914. Hundreds
of jurisdictions across America set their own rules, make their own ballots,
and supervise their own elections. The rules for voter registration, absentee
ballots, and the possible need for identification are all over the map.
My wife and I decided to be
election judges in our county in central Illinois. Judges here perform the
official functions of insuring that someone who wants to vote is registered and
votes in the proper precinct, and then documenting that the person has voted.
But the unofficial work on Election Day is just as important: helping people to
vote, who are confused about some element of this system. At my polling place,
which included three precincts, we helped voters find the proper precinct or
told them where to go if they were at the wrong place. We guided new voters to
the county courthouse if they were not yet registered, because Illinois allows
voters to register on Election Day. Voters who had recently moved, who had
changed their names, whose polling place had moved since the last election, or
who had made a mistake in filling in their ballot were all handled with
courtesy and care. It was a long day, from 5 AM to 8 PM, but everything went
smoothly. Nobody had to wait more than 5 minutes to cast a ballot. Democracy in
action.
That was not the case for all
American voters.
Voters had to wait
for hours in Georgia and other states. Voters in big cities, like
New York and Philadelphia, reported very
long lines. The likelihood of unusually heavy turnout had been
discussed for months, but many polling places were unprepared for large numbers
of voters.
There were problems across
the country with voting machines. Most states use voting machines that are more
than 10 years old, and 43 states
have machines that are no longer manufactured. Inadequate numbers of outdated
machines, some of which broke down almost immediately, caused long delays for
thousands, maybe hundreds
of thousands of voters. We had two machines at my polling place,
which broke down several times during the day, once at the same time. A
technician who came from the courthouse to fix them said there were many
machine problems across the city. Fortunately, we had paper ballots for anyone
who wanted them.
Not so easy to fix are the
structural problems that make it hard to vote. Inadequate staffing at many
polling places caused preventable delays. Siting of polling places far from
where voters live reduces voting.
The Republican legislature in
North Carolina recently passed new rules which resulted in the closure
of one-fifth of all early polling places. That came after a federal
court ruled that the legislature’s 2013 law, which reduced early voting by a
week and eliminated same-day registration, was designed to reduce African
American voting with “surgical precision”.
Racial vote suppression has
been a permanent feature of American democracy, even after the end of Jim Crow. Democratic and Republican
Congresses felt the need to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for nearly
50 years. In Shelby County v. Holder
in 2013, the Supreme Court eliminated that federal scrutiny of local electoral
behavior, when it decided that systematic racial
discrimination no longer existed. Suppression of the black vote, and
of other non-white Americans, had become more subtle.
The placement of voting
machines in Ohio in 2004 led to long lines in black districts. A thorough analysis of
the 2012 elections showed that most voters there waited only a
matter of minutes to vote. But in some communities, the average wait was almost
two hours. The only way to explain these differences was race: African
Americans had to wait twice as long as white voters.
Where polling places are
located can encourage or discourage voting. My polling place was over one mile
away from one of the precincts we covered.
Purging people from lists of
registered voters has been another tactic used by Republican state officials to
tilt the results. In Ohio, two
million voters were purged between 2011 and 2016, overwhelmingly
low-income, black Democratic voters. Voter purges have been used recently in
many states, eliminating millions
more, always predominantly Democrats.
Democrats did it, too.
American history provides a gold mine of notorious examples of every political
party cheating about elections by gerrymandering the geography of electoral
districts. But Republican officials across the country developed such extreme
methods to target their most persistent electoral foe, African Americans, that
the same Supreme Court admonished them to stop.
The justices rejected Pennsylvania’s
gerrymandered electoral maps, designed prevent Democratic victories.
Republicans had won 13 of 18 congressional districts in 2016 with only
54% of the popular vote, but only 9 two weeks ago.
Federal judges struck down
the North Carolina electoral map engineered to insure that Republicans won 10
of 13 congressional districts, but that map
was still used in this election, and 10 Republicans won again. The vote
totals show how the Republicans did had concentrated all the
Democrats they could into a few districts. In all three districts that
Democrats won, the margin was more than 40%. In four of the districts that
Republicans won, the margin was 10% or less.
Republicans don’t even try
very hard to hide the purpose of their voting “reforms”. North
Carolina Republican consultant Carter Wrenn told the Washington Post
in 2016, “Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they
would have kept early voting right where it was.” The map creator himself, Republican
state rep. Dave Lewis, said, “I think electing Republicans is better
than electing Democrats, so I drew the map to help foster what I think is
better for the country.” He
explained, “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan
advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s
possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”
Legal proceedings will only
catch the worst electoral criminals. Voters this time had a chance to voice an
opinion about how voting should proceed. Voters in Colorado (71%), Michigan
(61%), Missouri (62%), and Utah (by a hair’s breadth) passed proposals to put
the drawing of district lines in the hands of non-partisan
authorities, as did Ohio (75%) earlier
this year. Ballot measures passed in Nevada and Michigan to
automatically register as voters anyone who proves their citizenship while
obtaining an ID card.
There are many ways to cook
an election. We must always insure that our governers are not cheating. The
methods are new, but the targets are the same. As long as Republicans believe
that their power depends on preventing some Americans from voting, we will have
to fight for the basis of our democracy.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
November 20, 2018
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