ROBERT LOWES: A variety of voter suppression tactics combines to weigh on would-be voters and discourage them. But there are a few things that stand out in terms of tactics. And one of those is just more laws and 24 states have stricter voting laws than they did in 2010. So, these laws are going to be in effect this November and this wave of voter suppression laws tracks basically a backlash against the administration of President Obama, elected in 2008, America’s first black president.
So, we have a variety of laws that have shortened early voting. They’ve introduced strict photo ID laws. They have limited student voting even for college kids, requiring proof of citizenship. That’s something that we saw Chris Kobach attempt in Kansas, where he’s the secretary of state and where he’s running for governor. That onslaught of laws is remarkable, considering the fact that so many of them have been passed since the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v Holder, which weakened the Voting Rights Act and it seemed to open the gates wider for these kinds of laws to take effect.
And I think the other thing that is worth noting is the effort by particularly red states to purge voter registration rolls. It’s a normal thing to clean up your rolls when voters move out of a jurisdiction or they die. But in many states, this is done in a very hyper-aggressive and unfair way. And, the Brennan Center which is associated with the New York University, they’ve a found that between 2014 and 2016, that states purged from their voter rolls roughly 16 million voters. And that’s a 33 percent increase over the number purged between 2006 and 2008. And purging increased more in jurisdictions that had been subject to the Voter Rights Act of 1965 in terms of having to get federal approval to change their voting laws. That pre-clearance mechanism of the Voting Rights Act was essentially eliminated in Shelby county decision by the Supreme Court in 2013, so the purging activity is greater in those states and those jurisdictions that had been on a leash, you might say, with the Voting Rights Act.
BETWEEN THE LINES: To fight back against some of these restrictive voting laws, often dreamed up to deprive particular demographic groups, of their right to vote, there have been some referendums that are up on the ballot this November and legislation too, to allow same day voter registration, universal registration, and make sure everybody is on the books to cast a ballot and also independent commissions that would be constituted to draw district maps after the next Census so that they’re not drawn in a very partisan way that locks in the Republican party, which has been the case over these last 10 years that have been locked in, in various congressional seats.
ROBERT LOWES: That’s right. There is still the power of the ballot box and in a number of states we have these statewide initiatives that people are voting on. Florida voters are going to look at a constitutional amendment which would restore the right of felons to vote once they complete their sentences, unless they were convicted of murder or a sex crime. And in fact, there’s only four states where a felon, after he finishes his or her sentence, cannot vote. Basically, the majority of states allow felons to regain the right to vote after they either finish their sentence or finish parole or finish probation. In a state like Florida, felons have to seek the restoration of their voting rights on an individual basis, as opposed to having it automatically restored. So that’s good.
And you also have a constitutional amendment in Maryland which would allow citizens to register to vote on Election Day. This is called same day registration. We now have 16 states and the District of Columbia which allow you to register on the day on Election Day, and that means that you don’t have to worry in those states about being purged from the voting rolls because if it occurred for some reason — might have been a good faith mistake by the voting authorities or it may have been something more malicious — but either way, you can register on Election Day to vote and that expedites things.
Also, you mentioned automatic registration. That means that anytime you have a dealing with the government where you’re getting a driver’s license or you’re applying for benefits, that you’re automatically enrolled as a voter in, the course of that application you don’t have to opt-in to voter registration in the sense that once you fill out the application, then you say to the driver’s license office, well, please use this for my voter registration application. You’re automatically registered. So those are things that citizens can work for in their own states and basically take matters in their own hands.
